Thus saith the Lord of hosts
This is a preface to another prophecy, detached from the former,
respecting the redemption of the Lord's people by the Messiah;
and is used to excite the attention to it, as well as, to assure
the truth of it: the children of Israel and the children of
Judah [were] oppressed
together;
which cannot be well understood of the ten tribes of Israel, and
of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, or the whole body of the
Jewish people; since these were not oppressed at one and the same
time, nor by one and the same monarch and monarchy. The children
of Israel, or the ten tribes, were carried captive by Shalmaneser
the Assyrian monarch; and the children of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar
the Babylonian monarch, a hundred and fifty years after; to say
that some of the ten tribes were mixed with the children of
Judah, at the time when carried captive into Babylon, and so
oppressed together with them, can hardly be thought to answer the
import of the phrase, "the children of Israel"; which seems to
design the body of that people. It is better therefore to
understand it of the whole mystical Israel of God, as in their
nature state oppressed by sin and Satan, being under their
dominion; or as labouring under the oppressions and persecutions
of antichrist; or else of the Jewish people in their present
captivity, who will be redeemed from it, and converted, and all
Israel shall be saved: and all that took them captives held
them fast; they refused to let
them go;
as the Assyrians and Chaldeans took and held fast literal Israel
and Judah; so the elect of God, the Israel he has chosen for
himself, are taken captive by sin and Satan, and are held by
them, till they are snatched from them by powerful and
efficacious grace; and as many of God's Israel are taken and held
captive under the antichristian yoke; and as the Jews to this day
are in a state of exile and captivity, from which they cannot
free themselves.