THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION 517
(plural} ; and Jus tongue (singular) shall consume away in their mouth (plural)" The thought which the prophet probably intends to express, by the use of the singular suffix, is that this terrible catastrophe shall overtake each one and the whole company. " It is," as another has expressed it, "the act of God in His individual justice to each one of all those multitudes gathered against Him." One by one their eyes, of which they said, " Let our eye look (or gaze ) upon Zion " x (i.e., with joy at her desolation), shall consume away in their sockets, and their tongue, with which (like Rabshakeh and the Assyrians in a former siege of Jerusalem 2 ) they blasphemed God, shall consume away in their mouth a truly terrible judgment, intended as a warning to men that it is a fearful thing to be arrayed against Jehovah and His Anointed, or against the people and the city with which He and His cause shall in that day be identified.
The niiT 1 . nroinD, m humatJi Yehovah literally, a " tumult of Jehovah," with which the gathered hosts shall also be seized in that day, is the supernatural panic and " con fusion " which Jehovah sends among His enemies, with a view to their utter discomfiture and self-destruction. It is the same as the " astonishment " and " madness " with which the horses and the riders of these same hosts are spoken of as smitten in chap. xii. 4, and as a consequence "they shall lay hold" (*\>^r}.,hecfiziqu, a verb which is used generally but not exclusively of " laying hold," or " seizing violently " with evil intent) " every one on the hand of his neighbour." Each in that tumultuous, panic-stricken throng shall seize the other s hand, " mastering him power fully," with a view to his destruction " and his hand (i.e., each man s hand) shall be lifted up against the hand of his neighbour," with a view to deliver a deadly blow.
Such " confusions " or tumult the Lord had sent be fore in the midst of Israel s enemies. Thus the hosts of Midian were discomfited before Gideon and his little band,
1 Mic. iv. ii.
- Isa. xxxvi. 18-22, xxxvii. 4.
