Psalm 80:13
The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.
The boar out of the wood doth waste it,.... As Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, who carried the ten tribes captive; the title of this psalm in the Septuagint version is, a psalm for the Assyrian. Vitringa, on Isaiah 24:2 interprets this of Antiochus Epiphanes, to whose times he thinks the psalm refers; but the Jews {r} of the fourth beast in Daniel 7:7, which designs the Roman empire: the wild boar is alluded to, which lives in woods and forests {s}, and wastes, fields, and vineyards:
and the wild beast of the field doth devour it; as Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who carried the two tribes captive, and who for a while lived among and lived as the beasts of the field; both these, in their turns, wasted and devoured the people of Israel; see Jeremiah 50:17. Jarchi interprets this of Esau or Edom, that is, Rome; and says the whole of the paragraph respects the Roman captivity; that is, their present one; but rather the words describe the persecutors of the Christian church in general, comparable to wild boars and wild beasts for their fierceness and cruelty; and perhaps, in particular, Rome Pagan may be pointed at by the one, and Rome Papal by the other; though the latter is signified by two beasts, one that rose out of the sea, and the other out of the earth; which have made dreadful havoc of the church of Christ, his vine, and have shed the blood of the saints in great abundance; see Revelation 12:3, unless we should rather by the one understand the pope, and by the other the Turk, as the Jews interpret them of Esau and of Ishmael.
{r} Gloss. in T. Bab. Pesachim, fol. 118. 2.
{s} Homer. Odyss. xix. v. 439.