Here the gathering of all Israel is predicted as part of the great work of the restoration of the earth. Some shall come from the north, and some from the west, and "these" from the land of Sinim.
That the gathering has already commenced from the North and the West is evident by the Latter-day work in America, and the movement toward Palestine from Great Britain and America. The land of Sinim is, according to some, Syene, in the south of Egypt, but Dr. Clark, in his Commentary, remarks that the word "sinim" means "bushes," and he suggests that the "land of sinim," therefore, probably refers to a land with great woods, to which Jews may have immigrated. He comments as follows:
"The ten tribes are gone, no one knows whither. 1 On the slave coast in Africa, some Jewish rites appear among the people, and all the males are circumcized. The whole of this land, as it appears from the coast, may be emphatically the 'land of bushes' (eretz sinim), as it is all covered with woods as far as the eye can reach. Many of the Indians in North America, which also is a wood land, have a great profusion of rites, apparently in their basis Jewish. Is it not possible that the descendants of the ten lost tribes are among those in America, or among those in Africa whom European nations think they have a right to enslave? It is of these lost tribes that the 21st verse speaks: 'And these, where have they been?' "
Compare 26.