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For, lo, they are gone - Many of them fled to Egypt to avoid the destruction; but they went there only to die.

Memphis - Now Cairo, or Kahira, found them graves.

The pleasant places for their silver - The fine estates or villas which they had purchased by their money, being now neglected and uninhabited, are covered with nettles; and even in their tabernacles, thorns and brambles of different kinds grow. These are the fullest marks of utter desolation.

For lo, they are gone because of destruction - They had fled, for fear of destruction, to destruction. For fear of the destruction from Assyria, they were fled away and gone to Egypt, hoping, doubtless, to find there some temporary refuge, until the Assyrian invasion should have swept by. But, as befalls those who flee from God, they fell into more certain destruction.

Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them - They had fled singly, in making their escape from the Assyrian. Egypt shall receive them, and shall gather them together, but only to one common burial, so that none should escape. So Jeremiah says, “They shall not be gathered nor buried” Jeremiah 8:2; and Ezekiel, “Thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered” Ezekiel 29:5. “Memphis” is the Greek name for the Egyptian “Mamphta,” whence the Hebrew “Moph”; or “Manuph,” whence the Hebrew “Noph” (Isaiah 19:13; Jeremiah 2:16; Jeremiah 44:1; Jeremiah 46:14; Ezekiel 30:13 ff). It was at this time the capital of Egypt, whose idols God threatens. Its name, “the dwelling of Phta,” the Greek Vulcan, marked it, as a seat of idolatry; and in it was the celebrated court of Apis, the original of Jeroboam‘s calf. There in the home of the idol for whom they forsook their God, they should be gathered to burial. It was reputed to be the burial-place of Osiris, and hence, was a favorite burial-place of the Egyptians. It once embraced a circuit of almost 19 miles, with magnificent buildings; it declined after the building of Alexandria; its very ruins gradually perished, after Cairo rose in its neighborhood.

The pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them - The English margin gives the same sense in different words; “their silver shall be desired; (as Obadiah saith, “his hidden treasures were searched out) nettles shall inherit them” Obadiah 1:6. In either way, it is a picture of utter desolation. The long rank grass or the nettle, waving amid man‘s habitations, looks all the sadder, as betokening that man once was there, and is gone. The desolate house looks like the grave of the departed. According to either rendering, the silver which they once had treasured, was gone. As they had “inherited” and “driven” out (the word is one) the nations, whose land God had given them, so now nettles and thorns should “inherit them.” These should be the only tenants of their treasure-houses and their dwellings.

Israel gave rewards to their idols, in the offerings presented to them. It is common for those who are niggardly in religion, to be prodigal upon their lusts. Those are reckoned as idolaters, who love a reward in the corn-floor better than a reward in the favour of God and in eternal life. They are full of the joy of harvest, and have no disposition to mourn for sin. When we make the world, and the things of it, our idol and our portion, it is just with God to show us our folly, and correct us. None may expect to dwell in the Lord's land, who will not be subject to the Lord's laws, or be influenced by his love. When we enjoy the means of grace, we ought to consider what we shall do, if they should be taken from us. While the pleasures of communion with God are out of the reach of change, the pleasant places purchased with silver, or in which men deposit silver, are liable to be laid in ruins. No famine is so dreadful as that of the soul.