She is empty, and void, and waste. Bukahum' bukah, um' bulakah. The three words are of very similar meaning and sound, and express most forcibly the utter ruin of the city. A Latin commentator has endeavoured to imitate the Hebrew paronomasia by rendering them, "vacuitas, evacuatio, evanidatio"—a translation more ingenious than classical.
The paronomasia is better rendered by "vastitas, vastitia, vacuitas," and the German, "leer und ausgeleert und verheert." "Sack and sacking and ransacking" (Gandell). An analogous combination of words is found in Isaiah 24:3, Isaiah 24:4; Isaiah 29:2, Isaiah 29:3; Ezekiel 33:29; Zephaniah 1:15.
Septuagint, ἐκτιναγμὸς, καὶ ἀνατιναγμὸς καὶ ἐκβρασμός, "thrusting forth and spurning and tumult." The heart melteth. A common expression for fear and despondency (Joshua 7:5; Isaiah 13:7; Ezekiel 21:7).
The knees smite together (Daniel 5:6). So in Homer continually, λύτο γούνατα. Much pain is in all loins. The anguish as of childbirth. Septuagint, ὠδῖνες, "labour pains," in contrast with the injunction in Zephaniah 1:1 (comp.
Isaiah 13:8; Isaiah 21:3; Jeremiah 30:6). Gather blackness (Joel 2:6); or, Withdraw their colour; i.e. wax pale. But the Hebrew rather implies that the faces assume a livid hue, like that of coming death.
Hence the LXX. renders, ὡς πρόσκαυμα χύτρας, as the burning of an earthen vessel, which is blackened by the fire; and Jerome, sicut nigredo ollae (comp. Jeremiah 30:6).