Therefore thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts, the Lord: "Wailing will be in all the broad ways; And they will say in all the streets, 'Alas! Alas!' And they will call the farmer to mourning, And those who are skillful in lamentation to wailing.
They shall call, he says, the husbandman to mourning Some think אכר, acar, derived from נכר, nucar, which is to own, or, to make, one’s self a stranger: and they are induced to regard it so only for this reason, because the Prophet immediately mentions those who were skillful in mourning. But, as all the Hebrews agree as to the meaning of this word, I am unwilling, without authority to make any change: and it also harmonizes well with what the Prophet says. At the same time, those Hebrew interpreters are wrong, who think that the order is inverted, as though it ought to have been thus, “The skillful in lamentation shall call husband men to mourning.” But the Prophet, I doubt not, meant, that all were to be led together to mourning; for, though the manner was different, yet, in the first place, he appoints mourning to husbandmen, and then he shows that it would be common to all those who were wont to mourn. 