When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man.
When I have bent Judah for me - i:e., when I shall have made Judah as it were my bow.
Filled the bow with Ephraim - and "filled" it "with Ephraim," as my arrow wherewith, under the Maccabees as the leaders of the Jews, to overcome the successor of the Grecian Alexander, Antiochus Epiphanes (cf. notes, Daniel 8:1-27; Daniel 11:32; 1Ma 1:62 ; 1Ma 2:41-43), the oppressor of Judah. Having spoken (Zechariah 9:1-8) of Alexander's victories, after the parenthesis (Zechariah 9:9-10) as to Messiah, the infinitely greater King, coming, he passes to the victories which God would enable Judah to gain over Alexander's successor, after his temporary oppression of them.
And raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece. God, on one hand, addresses Zion, on the other Greece, showing that He rules all people. This was to be God's just retribution upon Greece, that as she had oppressed "the CHILDREN of Judah and of Jerusalem," who had been "sold" to her by the Tyrians as slaves (Joel 3:6-7), so Judah and Ephraim should be the arrows, "filling God's bow" "against thy SONS, O Greece." This foresight, not only of the overthrow of Persia, then in the height of her power, by Greece, but also of Greece herself, in the person of Antiochus Epiphanes, by the Jewish Maccabees, is a remarkable proof of the divine inspiration of the prophets.