Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 14:16

"And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles." — Zechariah 14:16 (ASV)

Every one that is left of the nations - God so gives the repentance, even through His visitations, that in proportion to the largeness of the rebellion and the visitation upon it, shall be the largeness of the conversion. Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled (Luke 21:24). And Paul says, Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles shall be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved (Romans 11:25–26). Until now, prophets had spoken of a “remnant” of Jacob, who should return to the mighty God (Isaiah 10:21), and should be saved; now, upon this universal rebellion of the pagan, He foretells the conversion of a remnant of the pagan also.

Shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts - There is a harmony between the rebellion and the repentance. The converted shall go to worship God there, where they had striven to exterminate His worshipers. The prophet could only speak of the Gospel under the image of the law. “The Feast of Tabernacles” has its counterpart, not, like the Pascha or the Pentecost, in any single feast, but in the whole life of the Gospel.

It was a thanksgiving for past deliverance; it was a picture of their pilgrim-life from the passage of the Red Sea, until the parting of the Jordan opened to them the entrance to their temporary rest in Canaan (see Hosea 12:9 at greater length, vol. i. p. 122). Jerome: “In that vast, wide, terrible wilderness, where there was no village, house, town, or cave, Israel made itself tents, in which to sojourn with wives and children, avoiding by day the burning sun, by night damp and cold and hurt from dew; and it was a statute forever in their generations; you shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt (Leviticus 23:41–43).”

Lap.: “Much more truly do Christians keep the feast of tabernacles, not once in the year only, but continually, unceasingly. This is what Peter admonishes, Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts (1 Peter 2:11). And Paul often teaches that we, like Abraham, are strangers on earth, but citizens of heaven, with the saints, and of the household of God (Ephesians 2:19). Faith, he says, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:1, 9-10).”

Jerome: “As long as we are in progress, in the course and militant, we dwell in tabernacles, striving with all our mind to pass from the tabernacles to the firm and lasting dwelling-place of the house of God. Therefore, holy David also said, I am a stranger with You and a sojourner, as all my fathers were (Psalms 39:12). So speaks he, who is still in Egypt and yet placed in the world. But he who goes forth out of Egypt, and enters a desert from vices, holds his way and says in the Psalm, I will pass through to the place of the tabernacle of the Wonderful unto the house of God (Psalms 41:5, Vulgate). Therefore, he also says elsewhere, How amiable are Your dwellings. You Lord of hosts; my soul longs, yea, even faints for the courts of the Lord; and a little after, Blessed are they who dwell in your house, they shall be alway praising You (Psalms 41:4). The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous (Psalms 118:15). One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple (Psalms 27:4). Whoever dwells in such tabernacles, and hastens to go from the tabernacles to the court, and from the court to the house, and from the house to the temple of the Lord, ought to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles, and so forth.”

It symbolizes how, (Dionysius), “in the New Testament, Christians, being delivered through Christ from the slavery to sin and Satan, and sojourning in this vale of misery, by making progress in virtues go up to the home of the heavenly paradise, the door of glory being open by the merit of the Lord’s Passion, and so the faithful of Christ celebrate the feast of tabernacles; and, after the destruction of Antichrist, they will celebrate it the more devoutly, as there will then be among them a fuller fervor of faith.”