XXXV.
(1) The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them... — The desolation of the chief enemy of Israel is contrasted with the renewed beauty of Israel’s own inheritance. The two last words are better omitted. The three nouns express varying degrees of the absence of culture, the wild pasture-land, the bare moor, the sandy steppe.
Shall... blossom as the rose. — Better, as the narcissus, but the primrose and the crocus (Colchicum autumnale) have also been suggested. The words paint the beauty of the chosen land flourishing once more as “the garden of Jehovah” (Genesis 13:10), and therefore a fit type of that which is in a yet higher sense the “Paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7).