For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant [places] for their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns [shall be] in their tabernacles.
Ver. 6. For, lo, they are gone because of destruction] They are gone either into Egypt for refuge, or into the state of the dead, they are gone out of the world (abierunt, i.e. obierunt). They shall perish by destruction, so some render it. When God had said in the former verse, "What will ye do," they should have fallen down before him and said, "What wilt thou have us to do, Lord?" we know not what at all to do, but our eyes are toward thee. This had been right, and thus they might have disarmed God's indignation; but they had other carnal shifts, and thought they could tell well enough what to do, and whither to go; whereupon they were so fully bent, that the prophet here reports them gone already. "For, lo, they are gone," and got to Egypt; as various of them did doubtless during the siege, and after the sack of Samaria, when they were forced to shift for themselves as they could: but did they so "escape by iniquity. In thine anger cast down the people, O God," saith David; and it is not more a prayer than a prophecy, Psalms 56:7, and this people had the proof of it.
Egypt shall gather them] Either for punishment or for burial, as Eze 29:5 Jeremiah 8:2, so that they fled but out of the smoke into the fire; and in running from death they ran to it; as the historian saith of those poor Scots at Musselborough Field, who, running for their lives, so strained themselves in their race, that they fell down breathless and dead.
Memphis shall bury them] Lest they should please themselves with vain hopes of return to their country, he shows that that shall never be; but they shall lay their bones in a strange land. Memphis (anciently called Noph, Isaiah 19:13, or (as some will), No, Nahum 3:8, at this day Grand Cairo, famous for the pyramids and the kings' sepulchres), Memphis, I say, a principal city of Egypt, shall be a Kibrothhattaavah to you, a place of sepulchres; especially then when Nebuchadnezzar, sent by God (who giveth him Egypt as his pay for his pains at Tyre), shall come and smite that land, and deliver such as are for death to death, and such as are for the sword to the sword, Jeremiah 43:11 .
The pleasant places for themselves, nettles shall possess them] Heb. shall possess them as their inheritance; so that the Israelites nor their heirs shall ever repossess these pleasant places for their silver, i.e. where they either laid up their silver (their repositories or countinghouses), or where they laid out their silver, either in costly buildings and sumptuous furniture, or else in idols and statues placed therein, to their no small charge and delight. These shall be ruined and overrun with nettles, thorns, and thistles, a token of horrible desolation, Isaiah 32:13; Isaiah 34:13. Note hence, that as God spareth a place for a few good men found therein (as he would have done Sodom, which is now a place of nettles and salt pits, Zep 2:9), so a fruitful land bringeth he into barrenness (or saltness), for the wickedness of them that dwell therein, Psalms 106:34,35; witness Judaea, that land of desire, Jeremiah 22:27, that garden of Eden, Joel 2:3, that glorious land, Daniel 11:16, yea, glory of all lands, Ezekiel 20:15, now woefully waste and desolate; so is Grecia, formerly so famous for arms and arts; so are some parts of Germany, and so may England soon be (without the greater mercy of God, by a miracle of whose mercy, and by a prop of whose extraordinary patience, we have hitherto subsisted), I say, England, whose valleys now are like Eden, whose hills are as Lebanon, whose springs are as Pisgah, whose rivers are as Jordan, whose walls is the ocean, and whose defence is the Lord Jehovah.