I will send for many fishers... — The words refer to the threat, not to the promise. The “fishers,” as in Amos 4:2; Habakkuk 1:15, are the invading nations, surrounding Judah and Jerusalem as with a drag-net, and allowing none to escape. The process is described under this very name of “drag-netting” the country by Herodotus (iii. 149, 6:31), as applied by the army of Xerxes to Samos, Chios, Tenedos, and other islands. The application of the words either to the gathering of the people after their dispersion or to the later work of the preachers of the Gospel is an after-thought, having its source in our Lord’s words, “I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). It is, of course, possible enough that those words may have been suggested by Jeremiah’s, the same image being used, as in the parable of Matthew 13:47, to describe the blessing which had before presented its darker aspect of punishment.
Hunters. — Another aspect of the same thought, pointing, so far as we can trace the distinction between the two, to the work of the irregular skirmisher as the former image did to that of the main body of the army: men might take refuge, as hunted beasts might do, in the caves of the rocks, but they should be driven forth even from these.