For the Lord, Yahweh of Hosts, is he who touches the land and it melts, and all who dwell in it will mourn; and it will rise up wholly like the River, and will sink again, like the River of Egypt.
 There is more henceforth than dealing generally with Judah and Israel. It was no small dishonour that they should come into the list of guilty nations in and around Palestine scourged for repeated transgressions always ending with the worst. But if Judah and Israel had sunk to the level of the Gentiles, this does not hinder His preferring a peculiar indictment against them, both as a whole and separately. Thus, though there was in chapters 1, 2 the general inclusion of Judah and Israel with the heathen round about them, in chap. iii. we come to what is far closer, more serious and characteristic, for they are here viewed as distinguished from their neighbours.
