Remove the diadem. — The word translated “diadem” is rendered in every other place in which it occurs (Exodus 28:4; Exodus 28:37 bis, Exodus 28:39; Exodus 29:6 bis, Exodus 39:28; Exodus 39:31; Leviticus 8:9 bis, Exodus 16:4) the mitre of the high priest, and undoubtedly has the same sense here. Not only was the royal but also the high-priestly office to be overthrown in the approaching desolation. Neither of them were ever recovered in their full power after the captivity. The various verbs here, remove, take off, exalt, abase, are in the original in the infinitive, and although it is sometimes necessary to translate the infinitive as an imperative, it is better here to keep to its more common sense of indicating an action without reference to the agent which is most readily expressed in English by the passive: “The mitre shall be removed, and the crown taken off... the low exalted, and the high abased.”
This shall not be the same. — Literally, this not this, or, supplying the verb, as is often required, this shall not be this — i.e., as the following clauses express, there shall be an utter change and overturning of the whole existing state of things. For the abasement of the high and exaltation of the low, as an expression of the Divine interposition at the introduction of a new order of things, comp. 1 Samuel 2:6-8; Luke 1:51-53.