John Calvin Commentary Zechariah 2:12

"And Jehovah shall inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and shall yet choose Jerusalem." — Zechariah 2:12 (ASV)

The Prophet confirms the former doctrine but removes offenses that might have occurred to the Jews and prevented them from believing this prophecy; for they had been rejected for a time, so that there was no difference between them and other nations. The land of Canaan had been given to them as a pledge of their inheritance, but they had been expelled from there, and there had been no temple, no public worship, no kingdom.

The Jews then might have concluded from all these reasons that they were rejected by God. Therefore, the Prophet here promises that they were to be restored again to their former state and to their own place. Jehovah, he says, will take Judah as his hereditary portion; that is, God will truly show that he has not forgotten the election by which he had separated the Jews for himself, for he intended them to be to him a peculiar people.

They were now mixed with the nations; their dispersion seemed evidence of repudiation. But it was to be eventually manifest that God was mindful of that adoption, by which he once purposed to gather the Jews to himself, so that their condition might be different from that of other nations.

When therefore he says that Judah would be to God for an heritage or for an hereditary portion, he brings forward nothing new but only reminds them that the covenant by which God chose Judah as his people would not be void, for it would be made evident in its time.

And the following clause is to the same purpose: And he will again choose Jerusalem; for it was not then for the first time that Jerusalem became the city of God when restoration took place, but the election, which existed before, was now in a manner renewed conspicuously in the sight of men. It is then as though the Prophet had said, “The course of God’s favor has indeed been interrupted, yet he will again show that you have not been chosen in vain as his people, and that Jerusalem, which was his sanctuary, has not been chosen without purpose.” The renovation of the Church, then, is what the Prophet means by these words.

What we have said elsewhere should also be noted: that the word choose is not to be taken here in its strict sense, for God does not repeatedly choose those whom he regards as his Church. God’s election is one single act, for it is eternal and immutable. But as Jerusalem had been apparently rejected, the word choose signifies here that God would make it evident that the original election had always been unchangeable, however hidden it may have been from the eyes of men. He then adds—