Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array.
Ver. 5. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains] Not only on the tops of standing grain, as other locusts, which therehence also have their name Aκριδες, but as the hurry of chariots in stony places, Revelation 9:9. For in that book of the Revelation, the penman borrows all the elegancies and flowers of the Old Testament, thereby to set out the story of the New in succeeding ages; as here hence the Popish priests are fitly called locusts for their numerosity and voracity, Revelation 9:3. They are also likened unto horses, Joel 2:7, fed and fierce to run, and rush into the battle not without noise. "Like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble," Ecclesiastes 7:6; or the rattling of "the jumping chariot wheels," Nahum 3:2 .
As a strong people set in battle array] In a bloody fight between Amurath, the third King of Turkey, and Lazarus, despot of Servia, many thousands fell on both sides. The brightness of the armour and weapons was as it had been the lightning the multitude of lances and other horsemen's staves shadowed the light of the sun. Arrows and darts fell so fast that a man would have thought they had poured down from heaven. The noise of the instruments of war, with the neighing of horses and outcries of men, was so terrible and great, that the wild beasts in the mountains stood astonished therewith, and the Turkish histories, to express the terror of the day, vainly say that the angels in heaven, amazed with that hideous noise, for that time forgot the heavenly hymns, wherewith they always glorify God.