I was wroth with my people. I have polluted … and given; rather, I polluted and gave. The reference is to the conquest of Judaea by Nebuchadnezzar. Thou didst show them no mercy. We have very little historical knowledge of the general treatment of the Jewish exiles during the Captivity.
A certain small number—Daniel and the Three Children—were advanced to positions of importance (Daniel 1:19; Daniel 2:48, Daniel 2:49; Daniel 3:30), and, on the whole, well treated. On the other hand, Jehoiachin underwent an imprisonment of thirty-seven years' duration (2 Kings 25:27).
Mr. Cheyne says that "the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel do not suggest that the [bulk of the] exiles were great sufferers." This is, no doubt, true; and we may, perhaps, regard Isaiah's words in this place as sufficiently made good by the "cruelties which disfigured the first days of the Babylonian triumph" (Lamentations 4:16; Lamentations 5:12; 2 Chronicles 36:17).
Still, there may well have been a large amount of suffering among the rank-and-file of the captives, of which no historic record has come down to us. Psalms 138:1-8. reveals some of the bitter feelings of the exiles.
Upon the ancient; rather, upon the aged. The author of Chronicles notes that Nebuchadnezzar, on taking Jerusalem, "had no compassion on young man or maiden, old man or him that stooped for age" (l.s.c.
). There is no reason for giving the words of the present passage an allegorical meaning.