Some by the mountains understand Moriah and Zion, which were the two tops of a mountain cleft into two, but this is too forced. As the country was mountainous, we are rather to understand the prophet as having in his eye the several neighboring and contiguous mountains which formed a chain around…

The Hebrew doctors explain this passage as meaning, that there shall spring from other nations very few who shall excel either in mental endowment or in virtuous attainment, but that in Israel such persons will be very numerous.

“Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.

The meaning of this verse is obscure, partly from its abrupt brevity, and partly from the ambiguity of one word. The word springs is, beyond all controversy, to be here taken metaphorically; but interpreters are not agreed as to the explanation of the metaphor.