For, behold - The prophet by the word, “for,” shows that he is about to explain in detail, what he had before spoken of, in sum. By the word, “behold,” he stirs up our minds for something great, which he is to set before our eyes, and which we should not be prepared to expect or believe, unless he solemnly told us, “Behold.” As the detail, then, of what goes before, the prophecy contains all times of future judgment on those who should oppose God, oppress His Church and people, and sin against Him in them and all times of His blessing upon His own people, until the Last Day. And this it gives in imagery, partly describing nearer events of the same sort, as in the punishments of Tyre and Sidon, such as they endured from the kings of Assyria, from Nebuchadnezzar, from Alexander; partly using these, His earlier judgments, as representatives of the like punishments against the like sins unto the end.
In those days and in that time - The whole period of which the prophet had been speaking, was the time from which God called His people to repentance, to the Day of Judgment. The last division of that time was from the beginning of the Gospel unto that Day. He fixes the occasion of which he speaks by the words, “when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem.” This form was used, before there was any general dispersion of the nation. For all captivity of single members of the Jewish people had this sore calamity, that it severed them from the public worship of God, and exposed them to idolatry. So David complains, “they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, go serve other gods” 1 Samuel 26:19. The restoration then of single members, or of smaller bodies of captives, was, at that time, an unspeakable mercy. It was the restoration of those shut out from the worship of God; and so was an image “of the deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God” Romans 8:21, or of any “return” of those who had gone astray, “to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls 1 Peter 2:25. The grievous captivity of the Jews, now, is to Satan, whose servants they made themselves, when they said, “we have no king but Caesar; His Blood be upon us and upon our children.” Their blessed deliverance will be “from the power of Satan unto God” Acts 26:18. It is certain from Paul Romans 11:26, that there shall be a complete conversion of the Jews, before the end of the world, as indeed has always been believed. This shall probably be shortly before the end of the world, and God would here say, “when I shall have brought to an end the “captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,” i. e., of that people “to whom were the promises” Romans 9:4, and shall have delivered them from the bondage of sin and from blindness to light and freedom in Christ, then will I gather all nations to judgment.”