The boar out of the wood doth waste it
As Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, who carried the ten tribes captive; the title of this psalm in the Septuagint version is, a psalm for the Assyrian. Vitringa, on ( Isaiah 24:2 ) interprets this of Antiochus Epiphanes, to whose times he thinks the psalm refers; but the Jews F18 of the fourth beast in ( Daniel 7:7 ) , which designs the Roman empire: the wild boar is alluded to, which lives in woods and forests F19, and wastes, fields, and vineyards:
and the wild beast of the field doth devour it;
as Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who carried the two tribes captive, and who for a while lived among and lived as the beasts of the field; both these, in their turns, wasted and devoured the people of Israel; see ( Jeremiah 50:17 ) . Jarchi interprets this of Esau or Edom, that is, Rome; and says the whole of the paragraph respects the Roman captivity; that is, their present one; but rather the words describe the persecutors of the Christian church in general, comparable to wild boars and wild beasts for their fierceness and cruelty; and perhaps, in particular, Rome Pagan may be pointed at by the one, and Rome Papal by the other; though the latter is signified by two beasts, one that rose out of the sea, and the other out of the earth; which have made dreadful havoc of the church of Christ, his vine, and have shed the blood of the saints in great abundance; see ( Revelation 12:3 Revelation 12:4 ) ( Revelation 13:1 Revelation 13:2 Revelation 13:7 Revelation 13:11 Revelation 13:12 ) , unless we should rather by the one understand the pope, and by the other the Turk, as the Jews interpret them of Esau and of Ishmael.