Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

his prophetic labours lasted. We simply know from ch. Vilad, that in the fourth year of Darius he announced a further revelation from God to the people, and that his last two oracles (ch. ix.-xiv.) fall within a still later period. All that the fathers are able to state with regard to the closing portion of his life is, that he died at an advanced age, and was buried near to Hageai; whilst the contradictory statement, in a Cod. of Epiph., to the effect that he was slain under Joash king of Judah, between the temple and the altar, has simply arisen from our prophet being confounded with the Zechariah mentioned in 2 Chron. xxiv. 20-23.

2. Tue Book oF ZECHARIAH contains, besides the brief word of God, which introduces his prophetic labours (ch. 1. 1-6), four longer prophetic announcements: viz. (1) a series of seven visions, which Zechariah saw during the night, on the twentyfourth day of the eleventh month, in the second year of Darius (ch. i. T-vi. 8), together with a symbolical transaction, which brought the visions to a close (vi. 9-15); (2) the communication to the people of the answer of the Lord to a question addressed to the priests and prophets by certain Judzeans as to their continuing any longer to keep the day appointed for commemorating the burning of the temple and Jerusalem by the Chaldeeans as a fast-day, which took place in the fourth year of Darius (ch. vii. and viil.); (8) a burden, ¢.e. a prophecy of threatening import, concerning the land of Hadrach, the seat of the ungodly worldpower (ch. ix.-xi.); and (4) a burden concerning Israel (ch. xil.-xiv.). The last two oracles, which are connected together by the common epithet massa’, are distinguished from the first two announcements not only by the fact that the headings contain neither notices as to the time, nor the prophet’s name, but also by the absence of express allusions to the circumstances of Zechariah’s own times, however unmistakeably the cireumstances of the covenant nation after the captivity form the historical background of these prophecies also; whilst there is in general such a connection between their contents and the prophetic character of the night-visions, that ch. ix._xiv. might be called a prophetic description of the future of the kingdom of God, in its conflict with the kingdoms of the world, as seen in the night-visions. For example, in the night-visions, as a sequel to Haggai, who had predicted two months before the overthrow of the might of all the kingdoms of the world and the preservation of Zerubbabel in the midst of that catastrophe (Hag. ii. 20-23), the future development of the kingdom of God is unfolded to the prophet in its principal features till its final completion in glory. The first vision shows that the shaking of the kingdoms of the world predicted by Hageai will soon occur, notwithstanding the fact that the whole earth is for the time still quiet and at rest, and that Zion will be redeemed from its oppression, and richly blessed (ch. i. 7-17). The realization of this promise is explained in the following visions: in the second (ii. 1-4), the breaking in pieces of the kingdoms of the world, by the four smiths who threw down the horns of the nations; in the third (ch. i. 5-17), the spread of the kingdom of God over the whole earth, through the coming of the Lord to His people; in the fourth (ch. iil.), the restoration of the church to favour, through the wiping away of its sins; in the jifth (ch. iv.), the glorifying of the church through the communication of the gifts of the Spirit; in the siwth (ch. v.), the sifting out of sinners from the kingdom of God; in the seventh (ch. vi. 1-8), the judgment, through which God refines and renews the sinful world; and lastly, in the symbolical transaction which closes the visions (ch. vi. 9-15), the completion of the kingdom of God by the Sprout of the Lord, who combines in His own person the dignity of both priest and king. If we compare with these the last two oracles, in ch. ix.-xi. we have first of all a picture of the judgment upon the kingdoms of the world, and of the establishment of the Messianic kingdom, through the gathering together of the scattered members of the covenant nation, and their exaltation to victory over the heathen (ch. ix. x.), and secondly, a more minute description of the attitude of the Lord towards the covenant nation and the heathen world (ch. xi.); and in ch. xii.-xiv. we have an announcement of the conflict of the nations of the world with Jerusalem, of the conversion of Israel to the Messiah, whom it once rejected and put to death (ch. xii. xii.); and lastly, of the final attack of the heathen world upon the city of God, with its consequences,—namely, the purification and transfiguration of Jerusalem into a holy dwelling-place of the Lord, as King over the whole earth (ch. xiv.); so that in both oracles the develop- ment of the Old Testament kingdom of God is predicted until its completion in the kingdom of God, which embraces the whole earth. The revelation from God, which stands between these two principal parts, concerning the continuance of the fast-days (ch. vii. vili.), does indeed divide the two from one another, both chronologically and externally; but substantially it forms the connecting link between the two, inasmuch as this word of God impresses upon the people the condition upon which the attainment of the glorious future set before them in the night-visions depends, and thereby prepares them for the conflicts which Israel will have to sustain according to the announcement in ch. ix.— xiv., until the completion of the kingdom of God in glory. Thus all the parts of the book hang closely together; and — the objection which modern critics have offered to the unity of the book has arisen, not from the nature of the last two longer oracles (ch. ix.-xiv.), but partly from the dogmatic assumption of the rationalistic and naturalistic critics, that the biblical prophecies are nothing more than the productions of natural divination, and partly from the inability of critics, in consequence of this assumption, to penetrate into the depths of the divine revelation, and to grasp either the substance or form of their historical development, so as to appreciate it fully... The current opinion of these critics, that the chapters in question date from the time before the captivity—viz. ch. ix.-xi. from a contemporary of Isaiah, and ch. xii—xiv. from the last period before the destruction of the kingdom of Judah —is completely overthrown by the circumstance, that even in these oracles the condition of the covenant nation after the captivity forms the historical ground and starting-point for the proclamation and picture of the future development of the kingdom of God. The covenant nation in its two parts, into which it had been divided since the severance of the kingdom at the death of Solomon, had been dispersed among the heathen like a flock without a shepherd (ch. x. 2). It is true that Judah had already partially returned to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah; but the daughter Zion had still “ prisoners of

1 For the history of these attacks upon the genuineness of the last part of Zechariah, and of the vindication of its genuineness, with the arguments pro and con, see my Lehrbuch der Einleitung, § 103, and Koehler’s Zechariah, i. p. 297 sqq.

