(36) Upon Elam will I bring the four winds . . .--The words reproduce those of Jeremiah 49:32 as to the extent of the dispersion, but there is an added circumstance of terror in the picture of destruction. The "four winds" whirling round as in a cyclone are to be the instruments of destruction. The imagery of the threshing-floor seems once more brought before us, and the Elamites are as the chaff which the winds, in such a tempest, carry off in all directions.

Verse 36. - An emblem of the utter hopelessness of escape. The four winds (figuratively spoken of by Zechariah (Zechariah 6:5) as "presenting themselves" before God, to receive his commissions) shall combine their forces to scatter the doomed nation. The outcasts of Elam. This is the marginal reading in the Hebrew Bible; the text has, "the perpetual outcasts." No philological eye can doubt that the correction should be admitted (a yod for a vav).

49:34-39 The Elamites were the Persians; they acted against God's Israel, and must be reckoned with. Evil pursues sinners. God will make them know that he reigns. Yet the destruction of Elam shall not be for ever. But this promise was to have its full accomplishment in the days of the Messiah. In reading the Divine assurance of the destruction of all the enemies of the church, the believer sees that the issue of the holy war is not doubtful. It is blessed to recollect, that He who is for us, is more than all against us. And he will subdue the enemies of our souls.And upon Elam will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven,.... The Targum interprets it the four kingdoms; see Daniel 7:2. Some think this had its accomplishment in the times of Alexander; or else after his death, in the times of his four successors; but rather in the times of Nebuchadnezzar, who should bring with him, in his army, people that dwelt in the several parts of the world, comparable to the winds for their swiftness and strength; whose blast would be so great as to drive the Elamites to every part of the world, as every light thing is by the wind:

and will scatter them towards all those winds; those four winds, east, west, north, and south:

and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come; those that are driven out of it, forced to flee from it, or are taken captive, should come into the several nations of the world; so that there would not be any in which an Elamite was not.