What will you say when He sets over you close allies whom you yourself trained? Will not pangs of anguish grip you, as they do a woman in labor?
As the Prophet observed that the Jews were in no way moved, he addressed them still further, and set before them what seemed then incredible, even the calamity, from which they thought they were able easily to defend themselves by means of their auxiliaries. He then adds, What wilt thou then say?
Here is, I. A judgment threatened against this people that would quite intoxicate them. This doom is pronounced against them in a figure, to make it the more taken notice of and the more affecting (Jer 13:12): Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, every bottle shall be filled with wine; that is, those that by their sins have made themselves vessels of wrath fitted...
Commenting on Jeremiah 13:12-21
Can the Ethiopian change his skin?.... Or, "the Cushite"; either, as the Arabic version, the "Abyssine", the inhabitant of the eastern Ethiopia; properly an Ethiopian, as the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions render it; or, the "Chusean Arabian"; the inhabitant of Arabia Chusea, which was nearer Judea than the other Ethiopia, and better known, and which were of a dark complexion.