8. And the daughter of Zion shall be left (20) as a cottage in a vineyard He alludes to a custom which exists in France, that the vinekeepers rear a cottage for themselves when the grapes begin to ripen. His next comparison, which is closely allied to the former, is taken from a custom of that nation of protecting also gardens of cucumbers (21) by means of men who kept watch during the night. He next explains what he intended to convey by both comparisons.
Like a besieged city This may be explained in two ways; either that the whole country will be wasted, with the solitary exception of the city, which shall be left standing like a cottage, or that the city itself will be destroyed. The former interpretation is adopted by the Jews, and they understand this passage to relate to the siege of Sennacherib; but I think that it has a wider signification, and embraces other calamities which followed afterwards. This may indeed refer to the neighboring country, from the misery and devastation of which it was impossible but that the city should sustain much damage; but I consider the Prophet’s meaning to be, that the evils of which he speaks shall reach even to the city itself, until, broken and ruined, it shall wear the aspect of a mean cottage
The daughter of Zion is the name here given to Jerusalem, in accordance with what is customary in Scripture to give the designation of daughter to any nation, in the same manner as the daughter of Babylon (Isaiah 47:1) and the daughter of Tyre (Psalms 45:12) are names given to the Tyrians and Babylonians. Zion is the name here employed rather than Jerusalem, on account of the dignity of the temple; and this figure of speech, by which a part is taken for the whole, is frequently employed.
(20) Residua manebit.
(21) A lively French traveler, Tavernier, who flourished about the middle of the seventeenth century, in describing the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, gives the following account: — “There we see large beds of melons and of cucumbers, but especially of the latter, of which the inhabitants of the Levant are particularly fond. Most frequently they eat them without peeling, and afterwards drink a glass of water. Throughout the whole of Asia this is the ordinary food of the common people for three or four months. The whole family lives on it; and when a child asks for something to eat, instead of giving it bread, as in France and other places is the custom, in the Levant they offer it a cucumber, which it eats raw just as it has been fresh pulled. Cucumbers in the Levant have a peculiarly excellent flavour, and though they are eaten raw they never do any injury.” — Ed.