368 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from Assyria and from Egypt, . . . and from the four corners of the earth.* *
It is a fact that there are now many Jews scattered in the regions which formed the "Assyrian" or Babylon empire 2 as well as in Egypt, and with the revival and progress of the East their numbers in those countries will greatly increase.
And when Jehovah thus gathers them and leads them back, He will bring them " into the land of Gilead and Lebanon" which probably represent the whole promised land east and west of the Jordan. But even there "place will not be found for them" which reminds us of Isa. xlix. 20, 21, where we read: " The children of thy bereavement shall yet say in thine ears, The place is too strait for me : give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering to and fro ? Who hath brought up these ? Behold, I was left alone ; these, where ivere they ? " which again reminds us of the jubilant exclamation in Isa. liv. :
" Sing \exult\ O barren, thou that didst not bear ; Break forth into singing, and cry, thou that didst not
travail :
For more are the children of the desolate Than of the married wife, saith Jehovah"
1 Isa. xi. II, 12.
2 Ewald, Hitzig, and other writers who deny the post-exilic origin of the second half of Zechariah, have argued from the mention of " Assyria (and not Babylon) that these chapters must have been written before the Babylonian Captivity and soon after the overthrow of the northern kingdom of Israel " ; but it must be borne in mind that in post-exilic times the King of Babylon was sometimes styled " the King of Assyria " (Ezra vi. 22 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 29 ; Judith i. 7, ii. I ; comp. Herod, i. 178, 188), inasmuch as his authority extended over Assyria, In later books the expressions, "King of the Persians " and " King of Assyria" are interchanged. Compare Ezra (i Esdr. ii. 30) with vii. 15. The King of Persia is also styled King of Babylon (Ezra v. 13 ; Neh. xiii. 6), and references are sometimes made to Assyria when Babylon is really signified, or when, as in this passage, allusion is made to the enemies of the covenant people north and south of their land (comp. Lam. v. 6; Jer. ii. 18).
