For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, [so] shall all the heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been.
Ver. 16. For as ye have drunk upon mine holy mountain] As you, O Edomites, have rejoiced and revelled in the ruins of Zion, carousing and carolling in her calamity, so shall many nations, and you among, yea, above the rest (for your excessive perfidy and cruelty), drink deeply of the cup of God's fury, which hath eternity to the bottom.
And they shall be as though they had not been] This clause makes against that other sense that some set upon the text, viz. The heathen shall drink, feast, and triumph over thee, O Edom, whom they have subdued; yea, they shall drink so stoutly that they shall swallow thee up, and all thy substance, leaving thee nothing, praeter coelum, et coenum, as that Roman prodigal boasted he had done to himself. Their exposition seemeth more probable who here begin the consolatory part of the prophecy, and make this verse an apostrophe to the afflicted Jews thus: Like as ye my people have drunk your part of the cup of affliction (an ordinary metaphor, not in Scripture only, as Eze 23:32 Jer 49:12 Matthew 20:22, but also in heathen writers, in allusion perhaps to the cup of poison given at Athens to malefactors, or, as some think, to the manner of their feasts, whereat the symposiarch, or ruler of the feast, John 2:9, gave order what, and how much, every one should drink), so shall all the heathen drink, and that continually; yea, they shall not only sip of the top, that which is sweetest and clearest; but the dregs and sediments too, they shall both drink and swallow down; till such time as it hath wholly swallowed them up, so that they shall be as though they had not been. See, for confirmation of this sense, Jeremiah 25:15; Jeremiah 49:12, and pray for the ruin of Rome, so long since foretold by Sibylla: Tota eris in cineres, quasi nunquam Roma fuisses. The prophecy is fulfilled already in Edom; whose very name is lost, more than what the Scripture reporteth of them. The Chaldees cut off abundance of them, together with the Moabites, Ammonites, and other neighbouring nations. After that Judas Maccabeus, and his nephew Hircanus, slew a great sort of them; and then, lastly, the Romans and other princes rooted them utterly out. See Joseph. lib. i. Antiq. cap. 10; 1Ma 5:65 2Ma 10:16; 2Ma 10:32 .