I find interpreters generally understand by the mountains, the great and lofty potentates of the earth setting themselves against the church: and, no doubt, these were, in the prophet’s view; but, the view was not confined to them only, God’s bringing down the Babylonian monarchy at their prayers, and the victories afterwards of the Maccabees over their enemies, cannot reasonably be supposed to complete the intent Of this prophecy.—We must needs look to the kingdom of Christ for it, of which there is plainly an account, chap. xvii. 16, 19. compare 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 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 nearest in view.—Isa. xxvi. 19. Thy dead shall live, &c,—but not terminating it.—Here then we may consider,
1. 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.
2. 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, drag, or sledge, 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. 11. Ephraim is an heifer that is taught, and loveth to tread out corn: as appears from Isaiah xxi. 10 For in this mountain shall the hand of the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill.—So it is applied to a self-mov-
