Verse 1
THE FIRST WOE.
This chapter was probably written in Hezekiah’s reign, and its utterance is against Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, before its downfall and depopulation under Shalmanezer, king of Assyria.
1. Woe A calamity pronounced as impending.
Crown of pride A poetic figure describing the site of Samaria, a beautiful, oblong hill, fertile to its summit, rising from the centre of a fertile plain or valley, behind which is a circular range of mountains. The whole is verdant with grass, grain, olive groves, and vineyards. Upon this place and people serious events are about to fall, for reasons in part contained in epithets characterizing them, namely, their pride and intemperance.
Drunkards of Ephraim So the people of Israel are called from the name of its strongest tribe.
On the head On Samaria’s heights, overlooking valleys below rich and fertile, but producing chiefly that which only made the people worse. Drunkenness, however, is mentioned, not as the only prevalent vice, but as the crying one.
Be the first to react on this!
