Ver. 5. "_Afterwards shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall tremble to the Lord and to His goodness in the end of the days._"
[Hebrew: iwbv] must not by any means be regarded as modifying [Hebrew: bqwv], so that both the verbs would constitute only one verbal idea. This must be objected to, not only from the arguments already stated in the remarks on chap. ii. 11, but, most decidedly, on account of the parallel passage, chap. ii. 9, "I will go and return to my first husband." Compare chap. vi. 1: "Come and let us return unto the Lord;" v. 15, where the Lord says, "I will go and return to My place until they become guilty and seek My face; in their affliction they will seek Me;" Jer. l. 4: "In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall _come_, they and the children of Judah together, weeping will they come, and seek the Lord their God,"--a passage which, like Jer. xxx. 9, points to the one before us in a manner not to be mistaken; Is. x. 21: "The remnant shall _return_, the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God." The text, and the parallel passages, most clearly indicate what is to be considered as the object of their return, namely, the Lord their God, and David their king, from whom they had so shamefully apostatized; so that those interpreters who here think of a return to Canaan do not deserve a refutation. The words, "Jehovah their God," at the same time lay open the delusion of the Israelites (who imagined that they could still possess the true God, in the idol which they called Jehovah), and rebuke their ingratitude. _Calvin_ says, "God had offered Himself to them, yea. He had had familiar intercourse with them,--He had, as it were, brought them up on His bosom just as a father does his sons. The prophet, therefore, indirectly rebukes, in these words, their stupendous wickedness." The God of the Israelites, as well as the God of the Jews after they had rejected Christ, stood to the God of Israel in the same relation as does the God of the Deists and Rationalists to the God of the Christians. The question here arises. Who is to be understood here by "David their king?" Some interpreters refer it, after the example of _Theodoret_ (t. ii. p. 2, p. 1326), to [Pg 288] Zerubbabel: but by far the greater number of them, following the Chaldee ("And they shall obey the Messiah, the son of David their king"), understand, thereby, the Messiah. It is true that the latter exposition is quite correct as to its substance, but not as to the form in which it is commonly expressed. From the words, "They shall return and seek," it is evident that the Messiah is here not called David as an individual, as is done in other passages, _e.g._, Jer. xxx. 9. For the return presupposes their having been there formerly, and their having departed; just as the seeking implies neglecting. The expression, "their king," also requires special attention. In contrast to the "king" in ver. 4 (compare viii. 4, "They have made a king, and not by Me, a prince, and I knew it not"), it shows that the subject of discourse is not by any means a new king to be elected, but such an one as the Israelites ought to obey, even now, as the king ordained for them by God. The sound view is this: By the "king David" the whole Davidic house is to be understood, which is here to be considered as an unity, in the same manner as is done in 2 Sam. vii., and in a whole series of Psalms which celebrate the mercies shown, and to be shown, to David and his house.[4] These mercies are most fully concentrated in Christ, in whose appearance and everlasting dominion the promises given to David were first to be fully realized. The prophet mentions the whole--the Davidic family--because it was only thus that the contrast between the apostasy and the return could be fully brought out; but that, in so doing, he has Christ especially in view--that he expected a return of the children of Israel to David in Christ, is shown by the term [Hebrew: baHrit himiM], which, in the prophets, never occurs in any other sense than the times of the Messiah. (Compare, regarding this expression, the remarks on Amos ix. 1.) This reason is alone sufficient to refute the reference to Zerubbabel; although so much must indeed be conceded, that the circumstance of part of the citizens of the kingdom of the ten tribes adhering to him, the descendant of the house of David, may be considered as a prelude of that general return. The close connection betwixt the seeking of Jehovah their God and David their king, likewise claims our attention.