20. It shall never be inhabited any more. By the verb תשב, ( thesheb,) shall sit, he means continuance; as if he had said, “There is no hope of restoring Babylon.” All these forms of expression have precisely the same object, that the Babylonians will be destroyed with such a destruction that their ruin shall be perpetual. The picture is still further heightened by adding, that the desolation will be so great that in that place neither will the Arabians pitch their tents, nor the shepherds their folds That place must have been marvellously forsaken and uncultivated, when it was disregarded by those roving tribes; for the Arabians were a wandering and unsettled nation, and had no fixed abode. Having left their native country, because it was barren, and is therefore called Arabia Deserta, (for it is of that country that we speak,) they devoted themselves to feeding flocks and to hunting, and wandered without any fixed residence; for which reason also the Greeks called them σκηνήται, ( skenetai,) dwellers in tents. Now the country around Babylon was exceedingly fertile before that calamity, which rendered this change the more astonishing and almost miraculous, either because the place lost its former fertility, or because the constant slaughter made all men abhor the sight of it. Undoubtedly the Prophet means that not only will the buildings be thrown down, but the very soil will be accursed.