I will turn your feasts into mourning, And all your songs into lamentation; And I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, And baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, And the end of it like a bitter day.
The pronoun “it,” and also “thereof,” is the feminine ה : Newcome refers it to הדברה, this matter, or this event, understood: or in case ארף, land, be the antecedent, he thinks that כאבל, “as a mourning,” should be rendered participially, as “one who mourns.” Either of these constructions may suit the original; but another seems preferable. The antecedent to “it appears to be אבל, “mourning,” in the first line of the verse. Our own version is no doubt the correct one, and not that which Calvin adopts; only the last line may be better rendered thus, as Junius and Tremelius do — 