Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
These two things shall come to thee in a moment - That is, suddenly. Belshazzar was slain; thus the city became metaphorically a widow, the husband - the governor of it, being slain. In the time in which the king was slain, the Medes and Persians took the city, and slew many of its inhabitants, see Daniel 5:30, Daniel 5:31. When Darius took the city, he is said to have crucified three thousand of its principal inhabitants.
In their perfection "On a sudden" - Instead of bethummam , "in their perfection," as our translation renders it, the Septuagint and Syriac read, in the copies from which they translated, pithom , suddenly; parallel to rega , in a moment, in the preceding alternate member of the sentence. The concurrent testimony of the Septuagint and Syriac, favored by the context, may be safely opposed to the authority of the present text.
For the multitude "Notwithstanding the multitude" - berob . For this sense of the particle beth , see Numbers 14:11.
Other Adam Clarke entries containing Isaiah 47:9:
Daniel 5:31
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