And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.
Every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts - (Isaiah 66:19; Isaiah 66:23). God will conquer all the foes of the Church. Some He will destroy, others He will bring into willing subjection.
From year to year, х mideey (H1767) shaanaah (H8141) bªshaanaah (H8141)] - literally, 'from the sufficiency of a year in a year.'
And to keep the feast of tabernacles. The other two great yearly feasts, the Passover and Pentecost, are not specified, because, their antitypes having come, the types are done away with. (But the feast of tabernacles will be commemorative of the Jews' sojourn, not merely 40 years in the wilderness, but for almost 2,000 years of their dispersion. So it was kept on their return from the Babylonian dispersion (Nehemiah 8:14-17). It was the feast on which Jesus made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:8) - a pledge of His return to His capital to reign (cf. Leviticus 23:34; Leviticus 23:39-40; Leviticus 23:42). Allusion to this feast of tabernacles occurs in Revelation 7:9; Revelation 21:3. For as the Israelites, when settled in their land of rest, made at this feast booths of palm branches (Nehemiah 8:15; Nehemiah 8:17), in order to stir themselves up to thanksgivings to God in the remembrance of their preservation in their least wanderings and their present happiness and rest, so the redeemed are represented as about to bear "palms in their hands" when they shall have reached the heavenly Canaan, in order to enhance the joy of their salvation by the recollection of the "great tribulation" which they shall have endured in this wilderness, out of which they shall then have safely come.
Then the "earthly tabernacle" shall have been exchanged for the "building of God," the "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1). A feast of special joy, as being commemorative of completed salvation and rest after weary wanderings (Psalms 118:15; Hosea 12:9). The feast on which Jesus gave the invitation to the living waters of salvation ("Hosanna," save us now was the cry, Matthew 21:9: cf. Ps. 108:25-26) (John 7:2; John 7:37). To the Gentiles too it will be significant of perfected salvation after past wanderings in a moral wilderness, as it originally commemorated the ingathering of the harvest. The seed time of tears shall then have issued in the harvest of joy (Moore). "All the nations" could not possibly in person go up to the feast, but they may do so by representatives.