They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up [as] the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand.
Ver. 9. They shall come all for violence] That by force and violence they may carry all before them. Fit via vi, Cedit viribus aequum. They are set upon it, and will have it so.
Their faces shall sup up as the east wind] That ventus urens et exsiccans, they shall blast all they look upon; Euroclydon-like, they shall overturn all, Acts 27:14. Navigantium pestem, the mariner's misery, Pliny calleth this wind, for the hurt it doeth by sea. Some read it, their faces shall look towards the east, viz. towards Babylon, whither they carry the booty they get.
And they shall gather the captivity as the sand] So many shall be their captives, and so little accounted for as the dust or sand they tread upon. Thus the Turks carry out of Hungary and other Christian countries near unto them innumerable booties and captives, fifteen thousand at a time. And so the Spaniards, when they had taken the island Hispaniola, in the Indies, within a few months they rid it clean of the inhabitants and natives, while they gathered unto themselves captives and slaves.