hope” waiting for release (ch. ix. 11, 12, compared with ch. ii. 10, 11), and the house of Joseph or Ephraim was still to be gathered and saved (ch. x. 6-10). Moreover, the severance of Judah and Ephraim, which lasted till the destruction of both kingdoms, had ceased. The eye of Jehovah is now fixed upon all the tribes of Israel (ch. ix. 1); Judah and Ephraim are strengthened by God for a common victorious conflict with the sons of Javan (ix. 13); the Lord their God grants salvation to His people as a flock (ix. 16 compared with viii. 13); the shepherd of the Lord feeds them both asa single flock, and only abolishes the brotherhood between Judah and Israel by the breaking of his second staff (ch. xi. 14). Hence the jealousy between Judah and Ephraim, the cessation of which was expected in the future by the prophets before the captivity (cf. Isa. xi. 13; Hos. ii. 2; Ezek. xxxvii..15 sqq.), is extinct; and all that remains of the severance into two kingdoms is the epithet house of Judah or house of Israel, which Zechariah uses not only in ch. ix.—xi., but also in the appeal in ch. viii. 13, which no critic has called in question. All the tribes form one nation, which dwells in the presence of the prophet in Jerusalem and Judah. Just as in the first part of our book Israel consists of Judah and Jerusalem (i. 19, cf. ii. 12), so in the second part the burden pronounced upon Israel (xii. 1) falls upon Jerusalem and Judah (xii. 2, 5 sqq., xiv. 2, 14); and just as, according to the night-visions, the imperial power has its seat in the land of the north and of the south (ch. vi. 6), so in the last oracles Asshur (the north land) and Egypt (the south land) are types of the heathen world (ch. x. 10). And when at length the empire of the world which is hostile to God is more precisely defined, it is called Javan,—an epithet taken from Dan. viii. 21, which points as clearly as possible to the times after the captivity, inasmuch as the sons of Javan never appear as enemies of the covenant nation before the captivity, even when the Tyrians and Philistines are threatened with divine retribution for haying sold to the Javanites the prisoners of Judah and Jerusalem (Joel ii. 6).

On the other hand, the differences which prevail between the first two prophecies of Zechariah and the last two are not of such a character as to point to two or three different prophets. It is true that in ch. ix.—xiv. there occur no visions, no angels taking an active part, no Satan, no seven eyes of God; but Amos also, for example, has only visions in the second part, and none in the first; whilst the first part of Zechariah contains not only visions, but also, in ch. i. 1-6, ch. vii. and vili., simple prophetic addresses, and symbolical actions not only in ch. vi. 9-15, but also in ch. xi. 4-17. The angels and Satan, which appear in the visions, are also absent from ch, vii. and vill.; whereas the angel of Jehovah is mentioned in the last part in ch. xii. 8, and the saints in ch. xiv. dare angels. The seven eyes of God are only mentioned in two visions (ch. ill. 9 and iy. 10); and the providence of God is referred to in ch. ix. 1, 8, under the epithet of the eye of Jehovah. This also applies to the form of description and the language employed in the two parts. The visionary sights are described in simple prose, as the style most appropriate for such descriptions. The prophecies in word are oratorical, and to some extent are rich in bold figures and similes. This diversity in the prophetic modes of presentation was occasioned by the occurrence of peculiar facts and ideas, with the corresponding expressions and words; but it cannot be proved that there is any constant diversity in the way in which the same thing or the same idea is described in the two parts, whereas there are certain unusual expressions, such as ayy Ty (in ch. vii. 14 and ix. 8) and Yay in the sense of removere (in ch. iil. 4 and xiii. 2), which are common to both parts. Again, the absence of any notice as to the time in the headings in ch. ix. 1 and xii. 1 may be explained very simply from the fact, that these prophecies of the future of the kingdom are not so directly associated with the prophet’s own time as the visions are, the first of which describes the condition of the world in the second year of Darius. The omission of the name of the author from the headings no more disproves the authorship of the Zechariah who lived after the captivity, than the omission of the name from Isa. xv. 1, xvii. 1, xix. 1, disproves Isaiah’s authorship in the case of the chapters named. All the other arguments that have been brought against the integrity or unity of authorship of the entire book, are founded upon false interpretations and misunderstandings; whereas, on the other hand, the integrity of the whole is placed beyond the reach of doubt by the testimony of tradition, which is to be regarded as of all the greater value in the case of Zechariah, inasmuch as the collection of the prophetic writings, if not of the whole of the Old Testament canon, was completed within even less than a generation after the prophet’s death.

Zechariah’s mode of prophesying presents, therefore, according to the cursory survey just given, a very great variety. Nevertheless, the crowding together of visions is not to be placed to the account of the times after the captivity; nor can any foreign, particularly Babylonian, colouring be detected in the visions or in the prophetic descriptions. The habit of leaning upon the prophecies of predecessors is not greater in his case than in that of many of the prophets before the captivity. The prophetic addresses are to some extent rich in repetitions, especially in ch. vil. and viii., and tolerably uniform; but in the last two oracles they rise into very bold and most original views and figures, which are evidently the production of a lively and youthful imagination. This abundance of very unusual figures, connected with much harshness of expression and transitions without intermediate links, makes the work of exposition a very difficult one; so that Jerome and the rabbins raise very general, but still greatly exaggerated, lamentations over the obscurity of this prophet. The diction is, on the whole, free from Chaldaisms, and formed upon the model of good earlier writers. For the proofs of this, as well as for the exegetical literature, see my Lehrbuch der Einleitung,

The first word of the Lord was addressed to the prophet Zechariah in the eighth month of the second year of the reign of Darius, and therefore about two months after Haggai’s first prophecy and the commencement of the rebuilding of the temple, which that prophecy was intended to promote (compare ver. 1 with Hag. i. 1 and 15), and a few weeks after Haggai’s prophecy of the great glory which the new temple would receive (Hag. ii. 1-9). Just as Hageai encouraged the chiefs and the people of Judah to continue vigorously the building that had been commenced by this announcement of salvation, so Zechariah opens his prophetic labours with the admonition to turn with sincerity to the Lord, and with the warning not to bring the same punishment upon themselves by falling back into the sins of the fathers. This exhortation to repentance, although it was communicated to the prophet in the form of a special revelation from God, is actually only the introduction to the prophecies which follow, requiring thorough repentance as the condition of obtaining the desired salvation, and at the same time setting before the impenitent and ungodly still further heavy judgments." Ver. 1. Bachddesh hassh*minit does not mean “on the eighth new moon” (Kimchi, Chr. B. Mich., Koehl.); for chddesh is never used in chronological notices for the new moon, or the first new moon’s day (see at Ex. xix. 1). The day of the eighth month is left indefinite, because this was of no importance whatever to the contents of this particular address. The word of the Lord was as follows: Ver. 2. “ Jehovah was angry with wrath concerning your fathers. Ver. 3. And thou shalt say to them, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, Return ye to me, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts, so will I return to you, saith Jehovah of hosts. Ver. 4. Be not like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, Turn now from your evil ways, and from your evil actions! But they hearkened not, and paid no attention to me, ts the saying of Jehovah.” The statement in ver. 2 contains the ground for the summons to turn, which the prophet is to aidilnesd to the people, and is therefore placed before AIDS in ver. 8, by which this summons is introduced. Because the Lord was very angry concerning the fathers, those who are living now are to repent with sincerity of heart. The noun getseph is added as the object to the verb, to give it greater force. The nation had experienced the severe anger of God at the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, and of Jerusalem

