adorned according to the monuments with ornaments of metal.[1]
The army of the enemy presents the appearance described בּיום הכינו, in the day of his equipment. הכין, to prepare, used of the equipping of an army for an attack or for battle, as in Jer 46:14; Eze 7:14; Eze 38:7. The suffix refers to Jehovah, like that in גּבּוריהוּ; compare Isa 13:4, where Jehovah raises an army for war with Babylon. Habberōshı̄m, the cypresses, are no doubt lances or javelins made of cypress-wood (Grotius and others), not magnates (Chald., Kimchi, and others), or viri hastati. הרעלוּ, to be swung, or brandished, in the hands of the warriors equipped for battle. The army advances to the assault (Nah 2:4), and presses into the suburbs. The chariots rave (go mad) in the streets. התהולל, to behave one's self foolishly, to rave, used here as in Jer 46:9 for mad driving, or driving with insane rapidity (see 2Ki 9:20). השׁתּקשׁק, hithpalel of שׁקק, to run (Joe 2:9); in the intensive form, to run over one another, i.e., to run in such a way that they appear as though they would run over one another. חוּצות and רחבות are roads and open spaces, not outside the city, but inside (cf. Amo 5:16; Psa 144:13-14; Pro 1:20), and, indeed, as we may see from what follows, in the suburbs surrounding the inner city of citadel. Their appearance (viz., that of the chariots as they drive raving about) is like torches. The feminine suffix to מראיהן can only refer to הרכב, notwithstanding the fact that elsewhere רכב is always construed as a masculine, and that it is so here in the first clauses. For the suffix cannot refer to רחבות (Hoelem. and Strauss), because הרכב is the subject in the following clause as well as in the two previous ones. The best way probably is to take it as a neuter, so that it might refer not to the chariots only, but to everything in and upon the chariots. The appearance of the
- ↑ “The chariots of the Assyrians,” says Strauss, “as we see them on the monuments, glare with shining things, made either of iron or steel, battle-axes, bows, arrows, and shields, and all kinds of weapons; the horses are also ornamented with crowns and red fringes, and even the poles of the carriages are made resplendent with shining suns and moons: add to these the soldiers in armour riding in the chariots; and it could not but be the case, that when illumined by the rays of the sun above them, they would have all the appearance of flames as they flew hither and thither with great celerity.” Compare also the description of the Assyrian war-chariots given by Layard in his Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 348.
