This verse continues the theme of the desolation from human habitation. The phrase “and the Lord have removed men far away” should be seen as a continuation of the “houses without man.” In the Assyrian invasion of Israel that comes shortly after this time, the removal of men from Israel creates not only the literal fulfillment of this prophecy, but is the beginning of the loss of the ten tribes. The “great forsaking” is this literal abandoning of the ancestral home. The Assyrians will carry away the men of Israel, thus they will have “forsaken” their homeland.