What is here said is very true; but the words are not the same in Hebrew. The first signifies delay, [יתמהמה] rendered “linger” in Genesis 19:16; 43:10. The other verb,
[יאחר], means, to put off, to postpone: and the sense is, that the vision will not be after the appointed time. So the two lines may be thus rendered:
If it will delay, wait for it,
For coming it will come, it will not be postponed;
or, be after, i.e., the appointed time.
Dr. Wheeler, quoted by Newcome, gives the right idea, by the following paraphrase:
It shall not be later than its season.
Both Jerome and Marckius have found a grammatical difficulty in this verse from a mistake as to the gender of [חזון], vision; and they had been evidently led astray by the Septuagint; in which the gender is
changed, and the phrase, “wait for it,” is rendered, “wait for him,” ὑπομεινον αὐτον; and so as to what follows, “for he that cometh (ἐρχομενος) shall come.” But [חזון] is the masculine gender; it is elsewhere connected with verbs in that gender. See 1 Samuel 3:1; Ezekiel 12:22. Indeed the whole tenor of the passage admits not of any other construction. It is probable that this mistake made Eusebius and Augustine to apply this verse to Christ, and
some to Nebuchadnezzar, in a typical sense.—Ed.