The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jolting chariots.
Read Chapter 3
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
Because they shook them and their branches violently. They destroyed weapons of their power from human beings, strong men disporting themselves in fire. The reins of their chariots on the day of his preparation, and the horses will be alarmed in the roads; the chariots will be confused and will collide in the streets; their appearance is like fiery torches, and they flash by like lightning. Since it was the omniscient God who made future events resound in the holy prophets, they necessarily foretold them as he wished. Often it came to them in actual visions of the events. Consequently, they were startled to see them occurring before their own eyes, as it were, and they delivered a prophecy of them. Something of this kind the prophet now seems to have experienced in the case of the inhabitants of Nineveh and the comrades of Cyrus: that they even shook them and their branches violently, and the prophecy was delivered as though by accident to the vines: the bunch is shaken and drops its grapes, either because a wild gale blows, or burning heat flares up, or some other damage so befalls it that even the branch itself along with its fruit proves to be divested even of its foliage. This was the way they shook them like vines. But their weapons were also destroyed, that is, their power, “weapons” sometimes meaning “power.” He says that the cavalry, fearsome though they are and skilled in fighting in chariots, were affected by such terrors as to be put to flight, colliding with one another, shattered and broken, and convinced that the enemy columns were advancing at such a rate as to be comparable to torches, and in their rapid and unbridled course burning them like lightning.
