tribes had been afterwards exiled. This typical significance is placed beyond all doubt by Zec 10:1, since the redemption of Israel out of the countries named is there exhibited under the type of the liberation of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt under the guidance of Moses. (Compare also Delitzsch on Isa 11:11.) The Ephraimites are to return into the land of Gilead and Lebanon; the former representing the territory of the ten tribes in the olden time to the east of the Jordan, the latter that to the west (cf. Mic 7:14). לא ימּצא, there is not found for them, sc. the necessary room: equivalent to, it will not be sufficient for them (as in Jos 17:16).
Verses 11-12
Zec 10:11. “And he goes through the sea of affliction, and smites the waves in the sea, and all the depths of the river dry up; and the pride of Asshur will be cast down, and the staff of Egypt will depart. Zec 10:12. And I make them strong in Jehovah; and they will walk in His name, is the saying of Jehovah.” The subject in Zec 10:11 is Jehovah. He goes, as once He went in the pillar of cloud as the angel of the Lord in the time of Moses, through the sea of affliction. צרה, which has been interpreted in very different ways, we take as in apposition to ים, though not as a permutative, “through the sea, viz., the affliction” (C. B. Mich., Hengst.); but in this sense, “the sea, which caused distress or confinement,” so that the simple reason why צרה is not connected with ים in the construct state, but placed in apposition, is that the sea might not be described as a straitened sea, or sea of anxiety. This apposition points to the fact which floated before the prophet's mind, namely, that the Israelites under Moses were so confined by the Red Sea that they thought they were lost (Exo 14:10.). The objection urged by Koehler against this view - namely, that צרה as a noun is not used in the sense of local strait or confinement - is proved to be unfounded by Jon 2:3 and Zep 1:15. All the other explanations of tsârâh are much more unnatural, being either unsuitable, like the suggestion of Koehler to take it as an exclamation, “O distress!” or grammatically untenable, like the rendering adopted by Maurer and Kliefoth, after the Chaldaeans usage, “he splits.” The smiting of the waves in the sea does indeed play upon the division of the waves of the sea when the Israelites passed through the Red Sea (Exo 14:16, Exo 14:21; cf. Jos 3:13; Psa 77:17; Psa 114:5);
