Zachariæ 8:4

Nova Vulgata

Haec dicit Dominus exercituum: Adhuc sedebunt senes et anus in plateis Ierusalem et unusquisque cum baculo suo in manu sua prae multitudine dierum;

Parallel Translations

Clementine Latin Vulgate (1592)
H�c dicit Dominus exercituum : Adhuc habitabunt senes et anus in plateis Jerusalem, et viri baculus in manu ejus pr� multitudine dierum.

Jerome's Latin Vulgate (405)
H�c dicit Dominus exercituum: Adhuc habitabunt senes et anus in plateis Jerusalem, et viri baculus in manu ejus pr� multitudine dierum.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

There: 1 Samuel 2:31, Job 5:26, Job 42:17, Isaiah 65:20-22, Lamentations 2:20, Lamentations 2:21, Lamentations 2:22, Lamentations 5:11-15, Hebrews 12:22

very age: Heb. multitude of days

Reciprocal: Exodus 21:19 - upon his staff 1 Samuel 2:32 - an old man Ecclesiastes 12:3 - strong Jeremiah 3:16 - when Jeremiah 30:10 - and shall Jeremiah 30:19 - and I Jeremiah 31:13 - shall Jeremiah 31:24 - General Lamentations 1:1 - full Ezekiel 37:26 - multiply Zechariah 2:4 - Jerusalem Zechariah 14:11 - shall be safely inhabited

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Thus saith the Lord of hosts,.... These words are used at every consolatory promise given, as Kimchi observes, for the confirmation of it:

there shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem; signifying that the inhabitants should be very healthful; no sweeping disease or calamity should be among them, but they should live to a good old age, as follows:

and every man with his staff in his hand for very age; or "because of multitude of days" i; the length of time they should have lived in the world, being worn out, not with diseases, but with old age, and therefore obliged to use a staff when they walk the streets for their support; all which is an emblem of the healthfulness of the inhabitants of Zion, who have no reason to complain of sickness, because their sins are forgiven them; and of that spiritual and eternal life, which they that are written among the living in Jerusalem do enjoy; who are in understanding men, fathers in Christ, and are growing up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; see Isaiah 65:20.

i מרב ימים "prae multitudine dierum", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Cocceius, Burkius.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

There shall yet dwell old men and old women - Dionysius: “Men and women shall not be slain now, as before in the time of the Babylonish destruction, but shall fulfill their natural course.” It shall not be, as when “He gave His people over unto the sword; the fire consumed their young men and their maidens were not given to marriage; the priests were slain by the sword and their widows made no lamentation” Psalms 78:63-64; apart from the horrible atrocities of pagan war, when the unborn children were destroyed in their mothers’ womb 2 Kings 15:16; Hosea 13:16; Amos 1:13, with their mothers. Yet (as in Zechariah 1:17), once more as in the days of old, and as conditionally promised in the law Deuteronomy 4:10; Deuteronomy 5:16, Deuteronomy 5:33; Deuteronomy 6:2; Deuteronomy 11:9; Deuteronomy 17:20; Deuteronomy 22:7; Deuteronomy 32:47; Ezekiel 20:17. As death is the punishment of sin, so prolongation of life to the time which God has now made its natural term, seems the more a token of His goodness. This promise Isaiah had renewed, “There shall no more be an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days” Isaiah 65:20. In those fierce wars neither young nor very old were spared. It implied then a long peace, that people should live to that utmost verge of human life.

The man, whose staff is in his hand for the multitude of days - The two opposite pictures, the old men, Dionysius), “so aged that they support with a staff their failing and trembling limbs,” and the young in the glad buoyancy of recent life, fresh from their Creator’s hands, attest alike the goodness of the Creator, who protecteth both, the children in their yet undeveloped strength, the very old whom He hath brought through “all the changes and chances of this mortal life,” in their yet sustained weakness. The tottering limbs of the very old, and the elastic perpetual motion of childhood are like far distant chords of the diapason of the Creator’s love. It must have been one of the most piteous sights in that first imminent destruction of Jerusalem Jeremiah 6:11; Jeremiah 9:21, how “the children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of the city; how the young children fainted for hunger in the top of every street” Lamentations 2:11, Lamentations 2:19.

We have but to picture to ourselves any city in which one lives, the ground strewn with these little all-but corpses, alive only to suffer. We know not, how great the relief of the yet innocent, almost indomitable joyousness of children is, until we miss them. In the dreadful Irish famine of 1847 the absence of the children from the streets of Galway was told me by Religious as one of its dreariest features . In the dreary back-streets and alleys of London, the irrepressible joyousness of children is one of the bright sun-beams of that great Babylon, amid the oppressiveness of the anxious, hard, luxurious; thoughtless, careworn, eager, sensual, worldly, frivolous, vain, stolid, sottish, cunning, faces, which traverse it. God sanctions by His word here our joy in the joyousness of children, that He too taketh pleasure in it, He the Father of all. It is precisely their laughing, the fullness of her streets of these merry creations of His hands, that He speaks of with complacency.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Zechariah 8:4. There shall yet old men and old women — In those happy times the followers of God shall live out all their days, and the hoary head be always found in the way of righteousness.