of that time, which met with only a very partial response, was also a foreshadowing of the future, when Jehovah shall lift up His hand again a second time to recover the remnant of His people which shall be left from Assyria and from Egypt, and from Pathros and from Cush, and from Elam and from Shinar, and from Hamath and from the islands of the sea: " And when they shall no more say, Jehovah liveth which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but Jehovah liveth which brought up and which led the seed of the House of Israel from the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land."
This is evident from the fact that this passage in Zechariah is based on those prophecies in Isaiah and Jeremiah which are quoted above, and which link the last great judgment of Babylon with the final deliverance and salvation of Israel, as may be seen from a study of the context, and also from the expression: " For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of heaven "; which in the passage we are considering immediately follows a call to come out of Babylon, and which, therefore, as it seems to me, looks on to a return subsequent to the time when the scattering shall have been universal, which was not the case till the second stage in the dispersion was inaugurated with the destruction of the second temple.[1]
The verses which follow are among the most important
- ↑ Keil, Hitzig, Kliefoth, Lange, etc., and among English interpreters, Dr. Wright, W. H. Lowe, and others, in order to get over the apparent difficulty why the exiles should be especially exhorted to return from the north if they had been "scattered to all the four winds of heaven " (as Hitzig expresses it), treat the word perasti as a prophetic perfect, and translate it in a good sense of the future, that is, "I shall spread you abroad," or "greatly multiply you as the four winds of heaven "; but the verb is nowhere used of multiplying or diffusing, but generally "of spreading out what remained coherent as hands, wings, a garment, tent, veil, cloud, letter, and light." In Ezek. xvii. 21 we have the same word and almost exactly the same phrase, and there it means certainly not to multiply or spread out, but to scatter towards every wind. It is probable that this expression in Ezekiel was in Zechariah's mind when he wrote this vision. Besides, this is not the only place where the north country in relation to Israel's scattering and gathering stands connected with the other lands of their dispersion it is so in the passage quoted from Jeremiah.
