Isa 14:4-8. A CHORUS OF JEWS EXPRESS THEIR JOYFUL SURPRISE AT BABYLON'S DOWNFALL.

      The whole earth rejoices; the cedars of Lebanon taunt him.

      4. proverb--The Orientals, having few books, embodied their thoughts in weighty, figurative, briefly expressed gnomes. Here a taunting song of triumph (Mic 2:4; Hab 2:6).
      the king--the ideal representative of Babylon; perhaps Belshazzar (Da 5:1-31). The mystical Babylon is ultimately meant.
      golden city--rather, "the exactress of gold" [MAURER]. But the old translators read differently in the Hebrew, "oppression," which the parallelism favors (compare Isa 3:5).

JFB.