1 “The prophet is thus instructed by God, that, before exhibiting to the nation the rich blessings of God for them to look at under the form of symbolical images, he is to declare the duty of His people, or the condition upon which it will be becoming in God to grant them an abundant supply of these good things.”—VITRINGA, Comm. in Sach. p. 76.

and the temple, and also in exile. The statement in ver. 15, that Jehovah was angry DY, is not at variance with this; for by> does not refer to the strength of the anger, but to its duration. 48) is the perf. with Vav consec., and is used for the imperative, because the summons to repentance follows as a necessary consequence from the fact stated in ver. 2 (cf. Ewald, § 342, 5 and c). pnb does not refer to the fathers, which might appear to be grammatically the simplest interpretation, but to the contemporaries of the prophet, addressed in the pronoun your fathers, the existing generation of Judah. Ds 32% does not presuppose that the people had just fallen away from the Lord again, or had lost all their pleasure in the continuance of the work of building the temple, but simply that the return to the Lord was not a perfect one, not a thorough conversion of heart. So had Jehovah also turned to the people again, and had not only put an end to the sufferings of exile, but had also promised His aid to those who had returned (compare DIMS ‘38 in Hag. i. 13); but the more earnestly and the more thoroughly the people turned to Him, the more faithfully and the more gloriously would He bestow upon them His grace and the promised salvation. This admonition is shown to be extremely important by the threefold “saith the Lord of Zebaoth,” and strengthened still further in ver. 4 by the negative turn not to do like the fathers, who cast the admonitions of the prophets to the winds. The “earlier prophets” are those before the captivity (cf. ch. vil. 7,12). The predicate D'W87 points to the fact that there was a gap between Zechariah and his predecessors, namely the period of the exile, so that Daniel and Ezekiel, who lived in exile, are overlooked; the former because his prophecies are not admonitions addressed to the people, the latter because the greater part of his ministry fell in the very commencement of the exile. Moreover, when alluding to the admonitions of the earlier prophets, Zechariah has not only such utterances in his mind as those in ‘which the prophets summoned the people to repentance with the words ‘sn aaw (eg. Joel ii. 13; Hos. xiv. 2, 3; Isa. xxxi. 6; Jer. iii. 12 sqq., vil. 13, etc.), but the admonitions, threatenings, and reproofs of the earlier prophets generally (compare 2 Kings xvii. 13 sqq.). The chethib om5y is to be read DI "ovyn, a plural form prey from nDey, and is to be retained, since the VOL. Il. An preposition min is wanting in the keri; and this reading has probably only arisen from the offence taken at the use of the plural form ‘alilim, which does not occur elsewhere, in the place of ‘aliloth, although there are many analogies to such a formation, and feminine forms frequently have plurals in 0”, either instead of those in nj or in addition to them.

A reason for the warning not to resist the words of the Lord, like the fathers, is given in vers. 5, 6, by an allusion to the fate which they brought upon themselves through their disobedience. Ver. 5. “ Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, can they live for ever? Ver. 6. Nevertheless my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers, so that they turned and said, As Jehovah purposed to do to us according to our ways and our actions, so has He done to us?” The two questions in ver. 5 are meant as denials, and are intended to anticipate the objection which the people might have raised to the admonitions in ver. 4, to the effect that not only the fathers, but also the earlier prophets, had died long ago; and therefore an allusion to things that had long since passed by could have no force at all for the present g generation. Zechariah neutralizes this objection by saying: Sou fathers have indeed been long dead, and even the prophets do not, or cannot, live for ever; but notwithstanding this, the words of the earlier prophets were fulfilled in the case of the fathers. The words and decrees of God uttered by the prophets did reach the fathers, so that they were obliged to confess that God had really done to them what He threatened, i.e. had carried out the threatened punishment. 8, only, in the sense of a limitation of the thing stated: yet, nevertheless (cf. Ewald, § 105, d). 127 and ‘Pn are not the words of ver. 4, which call to repentance, but the threats and judicial As which the earlier prophets announced in case of impenitence. 27 as in Ezek. xii. 28, Jer. xxxix. 16. ‘pn, the judicial decrees of God, like chog in Zeph. ii. 2. Hissig, 40 reach, applied to the dheanieneed punishments which pursue the sinner, like messengers sent after him, and overtake him (cf. Deut. xxviii. 15, 45). Biblical proofs that even the fathers themselves did acknowledge that the Lord had fulfilled His threatenings in their experience, are to be found in the mournful psalms written in captivity

(though not exactly in Ps. exxvi. and exxxvii., as Koehler supposes), in Lam. ii. 17 (opt awix mn ny, upon which Zechariah seems to play), and in the penitential prayers of Daniel (ix. 4 sqq.) and of Ezra (ix. 6 sqq.), so far as they express the feeling which prevailed in the congregation.

Three months after his call to be a prophet through the first word of God that was addressed to him, Zechariah received a comprehensive revelation concerning the future fate of the people and kingdom of God, in a series of visions, which were giyen him to behold in a single night, and were interpreted by an angel. This took place, according to ver. 7, “on the twentyfourth day of the eleventh month, i.e. the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius,’ that is to say, exactly five months after the building of the temple had been resumed (Hag. i. 15), with which fact the choice of the day for the divine revelation was evidently connected, and two months after the last promise issued through Haggai to the people, that the Lord would from henceforth bless His nation, and would glorify it in the future (Hag. ii. 10-23). To set forth in imagery this blessing and glorification, and to exhibit the leading features of the future conformation of the kingdom of God, was the object of these visions, which are designated in the introduction as “ word of Jehovah,” because the pictures seen in the spirit, together with their interpretation, had the significance of verbal revelations, and are to some extent still further explained by the addition of words of God (cf. i. 14 sqq., ii. 10-17). As they were shown to the prophet one after another in a single night, so that in all probability only short pauses intervened between the different views; so did they present a substantially connected picture of the future of Israel, which was linked on to the then existing time, and closed with the prospect of the ultimate completion of the kingdom of God.

