For while [they be] folden together [as] thorns
Like them, useless and unprofitable, harmful and pernicious, fit
only for burning, and, being bundled together, are prepared for
it; and which is not only expressive of the bad qualities of the
Ninevites, and of the danger they were in, and what they
deserved; but of the certainty of their ruin, no more being able
to save themselves from it, than a bundle of thorns from the
devouring fire: and while they are drunken [as]
drunkards;
dead drunk, no more able to help themselves than a drunken man
that is fallen; or who were as easily thrown down as a drunken
man is with the least touch; though there is no need to have
recourse to a figurative sense, since the Ninevites were actually
drunk when they were attacked by their enemy, as the historian
relates F9; that the king of Assyria being
elated with his fortune, and thinking himself secure, feasted his
army, and gave them large quantities of wine; and while the whole
army were indulging themselves, the enemy, having notice of their
negligence and drunkenness by deserters, fell upon them unawares
in the night, when disordered and unprepared, and made a great
slaughter among them, and forced the rest into the city, and in a
little time took it: they shall be devoured as stubble
fully dry;
as easily, and as inevitably and irrecoverably.
F9 Diodor. Sicul. l. 2. p. 112.