For Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer: now the LORD will feed them as a lamb in a large place.
For Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer - translate, 'Israel is refractory, as a refractory heifer,' namely, one that throws the yoke off her neck. Israel had represented God under the form of "calves" (1 Kings 12:28); but it is she herself who is one, untamed, petulant, and disinclined to God's yoke, and when under it turning backward rather than forward.
Now the Lord will feed them as a lamb in a large place - not in a good sense, as Isaiah 30:23. "In that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures." Here there is irony; lambs like a large pasture; but it is not so safe for them as a small one duly fenced from wild beasts. God will "feed" them, but it shall be with the "rod" (Micah 7:14, "Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage which dwell solitarily in the wood"). It shall be no longer in the narrow territory of Israel, but "in a large place" - namely, they shall be scattered in exile over the wide realm of Assyria, a prey to their foes, as lambs which are timid, gregarious, and not solitary, are a prey, when scattered asunder, to wild beasts. This shall be "now:" the judgment is no longer far off: it is at hand and immediate. She wished to be at large: at large she shall be; but it shall be the largeness of a desert.