(5) From the east . . .--Even from Isaiah's stand-point, the dispersion of Israel might well be contemplated in all this wide extent. The Ten Tribes were already carried off to the cities of the Medes (2Kings 17:6). The Babylonian exile had its beginning under Esar-haddon (2Chronicles 33:11); others may have been found before the time of Zephaniah (Zephaniah 3:10) beyond the rivers of Ethiopia. Even in the time of Joel the slave-trade of the Ph?nicians had carried the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the western isles of Javan, or Ionia (Joel 3:6).

Verse 5. - Fear not: for I am with thee (comp. Isaiah 41:10). I will bring thy seed from the east... from the west. The actual extent of the Jewish diaspora in Isaiah's day has been greatly exaggerated by some modern critics, who say that there were at that date "bands of Jewish exiles in the far lands of the Mediterranean, and even in China" (Cheyne). Israel had been carried captive into Mesopotamia and into Media (2 Kings 17:6; 1 Chronicles 5:26), perhaps, also, into other regions belonging at the time to Assyria, as Babylonia, Assyria Proper, Syria. Two hundred thousand Jews had been taken to Nineveh by Sennacherib ('Eponym Canon,' p. 134), and planted probably by him m outlying portions of his dominions. But such transplantation would not carry the dispersion further than Cilicia and Cyprus towards the west, Armenia towards the north, Media towards the east, and the shores of the Persian Gulf towards the south. Any scattering of the nation into regions more remote than these, as into [Egypt, Ethiopia, Elam (Isaiah 11:11), and China - if Sinim is China (Isaiah 49:12) - must have been seen by Isaiah in vision, or made known to him by revelation. It had not taken place in his day. The expression, "ends of the earth" (ver. 6), must not be pressed in Isaiah any more than in Herodotus, where the ἐσχατίαι τῆς οἰκουμέης are India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Scythia (3:106-116).

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.Fear not, for I am with thee,.... With thy ministers that preach the everlasting Gospel, to make it effectual to the conversion of many everywhere, as well as to bear thee up under all trials, and to cause thee to stand against all opposition:

I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; which is to be understood not literally of the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity; for these several quarters, east, west, north, and south, will hardly agree with that, though it may be supposed they were scattered in several countries; but spiritually of the gathering in of God's elect, whether Jews or Gentiles, which were scattered abroad throughout the world, called the "seed" of the church, because born to her, and brought up in her, and of which she consists; and therefore she herself is said to be gathered, converts being brought in from all quarters; from the "east", even from India, where the Apostle Thomas is said to preach the Gospel, and from other "eastern" countries; and from the "west", from the European nations, good part of which lay west of Judea. Our Lord seems to have respect to this passage in Matthew 8:12.