Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed [as] a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.
Ver. 12. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field] Even for your sakes, O wicked princes, priests, and prophets; you are the traitors that have betrayed us all into the hands of Divine justice. To be angry with us for saying so, and telling you what to trust to, is as if some fond people should be angry with the herald, or the trumpet, as the cause of their wars.
Zion shall be plowed as a field] Shall be utterly laid waste and levelled. Conquerors used to plough up those places that they would not have rebuilt; and to sow them with salt, Judges 9:45. It must needs be a dismal destruction that is described in such exquisite terms. Alterius perditio tua sit cautio. This threatening of the prophet took so well that the judgment was respited for over a hundred years, Jeremiah 26:19. But now men's hearts are more hardened, and therefore their destruction more hastened.
And Jerusalem shall become heaps] Rupes ruderum. This they once thought as possible as to overthrow God's own throne; the very disciples had a conceit that the world could not outlast the temple, as may be gathered from Matthew 24:3. But they (some of them) lived to see themselves confuted, and our Saviour's words verified, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down," Matthew 24:2 .
And the mountain of the house] That famous house, that was worthily reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, and stood upon Mount Moriah.
As the high places of the forest] As woody and desert places, fit only for wild beasts. Lege et Luge, Read and weep, saith one, speaking of Jerusalem's desolation.