Babylon's desolation and Israel's glorification.
Because ye were glad, etc.; rather, Truly ye may be glad; truly ye may rejoice, ye spoilers of mine heritage; truly ye may leap as a heifer at grass, and neigh as steeds; yet your mother, etc. Your triumph shall be of short duration; disgrace follows closely upon its heels. "Your mother" is a term for the nation regarded as a whole (comp. Isaiah 51:1; Hosea 2:2; Hosea 4:5). "At grass" is the reading adopted by the Septuagint and Vulgate; the pointed text has (the vowels alone are different), "(a heifer) that thresheth," i.e. allowed to eat its fill of corn, agreeably to the direction in Deuteronomy 25:4. It is not clear why the Authorized Version deserted the received pointing. Behold, the hindermost of the nations shall be a wilderness; rather, Behold, the hindermost of the nations! a wilderness, etc. The subject understood in the first part is obviously the people, in the second the land, of Babylon.