Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people:
Because - literally, Because, even because.
They have made you desolate, х shamowt (H8074)]. Cocceius takes this as feminine plural of a noun [shamaah], 'Because there are desolations, and they have swallowed you up' - i:e., because the surrounding pagan have taken advantage of your desolation by the Chaldees to seize on your possessions. Buxtorf, as the English version, makes it an infinitive, from х shaamam (H8074)] to desolate. Fairbairn needlessly makes it from [naasham], to breathe, 'Because they have breathed after you,' namely, like wild beasts after their prey (cf. margin and Hebrew, Isaiah 42:14).
And swallowed you up, х wªshaa'op (H7602)] - literally, panted after you, as a beast after its prey; implying the greedy cupidity of Edom as to Israel's inheritance (Psalms 56:1-2, "Man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me").
Ye are taken up in the lips of talkers - literally, 'ye are made to go up on the lip of the tongue,' i:e., on the lip of the slanderer, the man of tongue. Edom slandered Israel because of the connection of the latter with Yahweh, as though He were unable to save them. Deuteronomy 28:37; Jeremiah 24:9 had foretold Israel's reproach among the pagan (Daniel 9:16).