But let me very briefly point out in passing first, that it is a promise which has manifestly not yet been fulfilled. The expression BWn siao pKtM rrjTO pK, literally, "from the land of the rising of the sun, and from the land of the going down of the sun" properly rendered, " from the east country, and from the west country," in the English versions, really includes all parts of the earth, as may be seen from Ps. 1. i, cxiii. 3; Mai. i. II, etc., where the same Hebrew idiom is used. Now, never in the past has such a restora tion taken place. A representative section, but a mere handful out of the whole people, was indeed brought back to the land after the seventy years captivity in Babylon, of which Zechariah himself was a witness, but that could not possibly be the restoration here promised; first, because, as is to be inferred from the whole prophecy, this was to be something which should take place at a \\\n& future in the point of view, or outlook, of this post-exilic prophet, to whom, what we may call the chief act in the restoration from Babylon was already an accomplished fact; and, secondly, because that partial restoration was only from one direction, namely, from the east, or " north " (as Babylon and Persia were called, because their invasions of Palestine were from the north). From the " west " they could not then have been brought back, since very few of the Jewish nation had as yet wandered westward.
It was only at the second stage of Israel's dispersion, which was brought about by the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans, that Israel became in the fullest sense a Diaspora scattered over all the face of the earth the majority always found in lands more or less to the west of Palestine. No; the promise here is a divine summary and repetition of the many promises of the yet future restoration which were uttered by the former prophets, as, for instance, Isa. xliii. 5, 6, where we read, "Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth "; and will be fulfilled