Ver. 8. “TI saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtles which were in the hollow; and behind him red, speckled, and white horses. Ver. 9. And I said, What are these, my lord? Then the angel that talked with me said to me, I will show thee what these are. Ver. 10. And the man who stood among the myrtles answered and said, These are they whom Jehovah hath sent to go through the earth. Ver. 11. And. they answered the angel of Jehovah who stood among the myrtles, and said, We have gone through the earth, and, behold,

‘the whole earth sits still, and at rest. Ver. 12. Then the angel of Jehovah answered and said, Jehovah of hosts, how long wilt Thow not have compassion upon Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with whom Thou hast been angry these seventy years? Ver. 13. And Jehovah answered the angel that talked with me good words, comforting words. Ver. 14. And the angel that talked with me saad to me, Preach, and say, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, I have been jealous for Jerusalem and Zion with great jealousy, (Ver. 15) and with great wrath I am angry against the nations at rest: for I had been angry for a little, but they helped for harm. Ver. 16. Therefore thus saith Jehovah, I turn again to Jerusalem with compassion: my house shall be built in it, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts, and the measuring line shall be drawn over Jerusalem. Ver. 17. Preach as yet, and say, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, My cities shall yet swell over with good, and Jehovah will yet comfort Zion, and will yet choose Jerusalem.” 'The prophet sees, during the night of the day described in ver. 7 (neon is the accusative of duration), in an ecstatic vision, not in a dream but in a waking condition, a rider upon a red horse in a myrtlebush, stopping in a deep hollow, and behind him a number of riders upon red, speckled, and white horses (sisim are horses with riders, and the reason why the latter are not specially mentioned is that they do not appear during the course of the vision as taking any active part, whilst the colour of their horses is the only significant feature), At the same time he also sees, in direct proximity to himself, an angel who interprets the vision, and farther off (ver. 11) the angel of Jehovah also standing or stopping among the myrtle-bushes, and therefore in front of the man upon a red horse, to whom the riders bring a report, that they have gone through the earth by Jehovah’s command and have found the whole earth quiet and at rest; whereupon the angel of Jehovah addresses a prayer to Jehovah for pity upon Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, and receives a good consolatory answer, which the interpreting angel conveys to the prophet, and the latter publicly proclaims in vers. 14-17. The rider upon the red horse is not to be identified with the angel of Jehovah, nor the latter with the angelus interpres. It is true that the identity of the rider and the angel of Jehovah, which many commentators assume, is apparently favoured by the circumstance that they are both standing among the myrtles (‘oméd, stood; see vers. 8, 10, and 11); but all that follows from this is that the rider stopped at the place where the angel of Jehovah was standing, i.e. in front of him, to present a report to him of the state of the earth, which he had gone through with his retinue. This very circumstance rather favours the diversity of the two, inasmuch as it is evident from this that the rider upon the red horse was simply the front one, or leader of the whole company, who is brought prominently forward as the spokesman and reporter. If the man upon the red horse had been the angel of Jehovah Himself, and the troop of horsemen had merely come to bring information to the man upon the red horse, the troop of horsemen could not have stood behind him, but would have stood either opposite to him or in front of him. And the different epithets applied to the two furnish a decisive proof that the angel of the Lord and “the angel that talked with me” are not one and the same. The angel, who gives or conveys to the prophet the interpretation of the vision, is constantly called “the angel that talked with me,” not only in ver. 9, where it is preceded by an address on the part of the prophet to this same angel, but also in vers. 13 and 14, and in the visions which follow (ch. ii. 2, 7, iv. 1, 4, v. 5, 10, vi. 4), from which it is perfectly obvious that ‘2 1257 denotes the function which this angel performs in these visions (dibber b’, signifying the speaking of God or of an angel within a man, as in Hos. i. 2, Hab. ii. 1, Num. xii. 6, 8). His occupation, therefore, was to interpret the visions to the prophet, and convey the divine revelations, so that he was only an angelus interpres or collocutor.

This angel appears in the other visions in company with other angels, and receives instructions from them (ch. ii. 5-8); and his whole activity is restricted to the duty of conveying higher instructions to the prophet, and giving him an insight into the meaning of the visions, whereas the angel of Jehovah stands on an equality with God, being sometimes identified with Jehovah, and at other times distinguished from Him. (Compare the remarks upon this subject in the comm. on Genesis, Pent. 1. p- 185 sqq.) In the face of these facts, it is impossible to establish the identity of the two by the arguments that have been adduced in support of it. It by no means follows from ver. 9, where the prophet addresses the mediator as “ my lord,” that the words are addressed to the angel of the Lord; for neither he nor the angelus interpres has been mentioned before; and in the visions persons are frequently introduced as speaking, according to their dramatic character, without having been mentioned before, so that it is only from what they say or do that it is possible to discover who they are. Again, the circumstance that in ver. 12 the angel of the Lord presents a petition to the Supreme God on behalf of the covenant nation, and that according to ver. 13 Jehovah answers the angelus interpres in good, comforting words, does not prove that he who receives the answer must be the same person as the intercessor: for it might be stated in reply to this, as it has been by Vitringa, that Zechariah has simply omitted to mention that the answer was first of all addressed to the angel of the Lord, and that it was through him that it reached the mediating angel; or we might assume, as Hengstenberg has done, that “ Jehovah addressed the answer directly to the mediating angel, because the angel of the Lord had asked the question, not for his own sake, but simply for the purpose of conveying consolation and hope through the mediator to the prophet, and through him to the nation generally.”

