Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!
Ver. 12. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood] This seemeth to be the senseless creatures, black Cantus Song, (as they call it), chanted out against the wrong doer, by God's own appointment, cui obscura clarent, muta respondent, silentium confitetur, saith an ancient (Juvonal),
- “ cui servi ut taceant, iumenta loquentur, ”
The very beasts have a verdict to pass upon oppressors; as the dumb ass did upon Balaam: yea, the lifeless creatures shall ring a doleful knell of woe and alas in their ears, and cry them guilty; as the earth did Cain, and the heaven did Phocas; and as the tignum e ligno logs of wood, doth here Nebuchadnezzar. His town of Babylon was built in blood by Semiramis, who slew her husband, so was Rome by Romulus, so was Alexandria, in Egypt, by Alexander, that great manslayer, the founder of populous No, of whose woe read Nahum 3:8; Nahum 3:10. See Trapp on " Nah 3:8 " See Trapp on " Nah 3:10 " And for Alexander himself, he lay unburied thirty days together, neither did his bloody conquest above ground purchase him any title for a habitation underground. The like befell our conqueror William, who laid his foundation here upon fireworks; and was punished in his posterity for his depopulations at New Forest and elsewhere.
And stablisheth a city by iniquity] That thinketh so to establish it, but it proveth otherwise. Josephus telleth us that Nebuchadnezzar set three different walls of brick about his Babylon, one within another; but all would not do when once God took it to do. Oppression is a bony sin, Amos 5:12,13 .