O thou enemy, &c. This is a sudden apostrophe to the enemies of God's people, the Philistines, Amorites, or other nations which had formerly made great havoc and waste among them: Destructions are come to a perpetual end Thou hast formerly wasted and destroyed the people of God, but those destructions have now come to an end, and shall cease. Thy power to annoy Israel is now broken. Christians, when repeating those words, “may take a retrospect view of the successive fall of those empires, with their capital cities, in which the enemy had, from time to time, fixed his residence, and which had vexed and persecuted the people of God in different ages. Such were the Assyrian or Babylonian, the Persian and the Grecian monarchies. All these vanished away, and came to nothing. Nay, the very memorial of the stupendous Nineveh and Babylon is so perished with them that the place where they once stood is now no more to be found. The Roman empire was the last of the pagan persecuting powers; and when the church saw that under her feet, well might she cry out, The destructions of the enemy are completed to the uttermost! How lovely will this song be in the day when the last enemy shall be destroyed, and the world itself shall become what Babylon is at present.” Horne.

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