Yet the defenced city [shall be] desolate,.... Or "but", or "notwithstanding" b; though the Lord deals mercifully with his own people, and mixes mercy with their afflictions, and causes them to issue well, and for their good; yet he does not deal so with others, his and their enemies: for by the "defenced city" is not meant Jerusalem, as many interpret it, so Kimchi; nor Samaria, as Aben Ezra; nor literal Babylon, as others; but mystical Babylon, the city of Rome, and the whole Roman or antichristian jurisdiction, called the "great" and "mighty" city, Revelation 18:10 which will be destroyed, become desolate, or "alone" c, without inhabitants:
[and] the habitation forsaken and left like a wilderness; or "habitations"; the singular for the plural; even beautiful ones, as the word d signifies, the stately palaces of the pope and cardinals, and other princes and great men, which, upon the destruction of Rome, will be deserted, and become as a wilderness, uninhabited by men:
there shall the calf feed: not Ephraim, as Jarchi, from
Jeremiah 31:18 nor the king of Egypt, as Kimchi, from Jeremiah 46:20 nor the righteous that shall attack the city, and spoil its substance, as the Targum; see Psalms 68:30 but literally, and which is put for all other cattle, or beasts of the field, that should feed here, without any molestation or disturbance:
there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof; which the Targum interprets of the army belonging to the city; it denotes the utter destruction of it, and its inhabitants; see Revelation 18:2. Some of the Jewish writers e interpret this passage of Edom or Rome, and of the Messiah being there to take vengeance on it.
b כי "sed", Junius Tremellius, Forerius "tamen, nihilominus", Calvin. c בדד "solitaria", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius Tremellius, Piscator. d נוה "amoenum habitaculum", Tigurine version Piscator e Shemot Rabba, sect. 1. fol. 91. 3.