(16) Daughters of the nations is a common enough expression for the nations themselves, but is peculiarly appropriate in connection with a lamentation, since the formal mourning of the East was always performed by women.
Verse 16. - This is the lamentation, etc. The work of mourning for the dead was for the most part assigned to women (2 Samuel 1:24; Jeremiah 9:17; 2 Chronicles 35:25), and is therefore appropriately assigned to the daughters of the nations. He hears, as it were, their wailing over the fallen greatness of Egypt, even in the solitude of Tel-Abib.
32:1-16 It becomes us to weep and tremble for those who will not weep and tremble for themselves. Great oppressors are, in God's account, no better than beasts of prey. Those who admire the pomp of this world, will wonder at the ruin of that pomp; which to those who know the vanity of all things here below, is no surprise. When others are ruined by sin, we have to fear, knowing ourselves guilty. The instruments of the desolation are formidable. And the instances of the desolation are frightful. The waters of Egypt shall run like oil, which signifies there should be universal sadness and heaviness upon the whole nation. God can soon empty those of this world's goods who have the greatest fulness of them. By enlarging the matters of our joy, we increase the occasions of our sorrow. How weak and helpless, as to God, are the most powerful of mankind! The destruction of Egypt was a type of the destruction of the enemies of Christ.
This is the lamentation with which they shall lament her,.... The Egyptians themselves, or rather they that are after mentioned. The Targum is,
"the prophet said, a lamentation is this prophecy, and it shall be for a lamentation;''
he was bid at the beginning of it to take up a lamentation, and now at the end of it he pronounces it to be one, and that it should be sung as such:
the daughters of the nations shall lament for her; either literally understood, it being the business and custom of women to say or sing the funeral dirge, or the lamentation at the interment of the deceased; or figuratively, the inhabitants of other nations. So Ben Melech and the Targum,
"the villages of the people shall lament her'';
that is, the inhabitants of them, who were in alliance with Egypt, and under its protection:
they shall lament for her, even for Egypt, and for all her multitude; for the desolation of the land, and for the vast numbers of people that should be slain with the sword, or carried captive:
saith the Lord God; which is added for the confirmation of it; for what he has spoken shall be done.
"the prophet said, a lamentation is this prophecy, and it shall be for a lamentation;''
he was bid at the beginning of it to take up a lamentation, and now at the end of it he pronounces it to be one, and that it should be sung as such:
the daughters of the nations shall lament for her; either literally understood, it being the business and custom of women to say or sing the funeral dirge, or the lamentation at the interment of the deceased; or figuratively, the inhabitants of other nations. So Ben Melech and the Targum,
"the villages of the people shall lament her'';
that is, the inhabitants of them, who were in alliance with Egypt, and under its protection:
they shall lament for her, even for Egypt, and for all her multitude; for the desolation of the land, and for the vast numbers of people that should be slain with the sword, or carried captive:
saith the Lord God; which is added for the confirmation of it; for what he has spoken shall be done.