Therefore now shall they go captive with the first that go captive, and the banquet of them that stretched themselves shall be removed.
Ver. 7. Therefore now shall they go captive with the first] Heb. in the head of those that go captive: as they have been first in the degrees of honour and of sin, so shall they be now of punishment, according to that saying of the Centurists, Ingentia beneficia, ingentia flagitia, ingentia supplicia vast blessings, immoderate disgraces, enormous punishments (Magdeburg). This they shall have of God's hand, they shall lie down in sorrow, Isaiah 50:11; yea, many sorrows shall be to those wicked ones, Psalms 32:10, these merciless men shall not have the least mercy shown to them, James 2:13. God will surely set off all hearts from such, as he did from Haman, for whom in his misery not one man openeth his mouth once to intercede, and he will punish, magnum luxum magno luctu, as one saith, great luxury with great necessity.
And the banquet of them that stretched themselves] They shall neither have mind nor money to make feasts, that were wont to lay on in all sorts of superfluities. That prodigal abovementioned was by a just hand of God reduced to extreme penury, and cast off by all his former acquaintance. That luxurious Roman, Apicius (the expenses of whose kitchen amounted to more than two millions of gold), having eaten up his estate, and fearing poverty, poisoned himself; leaving behind him ten books of direction how to furnish and set forth a feast with all manner of varieties, which now he could sooner talk of than take of. The word here rendered banquet is taken for a funeral feast, Jeremiah 16:5, and so some think the sense here is; they shall be carried captive into a far country, and there be deprived of the honour of burials; which is a judgment elsewhere threatened, Jeremiah 22:18,19. Aben Ezra rendereth it, facesset canticum, the song of the wanton shall be set packing; and for this he allegeth, that in the Arabic dialect the root word here used signifieth to lift up the voice, either for joy or grief. The Seventy render it the neighing of horses; as noting their immoderate lust, according to Jeremiah 5:8. And this sense Ribera commendeth.