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God's Judgment upon his Enemies
v. 1. For, behold, in those days and in that time, in the Messianic period which had just been described according to its outstanding features, with the Day of Judgment very prominent in the description, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, of the spiritual Israel, by the deliverance through Christ, of which the return of Judah from exile was but a type,
v. 2. I will also gather all nations, with the great and mighty heathen nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which is here made the scene of the last great Judgment upon men, and will plead with them there, conducting a formal trial with them, for My people and for My heritage Israel, in the interest of the Lord's people, whom they have scattered among the nations, in the various oppressions and captivities which have struck the Lord's people from the earliest days, and parted My land, appropriating it or dividing it as they saw fit.
v. 3. And they have cast lots for My people, after they had taken them captive, and have given a boy for an harlot, namely, as the price for which they secured the services of a prostitute, and sold a girl for wine, for the sake of a drunken debauch, that they might drink. The description is typical of the manner with which the Lord's enemies have ever dealt with the believers.
v. 4. Yea, and what have ye to do with Me, O Tyre and Zidon and all the coasts of Palestine? that is, what object did they have in acting as they did, when not only the capitals of Phoenicia, but also the city-states of Philistia were showing such enmity against Him?. Will ye render Me a recompense? seeking revenge for what they consider a wrong done them. They had neither cause to seek revenge nor occasion to carry it out. And if ye recompense Me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompense upon your own head, Cf Psa_7:17,
v. 5. because ye have taken My silver and My gold, in the Temple-treasures and throughout the city of Jerusalem, and have carried into your temples, including also the palaces of their rulers, My goodly, pleasant things, His most costly possessions;
v. 6. the children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, the Philistines being those who reduced the captives to slavery, the Phoenicians those who acted as agents in selling the Hebrew slaves, that ye might remove them far from their border, to be slaves in distant countries.
v. 7. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, delivering them from the masters to whom they had been sold, and will return your recompense upon your own head, so that their revenge would react upon themselves;
v. 8. and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, when Tyre and Sidon were captured and their inhabitants either killed or reduced to slavery, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, who are mentioned as being the remotest nation toward the east, in the Arabian Desert, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it. The imagery of this paragraph is based, at least in part, upon happenings of those days; but the application includes far more than this, for the Lord makes those incidents typical of the punishments which He intended for all His enemies.