Commentaries:Barnes' Notes
<< Isaiah 15:2 Isaiah 15:4 >>
Isaiah 15:3
In their streets - Publicly. Everywhere there shall be lamentation and grief. Some shall go into the streets, and some on the tops of the houses.
They shall gird themselves with sackcloth - The common token of mourning; and also worn usually in times of humiliation and fasting. It was one of the outward acts by which they expressed deep sorrow (Genesis 37:34; II Samuel 3:31; I Kings 21:27; II Kings 19:1; Job 16:15; the note at Isaiah 3:24).
On the tops of the houses - The roofs of the houses in the East were, and still are, made flat, and were places of resort for prayer, for promenade, etc. The prophet here says, that all the usual places of resort would be filled with weeping and mourning. In the streets, and on the roofs of the houses, they would utter the voice of lamentation.
Shall howl - It is known that, in times of calamity in the East, it is common to raise an unnatural and forced howl, or long-continued shriek. Persons are often hired for this purpose Jeremiah 9:17.
Weeping abundantly - Hebrew, ' Descending into weeping;' "that is," going, as we would say, "deep into it," or weeping much; immersed as it were in tears (compare Jeremiah 13:17; Jeremiah 14:17).
Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Isaiah 15:3:
2 Kings 14:25
Psalms 60:8
Psalms 66:18
Psalms 76:10
Psalms 83:6
Isaiah 11:14
Isaiah 13:1
Isaiah 16:3
Isaiah 16:13
Isaiah 25:10
Isaiah 25:12
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