(7) I have forsaken mine house.--The speaker is clearly Jehovah, but the connection with what precedes is not clear. Possibly we have, in this chapter, what in the writings of a poet would be called fragmentary pieces, written at intervals, and representing different phases of thought, and afterwards arranged without the devices of headings and titles and spaces with which modern bookmaking has made us familiar. So far as a sequence of thought is traceable, it is this, "Thou complainest of thine own sufferings, but there are worse things yet in store for thee; and what after all are thine, as compared with those that I, Jehovah, have brought upon mine heritage, dear as it is to me?"

I have left.--Better, I have cast away.

Into the hand.--Literally, the palm, as given over utterly, unable to resist, and not needing the "grasp" of the whole hand.

Verses 7-17. - A separate prophecy. The key to it is in 2 Kings 24:1, 2, where it is related that, after Jehoiakim's rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, "Jehovah sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it." The prophecy falls into two strophes or sections, Vers. 7-13 and Vers. 14-17. In the first we have a complaint of the desolation produced by the guerilla warfare; in the second, a prediction of the captivity of the hostile peoples, not, however, without a prospect of their return home and conversion to Jehovah. It is evident enough that this passage stands in no connection with what precedes. The whole tone is that of a description of present scenes and not of the future. Sometimes, no doubt, a prophet, in the confidence of faith, represents the future as though it were already past; but there is always something in the context to determine the reference and prevent ambiguity. Here, however, there is nothing to indicate that the description relates to the future; and it is followed by a prediction which presupposes that the preceding passage refers to the literal past. Verse 7. - I have forsaken mine house. The "house" is here not the temple, but the people of Israel, as the parallel clause shows (see Hosea 8:1, and setup. Hebrews 3:6; 1 Timothy 3:15). Jehovah, not the prophet, is evidently the speaker. I have left; rather, I have east away. Into the hand of her enemies. The Hebrew is more expressive: "Into the palm of the hand." Bonomi ('Nineveh and her Palaces,' p. 191) has an engraving from the monuments of guests at a banquet, holding their drinking-vessels in the deeply hollowed palm of their hand. So here the people of Israel, in her weak, fainting state, needs only to be held in the quiet pressure of the palm of the hand. The remark and the illustration are due to Dr. Payne Smith.

12:7-13 God's people had been the dearly-beloved of his soul, precious in his sight, but they acted so, that he gave them up to their enemies. Many professing churches become like speckled birds, presenting a mixture of religion and the world, with its vain fashions, pursuits, and pollutions. God's people are as men wondered at, as a speckled bird; but this people had by their own folly made themselves so; and the beasts and birds are called to prey upon them. The whole land would be made desolate. But until the judgments were actually inflicted, none of the people would lay the warning to heart. When God's hand is lifted up, and men will not see, they shall be made to feel. Silver and gold shall not profit in the day of the Lord's anger. And the efforts of sinners to escape misery, without repentance and works answerable thereto, will end in confusion.I have forsaken my house,.... The temple, where the Lord took up his residence, and vouchsafed his presence to his people; this was fulfilled in the first temple, when it was destroyed by the Chaldeans; and more fully in the second, when Christ took his leave of it, Matthew 23:38 and when that voice was heard in it, a little before the destruction of Jerusalem, as Josephus (a) relates,

"let us go hence.''

So the Targum,

"I have forsaken the house of my sanctuary.''

I have left mine heritage: the people whom he had chosen for his inheritance, whom he prized and valued, took care of, and protected as such; see Deuteronomy 32:9.

I have given the dearly beloved of my soul; whom he heartily loved and delighted in, and who were as dear to him as the apple of his eye:

into the hands of her enemies; the Chaldeans. This prophecy represents the thing as if it was already done, because of the certainty of it, and to awaken the Jews out of their lethargy and stupidity; and by the characters which the Lord gives of them it appears what ingratitude they had been guilty of, and that their ruin was owing to themselves and their sins.

(a) De Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 5. sect. 3.