(6) Bring my sons . . .--The words imply an escort of honour, given by the heathen nations to the returning exiles.

Verse 6. - Bring my sons. The nations are called upon, not merely to "let Israel go," but to conduct and escort them from the places of their abode to their own country. (On the need of such escort, see Ezra 8:22, 31. On the actual furnishing of an escort in one case by a Persian king, see Nehemiah 2:7, 8.)

43:1-7 God's favour and good-will to his people speak abundant comfort to all believers. The new creature, wherever it is, is of God's forming. All who are redeemed with the blood of his Son, he has set apart for himself. Those that have God for them need not fear who or what can be against them. What are Egypt and Ethiopia, all their lives and treasures, compared with the blood of Christ? True believers are precious in God's sight, his delight is in them, above any people. Though they went as through fire and water, yet, while they had God with them, they need fear no evil; they should be born up, and brought out. The faithful are encouraged. They were to be assembled from every quarter. And with this pleasing object in view, the prophet again dissuades from anxious fears.I will say to the north, give up: and to the south, keep not back,.... That is, give up, and not retain, those that belong to the Lord; here the winds are spoken to by a personification; or the inhabitants of the northern and southern climates are called upon to deliver up the Lord's people to him, for whose sake the Gospel was sent into these parts, to find them out, and bring them home; by the "north" may be meant the Goths, Swedes, Muscovites, and those northern isles of ours, with others; and by the "south" the Egyptians, Africans, and Ethiopians. Manasseh ben Israel (h) thinks the passage is thus expressed, which he supposes refers to the universal gathering of the Jews in the latter day to the holy land; because Media, Persia, and China, lie to the east of it; Tartary and Scythia to the north; the kingdom of the Abyssines to the south; and Europe to the west:

bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; such whom the Lord had predestinated to the adoption of children, and had taken into his family, and whom he regenerated by his Spirit and grace, of either sex; to whom he beareth the strongest love and affection, as a parent to his children; and of whom he takes the utmost care, so that not one shall be lost; let them be in ever so distant a part of the world, he will send his Gospel to them, his ministers after them, and his Spirit shall accompany them, to bring them to himself, his Son, and his churches. Manasseh, before mentioned, understands this of America, and of the Jews there; but may be much better applied to converted Gentiles there; for God has many sons and daughters in those parts.

(h) Spes Israelis, sect. 24. p. 76.