I scattered them; I will scatter them. What had happened in the past is a sign of what shall befall them in the future in punishment of like obduracy. The form of the sentence denotes that God is recounting what he had said to the people in past time; hence it is best to translate the verbs in the future tense. Scattered them with a whirlwind; Septuagint, ἐκβαλῶ αὐτούς, "I will cast them out;" Vulgate, dispersi eos (comp. Job 27:21; Amos 1:14). Nations whom they knew not. This is the usual phrase for people of strange tongue (Deuteronomy 28:33; Jeremiah 16:13). Thus the land was desolate. This was the result of God's threatenings. Some make the words of Jehovah continue to "nor returned," but the punctuation is against them. After them; i.e. after they were carried away in captivity. No man passed through nor returned. No one went to and fro—a picture of extreme desolation (comp. Isaiah 33:8; Jeremiah 9:12; and for the phrase, see Zechariah 9:8; Ezekiel 35:7). For they laid the pleasant land desolate. The pronoun refers to the disobedient Jews, their sin being the cause of the desolation; or the verb may be taken impersonally, "So the pleasant land was made desolate." "The pleasant land" is literally, "the land of desire." Septuagint, γῆν ἐκλεκτήν (Psalms 106:24; Jeremiah 3:19).
HOMILETICS