Sacharja 10:11

Zac 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. Zac 10:12. And I make them strong in Jehovah; and they will walk in His name, is the saying of Jehovah." The subject in Zac 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); but it affirms still…

The scope of this chapter is much the same with that of the foregoing chapter - to encourage the Jews that had returned with hopes that though they had been under divine rebukes for their negligence in rebuilding the temple, and were now surrounded with enemies and dangers, yet God would do them good, and make them prosperous at home and victorious abroad. Now, I. They are here directed to eye the great God in all events that concerned them, and, both in the evils they suffered and in the comforts they desired, to acknowledge his hand (Zac 10:1-4). II. They are encouraged to expect strength and success from him in all their struggles with the enemies of their church and state, and to hope that the issue would be glorious at last (Zac 10:5-12).

10:11 When the Hebrews returned to the land of Israel from exile in Babylon, they had to ford the Euphrates River; this is likened to a second exodus from Egypt (see Isa 43:2-6, 16-17).