The people which were left of the sword, etc.; literally, the people of those left of the sword. The expression clearly implies that the Jews at the time spoken of had escaped, or were about to escape, in some great battle or some other kind of slaughter.
Hence the finding grace in the wilderness cannot refer to the sequel of the passage through the Red Sea, and we must perforce explain it of the second great deliverance, viz. from the Babylonian exile.
This view is strongly confirmed by Jeremiah 51:50, where the Israelites who escape the predicted slaughter at Babylon are called "escaped ones from the sword," and exhorted to remember Jehovah and Jerusalem "afar off."
The "wilderness" of the present passage, like the "afar off" of Jeremiah 51:1-64. (and of the next verse) seems to mean Babylon, which was, by comparison with the highly favoured Judah, a "barren and dry land" (comp.
Psalms 63:1), a spiritual Arabia. It may be objected that the tense here is the perfect; but there is abundance of analogy for explaining it as the prophetic perfect. The restoration of the chosen people to favour is as certain in the Divine counsels as if it were already an event past.
Even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest; rather, when I went to cause Israel to rest (literally, to cause him—Israel—to rest; but the pleonastic pronoun need not be represented in the English).
Another possible and perhaps preferable rendering is, I will go to cause, etc. "Rest" could only be had in the consciousness of God's favor. With all the outward property of many of the Jews in Babylon, there was no true "rest."
Comp. Jeremiah 16:1-21, "Ask for the old paths.; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls" (the same verbal root in the Hebrew for "rest" in both passages).