Charles Ellicott Commentary Zechariah 14:5

"And ye shall flee by the valley of my mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azel; yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah; and Jehovah my God shall come, and all the holy ones with thee." — Zechariah 14:5 (ASV)

And you shall flee to. — The Hebrew will not bear the rendering of Luther, “and you shall flee before.” The Oriental Jews, Targum, Septuagint, etc., by a different vocalization, read, “And the valley of my mountains shall be stopped;” but this reading is inappropriate. My mountains—the Mount of Olives, which is divided in two by the advent of the Lord—He calls my mountains (Margin).

It seems that they would flee there for fear of being overwhelmed in the destruction of Jerusalem, for the valley of the mountains will afford a ready place of refuge, as it shall reach unto Azal. Some suppose Azal to be a place near Jerusalem (some placing it to the west of the Temple Mount, others to the east of the Mount of Olives), but others take the word as a preposition and render it “very near.” In any case, they flee to the valley because of its convenient proximity.

The earthquake in the days of Uzziah is not mentioned in the sacred history, but it was an event that left such an impression on the popular mind that it became an era from which to date (Amos 1:1). “Similarly in Crete recent events are dated by such eras as in the year before the great earthquake” (Blakesley’s Herodotus 1.263). Thus, the mention of this earthquake does not “fix the date of the prophecy to the days of Uzziah” as some commentators have affirmed.

The second person, you fled, need not be taken as referring directly to the persons addressed; but, considering the fact of the continuity of the national existence, it may be understood as denoting the same nation at an earlier period, as in Joshua 24:5. Moreover, if we were to dwell on the fact of the addition of the words king of Judah to the name of Uzziah, it might be taken to imply that the prophecy was delivered so long after the time of Uzziah that it was necessary for the prophet to remind his hearers who this Uzziah was.

Saints. — Better, angels (Psalms 89:5, 6).

With you. — The change into the second person denotes the prophet’s own joyful waiting for his God’s advent. Some versions and manuscripts read “with him.”