O ye that dwell in Moab, leave the cities, and dwell in the rock,.... Signifying hereby that they would not be in safety in their strongest and most fortified cities, which would be besieged by the enemy, and taken; and therefore are advised to leave them, and flee to the rocks and mountains, that if possible they might be safe there:and be like the dove, [that] maketh her nest in the sides of the hole's mouth; which, for fear of birds of prey, makes her nest in the side of a hole, or cleft of a rock, that she and her young may be safe from them; and which being pursued by the hawk, flies into a hollow rock or cavern, as Homer observes: but here it intends the place where it makes its nest; which is for the most part in deserts and rocky places, where great numbers of doves resort, and make their nests, as Diodorus Siculus relates; and especially in the holes and clefts of rocks, to which the allusion is in So 2:14.
The Targum is,"and be as a dove that leaves her dove house, and comes down and dwells in the bottom of a pit,''or ditch. Iliad. 21. v. 495. Bibliothec. l. 2. p.