And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
And I will bring up ... baldness upon every head - a sign of mourning (Isaiah 15:2, "On all their heads shall be baldness;" Jeremiah 48:37; Ezekiel 7:18).
I will make it as the mourning of an only son - "it," i:e., the earth (Amos 8:9). I will reduce the land to such a state that there shall be the same occasion for mourning as when parents mourn for an only son (Jeremiah 6:26, "Make thee mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation;" similarly as was their mourning on account of their national overthrow, such shall be their mourning for the sin that caused it, at the eve of their national and spiritual restoration; Zechariah 12:10, "They shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born").