There is no doubt that, in this vision, both the locality in which the rider upon the red horse, with his troop, and the angel of the Lord had taken up their position, and also the colour of the horses, are significant. But they are neither of them easy to interpret. Even the meaning of m’tsulléh is questionable. Some explain it as signifying a “shady place,” from By a shadow; but in that case we should expect the form mtsillah. There is more authority for the assumption that mtsullah is only another form for m*tsalah, which is the reading in many codd., and which ordinarily stands for the depth of the sea, just as in Ex. xv. 10 ¢sdlal signifies to sink into the deep. The Vulgate adopts this rendering: in profundo. Here it signifies, in all probability, a deep hollow, possibly with water in it, as myrtles flourish particularly well in damp soils and by the side of rivers (see Virgil, Georg. ii. 112, iv. 124). The article in bamm’tsullah defines the hollow as the one which the prophet saw in the vision, not the ravine of the fountain of Siloah, as Hofmann supposes (Weissagung u. Erfillung, i. p- 883). The hollow here is not a symbol of the power of the world, or the abyss-like power of the kingdoms of the world (Hengstenberg and M. Baumgarten), as the author of the Chaldee paraphrase in Babele evidently thought; for this cannot be proved from such passages as ch. x. 16, Isa. xliv. 27, and Ps. cvii. 24. In the myrtle-bushes, or myrtle grove, we have no doubt a symbol of the theocracy, or of the land of Judah as a land that was dear and lovely in the estimation of the Lord (cf. Dan. vili. 9, xi. 16), for the myrtle is a lovely ornamental plant. Hence the hollow in which the myrtle grove was situated, can only be a figurative representation of the deep degradation into which the land and people of God had fallen at that time. There is a great diversity of opinion as to the significance of the colour of the horses, although all the commentators agree that the colour is significant, as in ch. vi. 2 sqq. and Rey. vi. 2 sqq., and that this is the only reason why the horses are described according to their colours, and the riders are not mentioned at all. About two of the colours there is no dispute. D178, red, the colour of the blood; and 122, white, brilliant white, the reflection of heavenly and divine glory (Matt. xvii. 2, xxviii. 3; Acts i. 10), hence the symbol of a glorious victory (Rev. vi. 2). The meaning of s’ruqqim is a disputed one. The LXX. have rendered it yapot Kat movxtrot, like D'¥DX OA in ch. vi. 3; the Itala and Vulgate, varti; the Peshito, versicolores. Hence sastm s‘ruqgim would correspond to the trios yAwpds of Rev. vi. 8. The word s‘ruqqim only occurs again in the Old Testament in Isa. xvi. 8, where it is applied to the tendrils or branches of the vine, for which soréq (Isa. v. 2; Jer. il. 21) or s*régah (Gen. xlix. 11) is used elsewhere. On the other hand, Gesenius (Thes. s.v.) and others defend the meaning red, after the Arabic oh the red horse, the fox, from i, to be bright red; and Koehler understands by sasim s’ruqgim, bright red, fire-coloured, or bay horses. But this meaning cannot be shown to be in accordance with Hebrew usage: for it is a groundless conjecture that the vine branch is called sorég from the dark-red grapes (Hitzig on Isa. v. 2); and the incorrectness of it is evident from the fact, that even the Arabic hes does not denote darkred, but bright, fiery red. The Arabic translator has therefore rendered the Greek cruppos by il in Cant. v. 9; but muppés answers to the Hebrew D178, and the LXX. have expressed sisim ’ddummim by tmmoe muppot both here and in ch. vi. 2. If we compare this with ch. vi. 2, where the chariots are drawn by red (adummim, muppot), black (sh’chorim, pédaves), white (U’bhanim, revolt), and speckled (b’ruddim, apot) horses, and with Rev. vi., where the first rider has a white horse (Aeuvxos), the second a red one (auppés), the third a black one (uéAas), the fourth a pale horse (yAwpéds), there can be no further doubt that three of the colours of the horses mentioned here occur again in the two passages quoted, and that the black horse is simply added as a fourth; so that the s’ruggim correspond to the b’ruddim of ch. vi. 3, and the trzros yAwpés of Rev. vi. 8, and consequently sdérdq denotes that starling kind of grey in which the black ground is mixed with white, so that it is not essentially different from bérdd, speckled, or black covered with white spots (Gen. xxxi. 10, 12).

By comparing these passages with one another, we obtain so much as certain with regard to the meaning of the different colours,—namely, that the colours neither denote the lands and nations to which the riders had been sent, as Hiivernick, Maurer, Hitzig, Ewald, and others suppose; nor the three imperial kingdoms, as Jerome, Cyril, and others have attempted to prove. For, apart from the fact that there is no foundation whatever for the combination proposed, of the red colour with the south as the place of light, or of the white with the west, the fourth quarter of the heavens would be altogether wanting. Moreover, the riders mentioned here have unquestionably gone through the earth in company, according to vers. 8 and 11, or at any rate there is no intimation whatever of their hae: gone through the different countries separately, according to the colour of their respective horses; and, according to ch. vi. 6, not only the chariot with the black horses, but that with the white horses also, goes into the land of the south. Consequently the colour of the horses can only be connected with the mission which the riders had to perform. This is confirmed by Rey. vi., inasmuch as a great sword is there given to the rider upon the red horse, to take away peace from the earth, that they may kill one another, and a crown to the rider upon the white horse, who goes forth conquering and to conquer (ver. 2), whilst the one upon the pale horse receives the name of Death, and has power given to him to slay the fourth part of the earth with sword, famine, and pestilence (ver. 8). It is true that no such effects as these are attributed to the riders in the vision before us, but this constitutes no essential difference. To the prophet’s question, mdh-élleh, what are these? 2.e. what do they mean? the angelus interpres, whom he addresses as “my lord” (ddonz), answers, “I will show thee what these be;” whereupon the man upon the red horse, as the leader of the company, gives this reply: “These are they whom Jehovah hath sent to go through the earth;” and then proceeds to give the angel of the Lord the report of their mission, viz. “ We have been through the earth, and behold all the earth sitteth still and at rest.” The man’s answer (vayya‘an, ver. 10) is not addressed to the prophet or to the angelus interpres, but to the angel of the Lord mentioned in ver. 11, to whom the former, with his horsemen (hence the plural, “ they answered,” in ver. 11), had given a report of the result of their mission. The verb ‘dndh, to answer, refers not to any definite question, but to the request for an explanation contained in the conversation between the prophet and the interpreting angel. 7284, in vers. 10 and 11, is not the land of Judah, or any other land, but the earth. The answer, that the whole earth sits still aad at rest (NYPMA Naw denotes the peaceful and secure condition of a land and its inhabitants, undisturbed by any foe; ef. ch. vii. 7, 1 Chron, iv. 40, and Judg. xviii. 27), points back to Hag. ii. 7, 8, 22, 23. God had there announced that for a little He would shake heaven and earth, the whole world and all nations, that the nations would come and fill His temple with glory. The riders sent out by God now return and report that the earth is by no means shaken and in motion, but the whole world sits quiet and at rest. We must not, indeed, infer from this account that the riders were all sent for the simple and exclusive purpose of obtaining information concerning the state of the earth, and communicating it to the Lord. For it would have been quite superfluous and unmeaning to send out an entire troop, on horses of different colours, for this purpose alone. Their mission was rather to take an active part in the agitation of the nations, if any such existed, and guide it to the divinely appointed end, and that in the manner indicated by the colour of their horses; viz. according to Rev. vi., those upon the red horses by war and bloodshed; those upon the starling-grey, or speckled horses, by famine, pestilence, and other plagues; and lastly, those upon the white horses, by victory and the conquest of the world.

