The children of Judah and the children of Israel will be gathered together, and they will appoint themselves one head, and will go up from the land; for great will be the day of Jezreel.
And shall come up out of the land - To “come up” or “go up” is a title of dignity; from where, in our time, people are said to go up to the metropolis, or the University; and in Holy Scripture, to “come up,” or “go up,” out of Egypt (Genesis 13:1; Genesis 45:25, etc.), or Assyria 2 Kings 17:3; 2 Kings 18:9, 2 Kings 18:13; Isaiah 36:1, Isaiah 36:10, or Babylon 2 Kings 24:1; Ezra 2:1; Ezra 7:6; Nehemiah 7:6; Nehemiah 12:1, to the land of promise, or from the rest of the land to the place which God chose Exodus 34:24 to place His name there, Shiloh, 1 Samuel 1:22, or, afterward, Jerusalem; (2 Samuel 19:34; 1 Kings 12:27-28; Psalms 122:4, etc.) and it is foretold that “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be exalted above the hills; and many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord” Isaiah 2:2-3; Micah 4:1-2. The land from which they should go up is, primarily and in image, Babylon, from where God restored the two tribes; but, in truth and fully, it is the whole aggregate of lands, the earth, the great “city of confusion,” which Babel designates. Out of which they shall go up, “not with their feet but with their affections,” to the “city set upon a hill” Matthew 5:14, “the heavenly Jerusalem” Hebrews 12:22, and heaven itself, where we are “made to sit together with Christ” Ephesians 2:6, and where “our conversation is” Philippians 3:20, that where He is, there may we “His servants be” John 12:26. They ascend in mind above the earth and the things of earth, and the lowness of carnal desires, that so they may, in the end, come up out of the earth, “to meet the Lord in the air, and forever be with the Lord” 1 Thessalonians 4:17.