Though gleaning be a term proper for all kind of harvest, yet the word used here is appropriated to the vintage, and implies the thorough riddance that the Chaldeans shall make, contrary to the law for gathering the vintage, though it may seem to allude to it, Leviticus 19:10. Judah shall be gleaned over and over, till there be a full end, none left; as the Israelites gleaned the Benjamites, Judges 20:45; for thus they picked them up at several times, both before, 2 Kings 24:2, and also at thee time of Zedekiah's reign, 2 Kings 25:6,7,11,15,19; and this seems to be intimated in the next words. See Habakkuk 1:9. Turn back thine hand; as much as to say, they should not be content with one spoiling, but they should go back a second and a third time, again and again, to carry away both persons and spoil, leaving nothing behind them worth carrying away, Jeremiah 52:28; the first carrying away being as the vintage, the second the gleaning; carrying away first the principal, and afterwards the more inferior sort. As a grape gatherer into the baskets; as the grapegatherers do, filling one basket after another. Whether these be the words of the Babylonians calling upon and stirring up one another to do it, as some; or the words of God to the Babylonians, as most; it comes much to the same thing; for what they did; as by God's commission.

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