Bible Strands
Zechariah 2:6
“Get up! Get up! Flee from the land of the north,” declares the LORD, “for I have scattered you like the four winds of heaven,” declares the LORD.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD addresses exiled Israel, commanding them to depart the northern region where they were dispersed. This utterance follows a promise of divine protection and precedes a parallel summons for Zion to escape Babylon.
The words — The imperative נֻסוּ (nusû) literally means "flee," intensified by the repeated הוֹי (hoy) expressing urgent distress. The phrase אֶרֶץ צָפוֹן ('ereṣ ṣāp̄ôn) identifies the "land of the north" as the geographic locus of their scattering.
The thread — This flight command runs parallel to Isaiah 48:20’s directive to leave Babylon and Ezekiel 17:21’s note that survivors will be scattered to every wind. It also mirrors the urgent escape order in Genesis 19:17 where fleeing for one’s life is commanded.
Why it lands — The text requires immediate physical departure from the place of dispersion, treating exile as a temporary state under sovereign control. It asks the reader to acknowledge that judgment and deliverance are both directed by God, demanding prompt obedience without delay.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the Lord: for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the Lord.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 48:20 Leave Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! Declare it with a shout of joy, proclaim it, let it go out to the ends of the earth, saying, “The LORD has redeemed His servant Jacob!”
- Ezekiel 17:21 All his choice troops will fall by the sword, and those who survive will be scattered to every wind. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken.’
- Genesis 19:17 As soon as the men had brought them out, one of them said, “Run for your lives! Do not look back, and do not stop anywhere on the plain! Flee to the mountains, or you will be swept away!”
- Deuteronomy 28:64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.
- Isaiah 52:11 Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing; come out from it, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the LORD.
- Ezekiel 11:16 Therefore declare that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries to which they have gone.’
- Revelation 18:4 Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, My people, so that you will not share in her sins or contract any of her plagues.
- Isaiah 55:1 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you without money, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost!
- Jeremiah 1:14 Then the LORD said to me, “Disaster from the north will be poured out on all who live in the land.
- Jeremiah 3:18 In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave to your fathers as an inheritance.