Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are cut down; all they that bear silver are cut off.
Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh - rather, 'the mortar,' a name applied to the valley of Siloam from its hollow shape (Jerome). The article prefixed proves it not to be a proper name х hamakteesh (H4389), from kaatash (H3806), to pound]. The valley between Zion and Mount Olivet, at the eastern extremity of Mount Moriah, where the merchants dwelt (Zechariah 14:21, "There shall be no more the Canaanite" - namely, the merchant-Chaldaic version). The Tyropoeon (i:e., cheese makers) Valley below mount Akra (Rosenmuller). Better, Jerusalem itself, so called as lying in the midst of hills (Isaiah 22:1, "the valley of vision;" Jeremiah 21:13, "O inhabitant (inhabitress) of the valley, and rock of the plain"), and as doomed to be the scene of its people being destroyed as grain or drugs are pounded in a mortar (Proverbs 27:22). (Maurer.) Compare the similar image of a "pot" (Ezekiel 24:3; Ezekiel 24:6, "Set on a pot ... Woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose scum is therein, and whose scum is not gone out of it ... For her blood is in the midst of her"). The reason for the destruction is subjoined-namely, its merchant people's greediness of gain.
For all the merchant people are cut down - literally, the Canaanite people: irony: all the merchant people of Jerusalem are very Canaanites in greed for gain and in idolatries (note, Hosea 12:7, "He is a merchant (margin, Canaan: see Ezekiel 16:3, "Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite); the balances of deceit are in his hand").
All they that bear silver are cut off - loading themselves with that which will prove but a burden (Habakkuk 2:6, "Woe ... to him that ladeth himself with thick clay").