The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from
the
end of the earth
Now though Babylon is represented as a country distant from
Judea, and said to be a nation "from far", ( Jeremiah
5:15 ) ; yet not "from the end of the earth"; as here; and
though the Roman nation, strictly speaking, was not at so great a
distance from Jerusalem, yet the Roman emperors, and great part
of their armies brought against it, were fetched from our island
of Great Britain, which in former times was reckoned the end of
the earth, and the uttermost parts of the world {s}; and so
Manasseh Ben Israel F20 interprets this nation of Rome, and
observes, that Vespasian brought for his assistance many nations
(or soldiers) out of England, France, Spain, and other parts of
the world: and not only Vespasian was sent for from Britain to
make war with the Jews, but when they rebelled, in the times of
Adrian, Julius Severus, a very eminent general, was sent for from
thence to quell them. And it appears to be a very ancient opinion
of the Jews, that this passage is to be understood of the Romans,
from what is related in one of their Talmuds F21: they
say, that
``Trajan, being sent for by his wife to subdue the Jews, determined to come in ten days, and came in five; he came and found them (the Jews) busy in the law on that verse, "the Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far" he said unto them, what are ye busy in? they answered him, so and so; he replied to them, this is the man (meaning himself) who thought to come in ten days, and came in five; and he surrounded them with his legions, and slew them:''[as swift] as the eagle flieth;
a nation whose tongue thou shalt not
understand;
which, though it is also said of the language of the Chaldean
nation, ( Jeremiah
5:15 ) ; yet as the Chaldee and Hebrew languages were only
dialects of one and the same language, common to the eastern
nations, the Chaldee language, though on account of termination
of words, pronunciation, and other things, might be difficult,
and hard to be understood by the Jews, yet must be much more easy
to understand than the Roman language, so widely different from
theirs.