An assembly of great nations from the north country. — Like all the great monarchies of the East, the Medo-Persian kingdom, which was to be the destroyer of Babylon, was made up of a congeries of many different races. Herodotus (vii. 61-69), in his account of the army of Xerxes, names twenty-two, from the Medes and Persians at the head of the list to the Arabians and Ethiopians at its close.
From thence she shall be taken. — The Hebrew adverb may be taken either of time or place. The latter, as referring to the region from which the assailants come, gives the better sense.
As of a mighty expert man. — The marginal rendering, “destroyer,” follows the Vulgate and the Targum, and represents a various reading. There is no sufficient reason for rejecting the Authorised Version, which has the support of the LXX. and the Syriac versions.
None shall return in vain. — Grammatically the words may refer either to the warrior or the arrow. The use of the same phrase in 2 Samuel 1:22; Isaiah 55:11 is perhaps in favour of the latter.