Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me
Or "us" F23; everyone of us: these are the words of Zion and Jerusalem, as appears from ( Jeremiah 51:35 ) ; complaining of the injuries done them by the king of Babylon, who had eaten them up; spoiled their substance, as the Targum; took their cities, plundered them of their riches, and carried them away captive: he hath crushed me;
to the earth; or "bruised" or "broken", even all her bones; see ( Jeremiah 50:17 ) ; he hath made me an empty vessel;
emptied the land of its inhabitants and riches, and left nothing valuable in it: he hath swallowed me up like a dragon;
or "whale", or any large fish, which swallow the lesser ones whole. The allusion is to the large swallow of dragons, which is sometimes represented as almost beyond all belief; for not only Pliny F24 from Megasthenes reports, that, in India, serpents, that is, dragons, grow to such a bulk, that they will swallow whole deer, and even bulls; but Posidonius F25 relates, that in Coelesyria was one, whose gaping jaws would admit of a horse and his rider: and Onesicritus F26 speaks of two dragons in the country of Abisarus in India; the one was fourscore and the other a hundred and forty cubits long; he hath filled his belly with my delicates;
with the treasures of the king and his nobles; with the vessels of the temple, and the riches of the people, which he loaded himself with to his full satisfaction. So the Targum,
``he filled his treasury with the good of my land;''he hath cast me out;