Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. No city but Jerusalem is called "the holy city" (Isaiah 48:2; Isaiah 52:1); the plural, therefore, refers to the upper and the lower parts of the same city, Jerusalem (Vitringa); or, all Judea was holy to God, so its cities were deemed 'holy' (Maurer). But the parallelism favours Vitringa. Zion and Jerusalem (the one city) answering to "holy cities."