Zacharias 2:4
And he said to him: Run, speak to this young man, saying: Jerusalem shall be inhabited without walls, by reason of the multitude of men, and of the beasts in the midst thereof.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- et dixit ad eum : Curre, loquere ad puerum istum, dicens : Absque muro habitabitur Jerusalem, præ multitudine hominum et jumentorum in medio ejus.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτὸν λέγων Δράμε καὶ λάλησον πρὸς τὸν νεανίαν ἐκεῖνον λέγων Κατακάρπως κατοικηθήσεται Ἰερουσαλὴμ ἀπὸ πλήθους ἀνθρώπων καὶ κτηνῶν ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῆς·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Zacharias 2:8
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלָ֔ו רֻ֗ץ דַּבֵּ֛ר אֶל הַנַּ֥עַר הַלָּ֖ז לֵאמֹ֑ר פְּרָזוֹת֙ תֵּשֵׁ֣ב יְרוּשָׁלִַ֔ם מֵרֹ֥ב אָדָ֛ם וּבְהֵמָ֖ה בְּתוֹכָֽהּ
Haydock's commentary
Walls. This must be understood of the spiritual Jerusalem, the Church of Christ. (Challoner)
According to St. Augustine (in Psalm lxxi.) when the literal sense cannot be verified, we must have recourse to the thing prefigured; and thus what is here written, must be explained of the Church rather than of Jerusalem. (Worthington)
A little before the fall of the latter, it was become so populous that the houses which had been built without the walls were enclosed. (Josephus, Jewish Wars vi. 6.)
This multitude was a sort of pledge or figure of the crowds which should embrace the gospel.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.