Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
The crooked places "The mountains" - For hodurim , crooked places, a word not easily accounted for in this place, the Septuagint read hararim , , the mountains. Two MSS. have hadarim , without the vau , which is hardly distinguishable from the reading of the Septuagint. The Divine protection that attended Cyrus, and rendered his expedition against Babylon easy and prosperous is finely expressed by God' s going before him, and making the mountains level. The image is highly poetical: -
At vos, qua veniet, tumidi subsidite montes,
Et faciles curvis vallibus este viae .
Ovid, Amor. 2:16.
"Let the lofty mountains fall down,
and make level paths in the crooked valleys."
The gates of brass "The valves of brass" - Abydenus, apud, Euseb. Praep. Evang. 9:41, says, that the wall of Babylon had brazen gates. And Herodotus, i, 179. more particularly: "In the wall all round there are a hundred gates, all of brass; and so in like manner are the sides and the lintels." The gates likewise within the city, opening to the river from the several streets, were of brass; as were those also of the temple of Belus. - Herod. i., 180, 181.
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