Isaiah 3:26

And her gates shall lament and mourn,.... These being utterly destroyed; or there being none to pass through them, meaning the gates of the city of Jerusalem: and she [being) desolate; clear of

And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground. Her gates shall lament. The place of concourse personified is represented mourning for the loss of those multitudes which once frequented it.

Her gates; the gates of Zion or Jerusalem, which, by a figure very usual in sacred Scripture and all authors, are said to lament, to imply the great desolation of the place, that there should be no people to go out and come in by the gates, or to meet together in the gates, as they used to do. Shall sit upon the ground, like a mournful woman bewailing the loss of her husband and children.

Isaiah 3:26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she [being] desolate shall sit upon the ground.Ver. 26. And her gates shall lament.] Because unfrequented. And the king desolate.] Swept and wiped of all; not, as once, with her turrified head and stretched forth neck. Sitteth upon the ground.] As a sad mourner. Money was coined by Vespasian with a woman sitting at the root of a palm tree, and this inscription, Iudaea capta. The Jews captured. πυργουνκεφαλην. - Nazian.

(25-26) Thy men . . .(26) her gates . . .—The feminine pronoun in both verses points to the daughter of Zion as representing her many daughters. As in Lamentations 1:1, and as in the JUDÆA CAPTA medals that commemorated the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, she is represented as sitting on the ground desolate and afflicted.

Verse 26. Sit upon the ground.] Sitting on the ground was a posture that denoted mourning and deep distress. The prophet Jeremiah (Lamentations 2:8) has given it the first place among many indications of sorrow, in the following elegant description of the same state of distress of his country: - "The elders of the daughter of Sion sit on the ground, they are silent: They have cast up dust on their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth; The virgins of Jerusalem have bowed down their heads to the ground." "We find Judea," says Mr. Addison, (on Medals, Dial. ii,) "on several coins of Vespasian and Titus, in a posture that denotes sorrow and captivity. I need not mention her sitting on the ground, because we have already spoken of the aptness of such a posture to represent an extreme affliction. I fancy the Romans might have an eye on the customs of the Jewish nation, as well as those of their country, in the several marks of sorrow they have set on this figure. The psalmist describes the Jews lamenting their captivity in the same pensive posture: 'By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion.' But what is more remarkable, we find Judea represented as a woman in sorrow sitting on the ground, in a passage of the prophet, that foretells the very captivity recorded on this medal." Mr. Addison, I presume, refers to this place of Isaiah; and therefore must have understood it as foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation by the Romans: whereas it seems plainly to relate, in its first and more immediate view at least, to the destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar, and the dissolution of the Jewish state under the captivity at Babylon. - L. Several of the coins mentioned here by Mr. Addison are in my own collection: and to such I have already referred in this work. I shall describe one here. On the obverse a fine head of the emperor Vespasian with this legend, Imperator Julius Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, Tribunitia Potestate Pater Patriae, Consul VIII. On the reverse a tall palm tree, emblem of the land of Palestine, the emperor standing on the left, close to the tree, with a trophy behind him; on the right, Judea under the figure of a female captive sitting on the ground, with her head resting on her hand, the elbow on her knee, weeping. Around is this legend, Judea Capta. Senates Consulto. However this prediction may refer proximately to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, I am fully of opinion that it ultimately refers to the final ruin of the Jewish state by the Romans. And so it has been understood by the general run of the best and most learned interpreters and critics.

26. her gates] the places of rendezvous in Eastern cities. lament and mourn] because they are now deserted. Cf. Lamentations 1:4; Jeremiah 14:2. and she, emptied, shall sit upon the ground] Cf. ch. Isaiah 47:1; Lamentations 2:10; Job 2:13.

And her gates - Cities were surrounded with walls, and were entered through gates opening into the principal streets.

26. Her gates — A poetical soliloquizing. The “gates” of Jerusalem were places busy with concourses occupied in imparting news, in trades, and in settling of disputes.