The superior angel of Zechariah 2:4 continues to speak. He calls on all the Hebrews still in dispersion to come and share this glorious state and escape the punishment which was about to fall upon the hostile kingdom.
The exaltation of Jerusalem is connected with the downfall of her enemies. Ho, ho, come forth, and flee; Hebrew, "Ho, ho I and flee," or, "flee thou" (comp. Isaiah 48:20; Jeremiah 51:6, Jeremiah 51:45.
) A great number of the exiles had remained in Babylonia, having established themselves there, according to the injunction in Jeremiah 29:5, etc; and grown rich. These people had refused to exchange their present prosperity for the doubtful future offered by a return to their desolate native land.
But they are now called upon to "flee" from the danger that menaced the country of their adoption. Babylon is said to have been twice taken in the reign of Darius (see note on Jeremiah 29:7). The land of the north; i.
e. Babylonia (comp. Jeremiah 1:14; Jeremiah 4:6; Jeremiah 23:8). We should have nailed the Babylonians an Eastern people if we had dwelt in Palestine; but they always invaded this land from the north, and the great caravan route entered the country from the same quarter, so they were deemed to he a northern power.
I have spread you abroad as the four winds (Ezekiel 17:21). The Jews had been dispersed through all parts of the extensive Babylonian empire, and that with a violence which is compared to the force of the combined winds of heaven.
Keil, Wright, and others regard the words as a promise of future extension only to be obtained by a return to the promised land, translating, "I will spread you," the perfect of the text being taken to express prophetic certainty.
But it is surely incongruous to comfort the dispersed Jews by the promise of a still wider dispersion. This appears to be as erroneous as the Septuagint rendering of the verb, συνάξω, "I will gather."