A lion has gone up from his thicket, a destroyer of nations has set out; he has gone out from his place to make your land a waste; your cities will be ruins without inhabitant.
The Prophet more fully declares the import of the threatening which we briefly considered yesterday; for God said in the former verse, that he would bring an evil from the north; and the kind of evil it was to be he now describes, and compares the king of Babylon to a lion; and afterwards, without a figure, he calls him the destroyer of nations By...
God's usual method is to warn before he wounds. In these verses, accordingly, God gives notice to the Jews of the general desolation that would shortly be brought upon them by a foreign invasion. This must be declared and published in all the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem, that all might hear and fear, and by this loud alarm be either brought to repentance or left inexcusable.
Commenting on Jeremiah 4:5-18
The lion is come up from his thicket,.... Meaning Nebuchadnezzar (s), from Babylon, who is compared to a lion for his strength, fierceness, and cruelty; see Jer 50:17 so the Roman emperor is called a lion, Ti2 4:17, agreeably to this the Targum paraphrases it, "a king is gone from his fortress;'' or tower; and the Syriac version, "a certain most powerful king is about...