For thus hath the Lord of hosts said,.... To the Chaldeans; for as it was the Lord that brought them out of their own country, and directed them to Jerusalem, and ordered them to prepare war against it; so they were as an army under his command, and he it was that ordered them to do this, and that, and the other thing: the whole affair was of the Lord, and the Jews had more to fear from him, who is the Lord of armies, than from the army of the Chaldeans; for, as they could do nothing without his divine permission, so, having that, there was a certainty of succeeding:hew ye down trees, and cast a mount against Jerusalem: in the Hebrew text it is, "pour out a mount" ; the reason of which is, because there were a ditch or ditches about the city; and into these they poured in stones, and dirt, and trees, and pieces of wood, and so filled them up, and cast up a mount, on which they could raise their batteries, and demolish the walls and houses; hence mention is made of hewing down of trees, in order to cast the mount; for these were to be cut down, not so much to make battering rams, and other instruments of war, as to fill up the ditch, and raise the mount, so that the walls might be more easily battered and scaled: though some interpret it of taking precise, fixed, determined counsel, about the war, and the manner of carrying it:this is the city to be visited; or punished; not only that deserves to be so visited, but which would certainly be visited, and that immediately; its punishment was not far off; vengeance would soon be taken on it, and that for its sins: and so the Targum,"this is the city whose sins are visited;''as it follows:she is wholly oppression in the midst of her; there were nothing but oppression and oppressors in her; not only full of oppressors, but oppression itself.
This is instanced in for all kind of wickedness; the meaning is, that she was a sink of sin, and very wickedness itself. hllo wkpv "fundite aggerem", V. L. Munster, Tigurine version; "fundite vallum", Schmidt.
hue wtrk "decidite, [vel] decernite consilium". So Gussetius, Ebr. Comment. p.