For he saith, By the strength of my hand... — Another reproduction of the style of the royal inscriptions of Assyria. (Comp. Isaiah 37:10-13.)
I have removed the bounds of the people. — The practice has, of course, more or less characterised the conquerors of all ages in their attempts to merge independent nationalities into one great empire; but it was pursued more systematically by Assyria than by most others. To be “a remover of boundaries and landmarks “was the title in which an Assyrian king most exulted. (Comp. inscription of Rimmon-nirari, in Smith’s Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 243, 244. Records of the Past, xi. 3).
I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. — Better, I have put down those that sat firmly. The Hebrew word for “valiant man” means primarily a “bull,” and then figuratively, as in Isa xxxiv, 7; Psalms 22:12, a “mighty one.” The fact that the bull appears so frequently in Assyrian monuments as a symbol of sovereignty, mates it probable that the word is used in that symbolic sense here. In Psalms 78:25, the “mighty ones” to whom it is applied are those of the host of heaven, the angels of God.