The standard - A flag or signal, to which the people were to rally.Retire, stay not - Rather, gather your goods together: linger not; "for I" (emphatic, Yahweh) am bringing at this very time etc.

I will bring evil from the north - From the land of Chaldea.

Set up the standard toward Zion: (e) retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction.
(e) He speaks this to admonish them of the great danger when every man will prepare to save himself, but it will be too late, (2-Kings 25:4).

Set up the standard toward Zion,.... Not on the tower of Zion, as Kimchi interprets it; but on some high place, pointing to Zion, and directing the country people to flee thither for safety; for the setting up of the standard here is not for enlisting of soldiers in order to fight, but as a sign of danger, and a direction where to flee from it:
retire; gather yourselves together in order to flee, as the word (p) is rendered in Isaiah 10:31, though some render it, "be ye strengthened" (q); take heart, and play the man; but this does not seem so agreeable to the context:
stay not; or, "stand not"; stand not in the place ye are in, but move from it in all haste, because of present danger:
for I will bring evil from the north; from Babylon, as Kimchi interprets it; which lay north to the land of Israel; and so designs the captivity Judah should be brought into there:
and a great destruction or, "breach" (r); which the Babylonians should make on the inhabitants of Judea and Jerusalem.
(p) "congregate vos, sub. ad fugiendum", Vatablus; "confirmate vos ad fugiendum", Piscator. (q) "Confortamini", V. L. "corroboramiui", Castalio; "agite viriliter", Munster. (r) "contritionem", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "confractionem", Cocceius.

Zion--The standard toward Zion intimated that the people of the surrounding country were to fly to it, as being the strongest of their fortresses.

Retire - Make haste away.