Zechariah 10:9, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to the closing prophecies of Zechariah, chapters 9-14, whose general tenor is prediction of Christ's kingdom, the great day of the Lord, and the punishment and judgment of the wicked, while looking forward to the final restoration and offering hope to those who truly seek God and trust the promises of the Spirit. In its original setting it is part of the restoration message encouraging the building of the temple and the restoring of Jerusalem under Zerubbabel and Ezra. In its plain sense it says God would scatter or sow His people among other nations, where even in distant lands they would remember Him, and they would live on with their children and return to Him.

On one view it describes the Jews scattered among other peoples during the Babylonian captivity, remembering God while living in distant countries, and returning with their children to the land of Canaan. The scattered people in far countries could hear that favor had again been shown to them and could return to Palestine if they wished. The prophecy was given in 517 B.C. and the decree fully restoring Jerusalem came in 457 B.C., sixty years later, when the Persian Empire had 120 provinces, so that even those scattered in distant lands, including Egypt, could learn of the decree.

The prophecy looks beyond the restoration from Babylon to the final restoration when Christ comes, and that restoration reformation work is a type of the last reformation. In the last days it will be fulfilled in the remnant: God sows them as seed among the people so that they increase rather than are lost, and in far countries they remember God after turning from their idols and rejoice in the Lord with their children. Their living with their children means others led to believe through them, who live with them, while the gathering also means that when God gathers the remnant from distant lands literal children will come with their parents, so that in the final recovery obedient families go together toward the heavenly Canaan.

The return is God's gathering and redemption of His people because He has redeemed them. He brings them out of Egypt, which is darkness, and out of Assyria, which is oppression, to a land as bright, balmy, fragrant, fertile and glorious as Gilead and Lebanon, where with all affliction past and all enemies overthrown they dwell forever with God. In the chapter's application the scattering and return belong to the remnant's departure from captivity after the removal of papal dominion in 1798: the remnant leaves the Roman Empire, passes through the sea with affliction, and journeys west across the Atlantic to America, the wilderness of preparation represented by Gilead and Lebanon.