Judah and Jerusalem.—The same prophecy mentions the tribe of Judah, whose gathering place, however, is not the Land of Zion, not the New Jerusalem, but Jerusalem of old, yet to be rebuilt upon a scale of magnificence paralleled only by the splendor of her sister city and twin capital of Christ's Kingdom.[[23]]
Even as the Waters.—Hear, O Israel! Children of Jacob! The night of dispersion is past. The day of gathering has dawned. The tempests that broke above the heads of your ancestors have spent their fury, and the clouds have parted and are rolling away. The barren ground, refreshed by the fearful visitation, has brought forth abundantly, and a ripened harvest awaits the reaper's cycle. The revivifying rains, having fulfilled their mission, must now return to the ocean whence they were taken. Such is the meaning, the symbolism, of the scattering and gathering of Israel.
Footnotes
[1]. John 10:16; 3 Nephi 15:21; 16:1-3; 21.
[2]. Isa. 11:12, 14, 16. See also 5:26; 35:10; 43:5, 6. The same Prophet declares:
"And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
"And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Isa. 2:2, 3.)
This prophecy, however; seems to refer, not so much to a gathering of Israel, as to an Israel already gathered, unto whom the nations will come to learn the ways of the Lord.
[3]. Jer. 3:14; 16:14-16; 31:8-10.
[4]. Matt. 24:31, as rendered by Joseph the Seer, Pearl of Great Price, p.78.