The city; Jerusalem, and other cities; for the singular word may be here taken collectively. Of confusion; or, of vanity, or emptiness, or desolation; for this Hebrew word signifies all these things. And the city may be thus called, either,
1. In regard of the judgments of God coming upon it, as if he had said, a city devoted to desolation or destruction, to be emptied of its goods and people; or,
2. For its sin, a city of confusion or disorder, breaking all the laws and orders which God had established among them; or a city that walketh with or after vanity, as the Scripture speaks, Job 31:5 Jeremiah 2:5, that loveth and speaketh vanity, as they did, Psalms 4:2, Psalms 12:2. And this may seem most convenient, that the sin of the city should be noted in this word, as the punishment is expressed in the next. Every house is shut up; either for fear of the enemy who have entered the city; or rather, because the inhabitants are either fled, or dead, or gone into captivity, and so there are none to go into it, or come out of it.