| Geneva Study Bible And the {h} unicorns shall come down with them, and the bulls with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. (h) The mighty and rich will be as well destroyed as the inferiors. Wesley's Notes 34:7 The unicorns - It is confessed, this was a beast of great strength and fierceness; and it is used in this place to signify their princes and potentates, who shall be humbled and cast down. Them - With the lambs, and goats, and rams. Fatness - With the fat of the slain sacrifices, mingled with it. King James Translators' Notes unicorns: or, rhinocerots soaked: or, drunken Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary 7. unicorns-Hebrew, reem: conveying the idea of loftiness, power, and pre-eminence (see on [755]Job 39:9), in the Bible. At one time the image in the term answers to a reality in nature; at another it symbolizes an abstraction. The rhinoceros was the original type. The Arab rim is two-horned: it was the oryx (the leucoryx, antelope, bold and pugnacious); but when accident or artifice deprived it of one horn, the notion of the unicorn arose. Here is meant the portion of the Edomites which was strong and warlike. come down-rather, "fall down," slain [Lowth]. with them-with the "lambs and goats," the less powerful Edomites (Isa 34:6). bullocks . bulls-the young and old Edomites: all classes. dust-ground. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 34:1-8 Here is a prophecy of the wars of the Lord, all which are both righteous and successful. All nations are concerned. And as they have all had the benefit of his patience, so all must expect to feel his resentment. The description of bloodshed suggests tremendous ideas of the Divine judgments. Idumea here denotes the nations at enmity with the church; also the kingdom of antichrist. Our thoughts cannot reach the horrors of that awful season, to those found opposing the church of Christ. There is a time fixed in the Divine counsels for the deliverance of the church, and the destruction of her enemies. We must patiently wait till then, and judge nothing before the time. Through Christ, mercy is exercised to every believer, consistently with justice, and his name is glorified. |