Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the LORD, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.
Send for - translate, 'I will send many;' "I will give the commission to many" (2 Chronicles 17:7).
I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters ... - successive invaders of Judea (Amos 4:2; Habakkuk 1:14-15). So "net" (Ezekiel 12:13). As to "hunters," see Genesis 10:9. Nimrod, "the mighty hunter," the first founder of an empire on conquest; Micah 7:2; the Chaldees were famous in hunting, as the Egyptians, the other enemy of Judea, were in fishing. "Fishers" expresses the ease of their victory over the Jews as that of the angler over fish; "hunters," the keenness of them pursuit of them into every cave and nook. It is remarkable the same image of "fishers" and "fish" is used in a good sense of the Jews' restoration, implying that just as their enemies were employed by God to take them in hand for destruction, so the same shall be employed for their restoration (Ezekiel 47:9-10). So, spiritually, those once enemies by nature (fishermen many of them literally) were employed by God to be heralds of salvation, "catching men" for life (Matthew 4:19; Luke 5:10; Acts 2:41; Acts 4:4); (cf. here Jeremiah 16:19). "O Lord, the Gentiles shall come unto thee" (2 Corinthians 12:16).