The fitness of the expression, _Inhabitants of Jerusalem_, to symbolize the Gentile converts, further appears in the fact, that the original inhabitants of the city, who were never expelled, were Gentiles. _The governors of Judah_ can signify no other than the apostles and disciples of our Lord, the first teachers of Christianity, or the founders of the new City. These, when the Jews were no longer willing to hear them, turned their attention to the Gentiles, and directed all their efforts to effect their conversion. As the strength of a city lies in its inhabitants, so the hope of strengthening theirs, from that time, rested in gaining over the Gentiles: “_The Governors of Judah say in their hearts, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God._” Does not this mean in the Lord of hosts _becoming_ their God? That is, in his becoming the God of the Gentiles by their conversion to Christianity? The extraordinary success of the apostles and disciples, in converting the Gentiles and repeopling the city, is foreshewn in the next verse. _In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf, and they shall devour all the nations round about on the right hand and on the left, and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem._ If the spiritual Jerusalem be Christianity, it was certainly the Gentiles who repeopled this city, when the Jews deserted it. But still it was not deserted by all the Jews, for the first Christians were Jews, as emphatically expressed in the next verse. _The Lord shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah._