Lamentations 4:20

The breath of our nostrils Pe. remarks that the phrase is an ancient one, being found in the Tell el Amarna letters (fifteenth century b.c.). Cp. Seneca (ad Neronem de Clementia, I. 4) "He (the Emperor) is the breath of life, which these many thousand (subjects) draw." As regards its application to Zedekiah individually we are to remember that whatever may have been his personal weaknesses (and he was weak rather than vicious), he was the one on whom the whole of the people's hopes depended for the continuance of their national life. So "the romantic enthusiasm of Cavaliers and Non-jurors for the Stuarts was not to be accounted for by the merits and attractions of the various successive sovereigns and pretenders towards whom it was directed," Adeney, op. cit. p. 298.

Of whom we said The reference may very possibly be to a hope entertained by the fugitives that by escaping to the mountainous region of Moab or Ammon they might maintain in some sort their national existence under Zedekiah.