In the second year of Darius there prevailed universal peace; all the nations of the earlier Chaldeean empire were at rest, and lived in undisturbed prosperity. Only Judea, the home of the nation of God, was still for the most part lying waste, and Jerusalem was still without walls, and exposed in the most defenceless manner to all the insults of the opponents of the Jews. Such a state of things as this necessarily tended to produce great conflicts in the minds of the more godly men, and to confirm the frivolous in their indifference towards the Lord. As long as the nations of the world enjoyed undisturbed peace, Judah could not expect any essential improvement in its condition, Even though Darius had granted permission for the building of the temple to be continued, the people were still under the bondage of the power of the world, without any prospect of the realization of the glory predicted by the earlier prophets (Jer. xxxi. seq.; Isa. xl. sqq.), which was to dawn upon the nation of God when redeemed from Babylon. Hence the angel of the Lord addresses the intercessory prayer to Jehovah in ver. 12: How long wilt Thou not have compassion upon Jerusalem, etc.? For the very fact that the angel of the Lord, through whom Jehovah had formerly led His people and brought them into the promised land and smitten all the enemies before Israel, now appears again, contains in itself one source of consolation. His coming was a sign that Jehovah had not forsaken His people, and His intercession could not fail to remove every doubt as to the fulfilment of the divine promises. The circumstance that the angel of Jehovah addresses an intercessory prayer to Jehovah on behalf of Judah, is no more a disproof of his essential unity with Jehovah, than the intercessory prayer of Christ in John xvii. is a disproof of His divinity. The words, “over which Thou hast now been angry for seventy years,” do not imply that the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity predicted by Jeremiah (Jer. xxv. 11 and xxix. 10) were only just drawing to a close. They had already expired in the first year of the reign of Cyrus (2 Chron. xxxvi. 22; Ezrai.1). At the same time, the remark made by Vitringa, Hengstenberg, and others, must not be overlooked,— namely, that these seventy years were completed twice, inasmuch as there were also (not perhaps quite, but nearly) seventy years between the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, and the second year of Darius. Now, since the temple was still lying in ruins in the second year of Darius, notwithstanding the command to rebuild it that had been issued by Cyrus (Hag. i. 4), it might very well appear as though the troubles of the captivity would never come to an end. Under such circumstances, the longing for an end to be put to the mournful condition of Judah could not fail to become greater and greater; and the prayer, “ Put an end, O Lord, put an end to all our distress,” more importunate than ever. Jehovah replied to the intercession of the angel of the Lord with good and comforting words. D%bhdrim tobhim are words which promise good, i.e. salvation (cf. Josh. xxiii. 14; Jer. xxix. 10). So far as they set before the people the prospect of the mitigation of their distress, they are nichummim, consolations. The word nichummim is a substantive, and in apposition to d*bhdrim. Instead of the form nichummim, the keri has the form nichumim, which is grammatically the more correct of the two, and which is written still more accurately nichamim in some of the codd. in Kennicott. The contents of these words, which are addressed to the interpreting angel either directly or through the medium of the angel of Jehovah, follow in the announcement which the latter orders the prophet to make in vers. 14-17. SP (ver. 14) as in Isa. xl. 6. The word of the Lord contains two things: (1) the assurance of energetic love on the part of God towards Jerusalem (vers. 14,15); and (2) the promise that this love will show itself in the restoration and prosperity of Jerusalem (vers. 16, 17). ¥&3P, to be jealous, applied to the jealousy of love as in Joel ii. 18, Num. xxv. 11, 13, etc., is strengthened by ning mp. Observe, too, the use of the perfect ‘DN3?, as distinguished from the participle ayp. The perfect is not merely used in the sense of “I have become jealous,” expressing the fact that Jehovah was inspired with burning jealousy, to take Jerusalem to Himself (Koehler), but includes the thought that God has already manifested this zeal, or begun to put it in action, namely by liberating His people from exile. Zion, namely the mountain of Zion, is mentioned along with Jerusalem as being the site on which the temple stood, so that Jerusalem only comes into consideration as the capital of the kingdom. Jehovah is also angry with the self-secure and peaceful nations. The participle gotséph designates the wrath as lasting. Sha’dndn, quiet and careless in their confidence in their own power and prosperity, which they regard as secured for ever. The following word, Ws, quod, introduces the reason why God is angry, viz. because, whereas He was only a little angry with Israel, they assisted for evil. DY refers to the duration, not to the greatness of the anger (cf. Isa. liv. 8). nye mY, they helped, so that evil was the result (mY as in Jer. xliv. 11), ze. they assisted not only as the instruments of God for the chastisement of Judah, but so that harm arose from it, inasmuch as they endeavoured to destroy Israel altogether (cf. Isa. xlvii. 6). It is no ground of objection to this definition of the meaning of the words, that myn in that case does not form an appropriate antithesis to)Y®, which relates to time (Koehler); for the fact that the anger only lasted a short time, was in itself a proof that God did not intend to destroy His people. To understand nye MY as only referring to the prolonged oppression and captivity, does not sufficiently answer to the words. Therefore (/akhén, ver. 16), because Jehovah is jealous with love for His people, and very angry with the heathen, He has now turned with compassion towards Jerusalem. The perfect ‘"2Y is not purely prophetic, but describes the event as having already commenced, and as still continuing. This compassion will show itself in the fact that the house of God is to be built in Jerusalem, and the city itself restored, and all the obstacles to this are to be cleared out of the way. The measuring line is drawn over a city, to mark off the space it is to occupy, and the plan upon which it is to be arranged. The chethib mp, probably to be read MP, is the obsolete form, which occurs again in 1 Kings vii. 93 and Jer. xxxi. 39, and was displaced by the contracted form \P (keri). But the compassion of God will not be restricted to this. The prophet is to proclaim still more (“cry yet,” ver. 17, referring to the “cry” in ver. 14). The cities of Jehovah, z.e. of the land of the Lord, are still to overflow with good, or with prosperity. Pats, to overflow, as in Prov. v.16; and 73$35n for M2"y;an (vid. Ewald, § 196, ¢). The last two clauses round off the promise. When the Lord shall restore the temple and city, then will Zion and Jerusalem learn that He is comforting her, and has chosen her still. The last thought is repeated in ch. ii. 16 and iii. 2.

In this vision it is shown to the prophet, and through him to the people, that although the immediate condition of things presents no prospect of the fulfilment of the promised restoration and glorification of Israel, the Lord has nevertheless already appointed the instruments of His judgment, and sent them out to overthrow the nations of the world, that are still living at rest and in security, and to perfect His Zion. The fulfilment of this consolatory promise is neither to be transferred to the end of the present course of this world, as is supposed by Hofmann (Weiss. wu. Erfill. i. 835), who refers to ch. xiv. 18, 19 in support of this, nor to be restricted to what was done in the immediate future for the rebuilding of the temple and of the city of Jerusalem. The promise embraces the whole of the future of the kingdom of God; so that whilst the commencement of the fulfilment is to be seen in the fact that the building of the temple was finished in the sixth year of Darius, and Jerusalem itself was also restored by Nehemiah in the reign of Artaxerxes, these commencements of the fulfilment simply furnished a pledge that the glorification of the nation and kingdom of God predicted by the earlier prophets would quite as assuredly follow.

