Zechariah 2:6

The land of the north — i.e., Babylonia, as in Jeremiah 1:14; Jeremiah 6:22; Jeremiah 10:22.

For I have spread you abroad. — This conjugation of this verb occurs nine times in all in the Hebrew Scriptures. Seven times it is used of “stretching forth the hands;” once (Psalms 68:15) it means “to scatter.” If we assign to it this latter meaning here, the tense must be taken as the actual past, and the reference must be to the dispersions which had already taken place. “The Book of Esther (Esther 1:1; Esther 3:8; Esther 3:12; Esther 8:5) shows that, sixty years after this, the Jews were dispersed over the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the Persian empire, from India (the Punjaub) to Ethiopia, whether they were purposely placed by the policy of the conquerors in detached groups, as the ten tribes were in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:6), or whether, when more trusted, they migrated of their own accord. “God, in calling them to return, reminded them of the greatness of their dispersion. He had dispersed them abroad as the four winds of heaven; He, the same, recalled them” (Pusey). Or, if we take the verb in a good sense, the tense must be regarded as the prophetic perfect, meaning, “for it is my fixed intention to spread you abroad.” According to this interpretation they are encouraged to flee from Babylon by being warned of the judgments which were to come upon her (Zechariah 2:8), and because God was determined so to bless them, that they should spread out to all quarters of the globe.

As the four winds of the heaven. — The rendering of some, “for I will scatter you to the four winds,” as referring to a new dispersion of Israel, which loomed darkly in the future, rests on a linguistic error. LXX. deliberately paraphrases, ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων�, “from the four winds of heaven I will gather you.”