Shall build houses, etc. The words sound almost like a direct quotation from Jeremiah 23:6 and Jeremiah 36:28; and, at all events, present a suggestive parallel. The restoration was to include also the blessing of confidence and hope; no longer a groundless and false confidence, like that of Jeremiah 2:37 and Jeremiah 48:13, but one resting on the fact that God was in very deed the Judge of all the earth. We may note, at the close of the chapter, how its juxtaposition of the two Phoenician cities seems to have been present to the mind of the Christ in his references to the judgment that should come upon both of them (Matthew 11:21; Luke 10:13). He himself, it will be remembered, passed through the coasts of Tyre and Zidon (Matthew 15:21), and probably, according to the best text of Mark 7:24, actually trod the streets of the latter city. They supplied some of the great multitude of Mark 3:8, who listened to his teaching.
HOMILETICS