The second vision is closely connected with the first, and shows how God will discharge the fierceness of His wrath upon the heathen nations in their self-security (ch. i. 15). Ver. 18. “And I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns. Ver. 19. And I said to the angel that talked with me, What are these? And he said to me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. Ver. 20. And Jehovah showed me four smiths. Ver. 21. And I said, What come these to do? And He spake to me thus: These are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no one lifted up his head; these are now come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations which have lifted up the horn against the land of Judah to scatter it.” The mediating angel interprets the four horns to the prophet first of all as the horns which have scattered Judah; then literally, as the nations which have lifted up the horn against the land of Judah to scatter it. The horn is a symbol of power (cf. Amos vi. 13). The horns therefore symbolize the powers of the world, which rise up in hostility against Judah and hurt it. The number four does not point to the four quarters of the heaven, denoting the heathen foes of Israel in all the countries of the world (Hitzig, Maurer, Koehler, and others). This view cannot be established from ver. 10, for there is no reference to any dispersion of Israel to the four winds there. Nor does it follow from the perfect that only such nations are to be thought of, as had already risen up in hostility to Israel and Judah in the time of Zechariah; for it cannot be shown that there were four such nations. At that time all the nations round about Jy@ah were subject to the Persianempire, as they had been in Nebuchadnézzar’s time to the Babylonian. Both the number four and the perfect zéra belong to the sphere of inward intuition, in which the objects are combined together so as to form one complete picture, without any regard to the time of their appearing in historical reality. Just as the prophet in ch. vi. sees the four chariots all together, although they follow one another in action, so may the four horns which are seen simultaneously represent nations which succeeded one another. This is shown still more clearly by the visions in Dan. ii. and vii., in which not only the colossal image seen in a dream by Nebuchadnezzar (ch. ii.), but also the four beasts which are seen by Daniel to ascend simultaneously from the sea, symbolize the four empires, which rose up in succession one after the other. It is to these four empires that the four horns of our vision refer, as Jerome, Abarb., Hengstenberg, and others have correctly pointed out, since even the picturing of nations or empires as horns points back to Dan. vil. 7, 8, and viii. 3-9. Zechariah sees these in all the full development of their power, in which they have oppressed and crushed the people of God (hence the perfect zérz), and for which they are to be destroyed themselves. Zdrdh, to scatter, denotes the dissolu— tion of the united condition and independence of the nation of God. In this sense all four empires destroyed Judah, although the Persian and Grecian empires did not carry Judah out of their own land. The striking combination, “Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem,” in which not only the introduction of the name of Israel between Judah and Jerusalem is to be noticed, but also the fact that the nota acc. NX is only placed before Y*hadah and Yisré@’él, and not before Y’rashdlaim also, is not explained on the ground that Israel denotes the kingdom of the ten tribes, Judah the southern kingdom, and Jerusalem the capital of the kingdom (Maurer, Umbreit, and others), for in that case Jsrael would necessarily have been repeated before Judah, and ’éth before Y’rushdlaim. Still less can the name Israel denote the rural population of Judah (Hitzig), or the name Judah the princely house (Neumann). By the fact that eth is omitted before Y’rashdlaim, and only Vav stands before it, Jerusalem is connected with Israel and separated from Judah; and by the repetition of ’¢h before Yisrd’él, as well as before Y’hadah, Israel with Jerusalem is co-ordinated with Judah. Kliefoth infers from this that “the heathen had dispersed on the one hand Judah, and on the other hand Israel together with Jerusalem,” and understands this as signifying that in the nation of God itself a separation is presupposed, like the previous separation into Judah and the kingdom of the

ten tribes. ‘ When the Messiah comes,” he says, “a small portion of the Israel according to the flesh will receive Him, and so constitute the genuine people of God and the true Israel, the

Judah; whereas the greater part of the Israel according to the flesh will reject the Messiah at first, and harden itself in unbelief, until at the end of time it will also be converted, and join the true Judah of Christendom.” But this explanation,

according to which Judah would denote the believing portion of the nation of twelve tribes, and Israel and Jerusalem the unbelieving, is wrecked on the grammatical difficulty that the cop. } is wanting before beabrny, If the names Judah and Israel were intended to be co-ordinated with one another as two different portions of the covenant nation as a whole, the two parts would necessarily have been connected together by the cop. Vav. Moreover, in the two co-ordinated names Judah and Israel, the one could not possibly stand in the spiritual sense, and the other in the carnal. The co-ordination of ’eth- Y*hudah with ’eth- Yisra’el without the cop. Vav shows that Israel is really equivalent to the Jerusalem which is subordinated to it, and does not contain a second member (or part), which is added to it,— in other words, that Israel with Jerusalem is merely an interpretation or more precise definition of Y‘hadah; and Hengstenberg has hit upon the correct idea, when he takes Israel as the honourable name of Judah, or, more correctly, as an honourable name for the covenant nation as then existing in Judah. This explanation is not rendered questionable by the objection offered by Koehler: viz. that after the separation of the two kingdoms, the expression Israel always denotes either the kingdom of the ten tribes, or the posterity of Jacob without regard to their being broken up, because this“is not the fact. The use of the name Israel for Judah after the separation of the kingdoms is established beyond all question by 2 Chron. xii. 1, xvinl 7; "xix, 8, xxi.02) 4 scx. 12) xxiv75, eter

Jehovah then showed the prophet four chdérdshim, or workmen, 7.¢. smiths; and on his putting the question, “ What have

1 Gesenius has correctly observed in his Thesaurus, p. 1339, that ‘from this time (i.e. from the severance of the kingdom) the name of Israel began to be usurped by the whole nation that was then in existence, and was used chiefly by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Deutero(?)- Isaiah, and after the captivity by Ezra and Nehemiah; from which it came to pass, that in the Paralipomena, even when allusion is made to an earlier period, /srael stands for Judah,” although the proofs adduced in support of this from the passages quoted from the prophets need considerable sifting.

these come to do?” gave him this reply: “To terrify those,” etc. For the order of the words nivy? o2 nbs nd, instead of DNa MPN nib? mp, see Gen. xii. 12, Neh. ii. 12, Judg. ix. 48. ninpa nN is not a nominative written absolutely at the head of the sentence in the sense of “these horns,” for that would require MNT ninpt; but the whole sentence is repeated from ver. 2, and to that the statement of the purpose for which the smiths have come is attached in the form of an apodosis: “these are the horns, etc., and they (the smiths) have come.” At the same time, the earlier statement as to the horns is defined more minutely by the additional clause ‘) US BD, according to the measure, 7.¢. in such a manner that no man lifted up his head any more, or so that Judah was utterly prostrate. LHachdrid, to'throw into a state of alarm, as in 2 Sam. xvil. 2. Them (othdm): this refers ad senswm to the nations symbolized by the horns. Yaddoth, inf. piel of yddah, to cast down, may be explained as referring to the power of the nations symbolized by the horns. ’Lrets Y*hadah (the land of Judah) stands for the inhabitants of the land. The four smiths, therefore, symbolize the instruments “of the divine omnipotence by which the imperial power in its several historical forms is overthrown” (Kliefoth), or, as Theod. Mops. expresses it, “the powers that serve God and inflict vengeance upon them from many directions.” The vision does not show what powers God will use for this purpose. It is simply designed to show to the people of God, that every hostile power of the world which has risen up against it, or shall rise up, is to be judged and destroyed by the Lord.

