John Gill Commentary Jeremiah 4:7

"A lion is gone up from his thicket, and a destroyer of nations; he is on his way, he is gone forth from his place, to make thy land desolate, that thy cities be laid waste, without inhabitant." — Jeremiah 4:7 (ASV)

The lion is come up from his thicket
Meaning Nebuchadnezzar^F19, from Babylon, who is compared to a lion for his strength, fierceness, and cruelty; see (Jeremiah 50:17) so the Roman emperor is called a lion, (2 Timothy 4:17) agreeably to this the Targum paraphrases it, ``a king is gone from his fortress;'' or tower; and the Syriac version, ``a certain most powerful king is about to go up as a lion out of his wood:''

and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way;
he who had conquered and destroyed other nations not a few, and these mighty and strong; and therefore the Jews could not expect but to be destroyed by him. This tyrant was a type of antichrist, whose name is Apollyon, a destroyer of the nations of the earth, (Revelation 9:11) (9:18)

he is gone forth from his place, to make your land desolate;
from Babylon, where his royal palace was, in order to lay waste the land of Judea; and he is represented as being come out, and on the road with this view, to strike the inhabitants of Judea with the greater terror, and to hasten their flight, their destruction being determined and certain:

and your cities shall be laid waste without an inhabitant;
they shall become so utterly desolate, that there should be none dwelling in them, partly by reason of the multitudes of the slain, and partly by reason of multitudes that should flee; and should be laid waste to such a degree, that they should be covered with grass growing upon them; which is the signification of the word^F20 here used, according to R. Joseph Kimchi.

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FOOTNOTES:

• F19: So T. Bab. Megilia, fol. 11. 1. & Sanhedrin. fol 94. 2.
• F20: (hnyut) "gramine succrescente obducantur quidam" in Gataker.