(16) Desolate . . . astonished.--Better, desolate in both clauses. The Hebrew verb is the same, and there is a manifest emphasis in the repetition which it is better to reproduce in English.

A perpetual hissing.--The Hebrew word is onomatopoetic, and expresses the inarticulate sounds which we utter on seeing anything that makes us shudder, rather than "hissing in its modern use as an expression of contempt or disapproval.

Wag his head.--Better, shake his head. The verb is not the same as that which describes the gesture of scorn in Psalm 22:7; Psalm 109:25; Lamentations 2:15; Zephaniah 2:15, and describes pity or bemoaning rather than contempt. Men would not mock the desolation of Israel, but would gaze on it astounded and pitying, themselves also desolate.

Verse 16. - The effect of this is to make the land of the transgressors an object of horror and astonishment (so render rather than desolate).

18:11-17 Sinners call it liberty to live at large; whereas for a man to be a slave to his lusts, is the very worst slavery. They forsook God for idols. When men are parched with heat, and meet with cooling, refreshing streams, they use them. In these things men will not leave a certainty for an uncertainty; but Israel left the ancient paths appointed by the Divine law. They walked not in the highway, in which they might travel safely, but in a way in which they must stumble: such was the way of idolatry, and such is the way of iniquity. This made their land desolate, and themselves miserable. Calamities may be borne, if God smile upon us when under them; but if he is displeased, and refuses his help, we are undone. Multitudes forget the Lord and his Christ, and wander from the ancient paths, to walk in ways of their own devising. But what will they do in the day of judgment!To make their land desolate,.... Not that this was the intention either of those that led them out of the right way into those wrong paths, or of them that went into them; but so it was eventually; this was the issue of things; their idolatry and other sins were the cause of their land being desolate; through the ravage of the enemy, let in upon them by way of judgment; and through the destruction of men by them; so that there were few or none to cultivate and manure it:

and a perpetual hissing; to be hissed at perpetually by the enemy, whenever they passed by it, and observed its desolation; thereby expressing their hatred at its inhabitants; their joy at its desolation; and their satisfaction in it, which would be for ever; or, as Kimchi interprets, a long time. This is the present case of the Jews; and has been ever since their destruction by the Romans; and will be until the fulness of the Gentiles is gathered in:

everyone that passeth thereby shall be astonished: to see the desolations made, and the strange alterations in a place once so famous for fruitfulness and number of inhabitants:

and wag his head; either out of pity, or rather in a way of derision and exultation; see Lamentations 2:15.