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17, 19. compared with Dan. ii. 54, 55. And we must carry on our view all along to the end of time, Rev. ii. 26, 27. The rather, that it is the way of the prophet to wrap up in one expression temporal, spiritual and eternal deliverance; the deliverance from Babylon, which was temporal, being the first and neared in view; Isaiah xxvi. 19. Thy dead men shall live, &c. but not terminating in it. Here then we may consider,
First, What worm Jacob has to encounter or yoke with, mountains and hills, whose weight is sufficient to crush millions of him! difficulties quite disproportionable to his strength, as a mountain to that of a worm.
Secondly, The success of this very unequal match: The mountains shall not crush the worm, but the worm shall thresh the mountains, as one doth a sheaf of corn, with repeated strokes. They did not thresh their corn in those days, with flails, as we do; but trode it out with the feet of men or beasts, or else by drawing a kind of cart fledge, over and over it, called, in the text, threshing instruments. I do not mind the word here denoting the action of the worm, and rendered threshing, applied at all to the drag, but, as it formerly signifies, to tread out, as rendered, Hosea x. II. "Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught, and loveth to tread out corn." As appears from Isaiah
