Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it.
Ver. 1. Come near, ye nations.] In this chapter and the next, the prophet, for the terror of the wicked, and comfort of the godly, summeth up what he had said before concerning the destruction of the enemies and the restoration of the Church. Eusebius, a with many other ancients, will have this chapter to be understood to be the end of the world and the last judgment; and further saith that Plato hath taken this place of the prophet Isaiah into his writings, and made it his own. Litera vero huius vaticinii de extremo iudicio non loguitur; but this cannot be the literal sense of the text, saith Scultetus. The Jewish doctors will needs understand these two Chapter s as a prophecy of their return into the Holy Land, when once Idumea shall be destroyed; and for this they allege Lamentations 4:22, which yet proveth it not.
a De Praep. Evang., lib. xi.