By thy messengers; so thou hast advanced thy very servants above me. I am come up to the height of the mountains; I have brought up my very chariots to those mountains which were thought inaccessible by my army. Lebanon; a high hill, famous for cedars and fir trees, here following. Will cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: this may be understood, either,
1. Mystically, I will destroy the princes and nobles of Judah, (which are sometimes compared to cedars, &c.,) or their strongest cities. Or rather,
2. Literally, I will cut down the trees that hinder my march and plain and prepare the way for all my numerous army and chariots. And by this one instance he intimates that nothing should stand in his way; no, not the highest and strongest places. The lodgings of his borders, i.e. those towns and cities (which he calls lodgings in way of contempt) which are in his utmost borders, and most remote from me. I am come into the land of Canaan at one border, Lebanon, and I resolve to march on to the other extreme border, and so to destroy the whole country, from one border to another; the borders of a land being oft put for the whole land within its, borders; as Exodus 8:2 Psalms 74:17, Psalms 147:14 Isaiah 44:12. Or, as it is in the Hebrew, into the lodging of his border; for which, in the parallel place, Isaiah 37:21, it is into the height of his border. And so this may be understood of Jerusalem; which it is not probable that in all his brags he would omit; and against which his chief design now lay; which he here calleth a lodging for its contemptible smallness, if compared with his great and vast city of Nineveh: or, as it is in Isa 37, the height, for its two famous mountains, Zion and Moriah; or for the mountains which were round about Jerusalem, Psalms 125:2; and he adds, of his border, because this city was in the border of Judah; as being part of it in the tribe of Benjamin, and near the kingdom of the ten tribes, which was now in the Assyrian's hands. The forest of his Carmel, i.e. the forest of Mount Carmel, which may seem to be another inaccessible place, like Lebanon. Or, into his forest, and his fruitful field; for Carmel, though properly it was a pleasant and fruitful mountain in the tribe of Issachar, of which see Joshua 12:22; yet it is oft used to signify any fruitful place, as is manifest from Isaiah 10:18, Isaiah 16:10 Jeremiah 2:7. And thus all the parts of the land are here enumerated; the mountains, the cities, the woods, and the fruitful fields. Or, his fruitful forest, to wit, Jerusalem; which is thought by many interpreters to be called a forest, Jeremiah 21:14 Ezekiel 20:46, a name which agrees well enough to cities, where buildings are very numerous, and close, and high, like trees in a forest. And if Jerusalem might be called a forest, it might well be called Hezekiah's Carmel, or fruitful place, because his chief strength, and treasure, and fruit was now in it; and this last word may seem to be added here, to intimate that this was not like other forests, unfruitful and barren. And so both this and the foregoing words are understood of the same place, even of Jerusalem; the last branch being joined to the former by way of apposition; into the lodging of his border, the forest of his Carmel, or his fruitful forest; there being no more words in the Hebrew text.