All nations shall call you blessed - The promise goes beyond the temporal prosperity of their immediate obedience. Few could know or think much of the restored prolificalness of Judaea; none could know of its antecedents. A people, as well as individuals, may starve, and none know of it. Had the whole population of Judah died out, their Persian masters would not have cared for it, but would have sent fresh colonists to replace them and pay the tribute to the great king. The only interest, which all nations could have in them, was as being the people of God, from whom He should come, "the Desire of all nations, in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed." Of this, God's outward favor was the earnest; they should have again the blessings which He had promised to His people.

And ye shall be called a delightsome land - , literally "a land of good pleasure." It was not so much the land as the people; ye shall be called. The land stands for the people upon it, in whom its characteristics lay. The river Jordan was not so bright as Abana and Pharpar: "the aspect of the shore" is the same, when the inhabitants are spiritually or morally dead; only the more beautiful, in contrast with the lifeless "spirit of man." So Isaiah says Isaiah 62:2-4, "The nations shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory; and thou shrill be called by a name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name Thou shalt no more be called Forsaken, nor shall thy land be called Desolate, but thou shalt be called My-delight-is-in-her, and thy land Married: for the Lord delighteth in thee and thy land shall be married." God and man should delight in her.

All nations shall call you blessed - They shall see that a peculiar blessing of God rests upon you, and your land shall be delightsome; like Paradise, the garden of the Lord.

And all nations shall call you blessed,.... When they shall see the land freed from the devouring locust, and other hurtful creatures; the former and the latter rains given in their season, and the earth yielding a large increase:

for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts; or a desirable (n) one; not only pleasant to themselves, being fruitful, but wished for by others, by their neighbouring nations, who, seeing their prosperity, could not but desire to dwell with them; or delightsome to the Lord of hosts: thus Jarchi interprets it, the land that I delight in; and so Aben Ezra; to which agrees the Targum,

"and all nations shall praise you, because you dwell in the land of the house of my Shechinah or majesty, and do my will in it;''

and the Syriac version renders it, "the land of my delight": see Isaiah 62:4.

(n) "terra desiderabilis", V. L. Pagninus, Drusius; "terra beneplaciti", Montanus, Vatablus, Burkius; "oblectationis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.

3:12 All nations - All that are about you. A delightsome land - The revival of religion in a land, will make it delight - some, both to God, and to all good men.

12. Fulfilling the blessing (De 33:29; Zec 8:13).

delightsome land-(Da 8:9).

3:7-12 The men of that generation turned away from God, they had not kept his ordinances. God gives them a gracious call. But they said, Wherein shall we return? God notices what returns our hearts make to the calls of his word. It shows great perverseness in sin, when men make afflictions excuses for sin, which are sent to part between them and their sins. Here is an earnest exhortation to reform. God must be served in the first place; and the interest of our souls ought to be preferred before that of our bodies. Let them trust God to provide for their comfort. God has blessings ready for us, but through the weakness of our faith and the narrowness of our desires, we have not room to receive them. He who makes trial will find nothing is lost by honouring the Lord with his substance.