And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken [it].
Ver. 8. And I will sell your sons and your daughters] And so the scene shall be soon altered, and a strange vicissitude easily observed. But when was this done? or was it ever done? Ego putarim factum, etsi scriptura non dicat quando, saith Tarnovius: I suppose it was done, though the Scripture say not when. Others fly to allegories, and understand the text of the conversion of the Gentiles. I like their way best, that say, That which God did for the Church's sake, the Church itself is said to do it. For their cruelties to the Jews, God delivered these nations up into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar first (who had a hard tug of it, and had therefore Egypt given him for his wages), and afterwards by Alexander the Great, who took Tyre, and razed it. And this was that great service spoken of Ezekiel 29:18, wherein every head was made bald, and every shoulder bare, in filling up that strait of the sea, which separated it from the continent, before it could be taken. But taken it was, together with Sidon and Philistia; and their children sold as far as Sabaea, which was then counted the utmost part of the known earth, Mat 12:42 Luke 11:31, being part of Arabia the Happy, or (as some will) the Desert. All this was done for the Jews' sake, though the world little considereth it. It was enough for them that they knew it to be so, according to this prophecy; and that God did hereby show his high esteem of them, by avenging them of their enemies, and by thus giving men for them, and people for their life, Isaiah 43:4 .
For the Lord hath spoken it] And will therefore surely do it; neither could their Apollo deliver them out of God's hands; though, to prevent his forsaking of them, when besieged by Alexander, the Tyrians chained and nailed that idol of theirs to a post, that they might be sure of it. But all would not do.