Say thou unto them, thus saith the Lord God,.... In answer to their sneering question; or notwithstanding their stupidity and indolence, and in order to awaken them out of it:
this burden [concerneth] the prince in Jerusalem; the present reigning prince in Jerusalem, King Zedekiah. The sense is, either that that burden of goods the prophet carried out on his shoulders had a regard to the king of Judah and his captivity, and was an emblem of it; or rather that the burden of prophecy, or that sorrowful calamity predicted by the above sign or type, had relation to that prince, and would be fulfilled in him; and so the Targum,
"upon the prince is the burden of this prophecy;''
in like manner Jarchi interprets it of prophecy:
and all the house of Israel which [are] among them; they were also concerned in it, and would be carried captive with their prince.