Shall I cause it to return ... - Or, Back to its sheath! The work of the sword is over.

I will judge thee - This seems to refer to Nebuchadnezzar, who, after his return from Jerusalem, became insane, and lived like a beast for seven years; but was afterwards restored, and acknowledged the Lord.

Shall I cause it to return into his sheath?.... The drawn and furbished sword of the Chaldeans? no, I will not; it shall never return or be put up until the Ammonites are utterly consumed. Some read these words in the imperative, as the Targum,

"return the sword to its sheath;''

so the Vulgate Latin version, "return to thy sheath"; and so may be considered as a direction to the Ammonites to put up their swords, and not stand in their own defence, since it would be to no purpose; though Jerom, and Grotius after him, take the words to be an apostrophe to the drawn sword of the Chaldeans to sheath itself, having done its work upon the Jews and Ammonites; or to the Chaldeans to return to Babylon, and where they also should be punished; and so interpret all that follows of the destruction of the Babylonians by the Medes and Persians; but the first sense is best:

I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created, in the land of thy nativity; not in the place where their father Ammon was born, which was at Zoar; but where they first became a kingdom and state, a body politic; or where the present generation of them were born; they should not be carried out of their own land, but destroyed in it.

Shall I cause it to return into his sheath? I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created, in the land of thy nativity.

21:30 Shall I cause it - God will by no means suffer the sword to be sheathed. Judge thee - Condemn, and execute.

Shall...: or, Cause it to return

30. Shall I cause it to return into his sheath-namely, without first destroying Ammon. Certainly not (Jer 47:6, 7). Others, as the Margin, less suitably read it imperatively, "Cause it to return," that is, after it has done the work appointed to it.

in the land of thy nativity-Ammon was not to be carried away captive as Judah, but to perish in his own land.

21:28-32 The diviners of the Ammonites made false prophecies of victory. They would never recover their power, but in time would be wholly forgotten. Let us be thankful to be employed as instruments of mercy; let us use our understandings in doing good; and let us stand aloof from men who are only skilful to destroy.