Now in the twenty and fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackclothes, and earth upon them.
Ver. 1. Now in the twenty and fourth day] A day after the feast of tabernacles, they keep a solemn fast:
Usque adeo nihil est, ex omni parte, beatum.
There is in this present life an interchange of all things, a succession of feasting and fasting. Of the best, while here it may be said, as Pliny doth of Metellus, Infelix dici non debet, felix non potest; unhappy you cannot call him, happy you may not (lib. vii. cap. 47). One compareth him to the Ark, which was ever transported, till settled in Solomon's Temple; another to quicksilver, which hath in itself a principle of motion, but not of rest.
The children of Israel were assembled with fasting] As Epaminondas walked heavily the day after his triumph. Deadness of spirit is apt to follow our liveliest joys; but that must be looked to, and security prevented, which is wont to seize upon men after holy duties; like as worms and wasps eat the sweetest fruits. These fasters had wept at the hearing of the law, and were stilled by the Levites, Nehemiah 8:11, because it was unseasonable. Now the feast being over, and their hearts yet full of grief for their great sin in taking strange wives (not yet put away, though they had vowed to do it, Ezra 10:3, &c.), they first put away those wives on the twenty-third day, and then humble themselves by fasting and prayer on this twenty-fourth day; being wrought thereunto by the reading of the law, as is implied in the next verse.
And with sackcloth] As acknowledging themselves unworthy of the coarsest clothing; and that, but for shame, they would have stripped themselves naked.
And earth upon them] As those that had forfeited all, and deserved to be as far underground as now they were above.