Yet the defenced city [shall be] desolate,.... Or "but", or "notwithstanding" ; though the Lord deals mercifully with his own people, and mixes mercy with their afflictions, and causes them to issue well, and for their good; yet he does not deal so with others, his and their enemies: for by the "defenced city" is not meant Jerusalem, as many interpret it, so Kimchi; nor Samaria, as Aben Ezra; nor literal Babylon, as others; but mystical Babylon, the city of Rome, and the whole Roman or antichristian jurisdiction, called the "great" and "mighty" city, Re 18:10 which will be destroyed, become desolate, or "alone" , without inhabitants:[and] the habitation forsaken and left like a wilderness; or "habitations"; the singular for the plural; even beautiful ones, as the word signifies, the stately palaces of the pope and cardinals, and other princes and great men, which, upon the destruction of Rome, will be deserted, and become as a wilderness, uninhabited by men:there shall the calf feed: not Ephraim, as Jarchi, from Jer 31:18 nor the king of Egypt, as Kimchi, from Jer 46:20 nor the righteous that shall attack the city, and spoil its substance, as the Targum; see Ps 68:30 but literally, and which is put for all other cattle, or beasts of the field, that should feed here, without any molestation or disturbance:there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof; which the Targum interprets of the army belonging to the city; it denotes the utter destruction of it, and its inhabitants; see Re 18:2.
Some of the Jewish writers interpret this passage of Edom or Rome, and of the Messiah being there to take vengeance on it. yk "sed", Junius & Tremellius, Forerius; "tamen, nihilominus", Calvin. ddb "solitaria", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.
hwn "amoenum habitaculum", Tigurine version; Piscator Shemot Rabba, sect. 1. fol. 91.