Whilst the second vision sets forth the destruction of the powers that were hostile to Israel, the third (ch. ii. 1-5) with the prophetic explanation (vers. 6-13) shows the development of the people and kingdom of God till the time of its final glory. The vision itself appears very simple, only a few of the principal features being indicated; but in this very brevity it presents many difficulties so far as the exposition is concerned. It is as follows: Ver. 1. “And J lifted up my eyes, and saw, and behold a man, and in his hand a measuring line. Ver. 2. Then

I said, Whither goest thou? And he said to me, To measure Jerusalem, to see how great its breadth, and how great its length. Ver. 3. And, behold, the angel that talked with me went out, and another angel went out to meet him. Ver. 4. And he said to him, Run, speak to this young man thus: Jerusalem shall lie as an open land for the multitude of men and cattle in the midst of it. Wer. 5. And I shall be to it, is the saying of Jehovah, a fiery wall round about; and I shall be for glory in the midst of it.’ The man with the measuring line in his hand is not the interpreting angel (C. B. Mich., Ros., Maurer, etc.); for it was not his duty to place the events upon the stage, but simply to explain to the prophet the things which he saw. Moreover, this angel is clearly distinguished from the man, inasmuch as he does not go out (ver. 3) till after the latter has gone to measure Jerusalem (ver. 2). At the same time, we cannot regard the measuring man as merely “a figure in the vision,” since all the persons occurring in these visions are significant; but we agree with those who conjecture that he is the angel of Jehovah, although this conjecture cannot be distinctly proved. The task which he is preparing to perform —namely, to measure Jerusalem—leads unquestionably to the conclusion that he is something more than a figure. The measuring of the breadth and length of Jerusalem presupposes that the city is already in existence; and this expression must not be identified with the phrase, to draw the measure over Jerusalem, in ch. i. 16. Drawing the measure over a place is done for the purpose of sketching a plan for its general arrangement, or the rebuilding of it. But the length and breadth of a city can only be measured when it is already in existence; and the object of the measuring is not to see how long and how broad it is to be, but what the length and breadth actually are. It is true that it by no means follows from this that the city to be measured was the Jerusalem of that time; on the contrary, the vision shows the future Jerusalem, but it exhibits it as a city in actual existence, and visible to the spiritual eye. While the man goes away to measure the city, the interpreting angel goes out: not out of the myrtle thicket, for this only occurs in the first vision; but he goes away from the presence of the prophet, where we have to think of him as his interpreter, in the direction of the man with the measuring line, to find out what he is going to do, and bring back word to the prophet. At the very same time another angel comes out to meet him, viz. the angelus interpres, not the man with the measuring line. For one person can only come to meet another when the latter is going in the direction from which the former comes. Having come to meet him, he (the second angel) says to him-(the angelus interpres), “Run, say to this young man,” etc. The subject to 128 can only be the second angel; for if, on grammatical grounds, the angelus interpres might be regarded as speaking to the young man, such an assumption is proved to be untenable, by the fact that it was no part of the office of the angelus interpres to give orders or commissions to another angel. On the other hand, there is nothing at all to preclude another angel from revealing a decree of God to the angelus interpres for him to communicate to the prophet; inasmuch as this does not bring the angelus interpres into action any further than his function requires, so that there is no ground for the objection that this is at variance with his standing elsewhere (Kliefoth). But the other angel could not give the instructions mentioned in ver. 4 to the angelus interpres, unless he were either himself a superior angel, viz. the angel of Jehovah, or had been directed to do so by the man with the measuring line, in which case this “man” would be the angel of Jehovah. Of these two possibilities we prefer the latter on two grounds: (1) because it is impossible to think of any reason why the “other angel” should not be simply called 717? JNO, if he really were the angel of the Lord; and (2) because, according to the analogy of Ezek. xl. 3, the man with the measuring line most probably was the angel of Jehovah, with whose dignity it would be quite in keeping that he should explain his purpose to the angelus interpres through the medium of another (inferior) angel. And if this be established, so far as the brevity of the account will allow, we cannot understand by the “young man” the man with the measuring line, as Hitzig, Maurer, and Kliefoth do. The only way in which such an assumption as this could be rendered tenable or in harmony «with the rest, would be by supposing that the design of the message was to tell the man with the measuring line that “he might desist from his useless enterprise” (Hitzig), as Jerusalem could not be measured at all, on account of the number of its inhabitants and its vast size (Theod. Mops., Theodoret, Ewald, Umbreit, etc.); but Kliefoth has very justly replied to this, that “if a city be ever so great, inasmuch as it is a city, it can always be measured, and also have walls.” If, then, the symbolical act of measuring, as Kliefoth also admits, expresses the question how large and how broad Jerusalem will eventually be, and if the words of vers. 4, 5 contain the answer to this question, viz. Jerusalem will in the first place (ver. 4) contain such a multitude of men and cattle that it will dwell like p‘rdzoth; this answer, which gives the meaning of the measuring, must be addressed not to the measuring man, but simply to the prophet, that he may announce to the people the future magnitude and glory of the city. The measuring man was able to satisfy himself of this by the measuring itself. We must therefore follow the majority of both the earlier and later expositors, and take the “ young man” as being the prophet himself, who is so designated on account of his youthful age, and without any allusion whatever to “human inexperience and dim short-sightedness ” (Hengstenberg), since such an allusion would be very remote from the context, and even old men of experience could not possibly know anything concerning the future glory of Jerusalem without a revelation from above. Zalldz, as in Judg. vi. 20 and 2 Kings iv. 25, is a contraction of halldzeh, and formed from ldzeh, there, thither, and the article hal, in the sense of the (young man) there, or that young man (cf. Ewald, § 103, a, and 183, b; Ges. § 34, Anm. 1). He is to make haste and bring this message, because it is good news, the realization of which will soon commence. The message contains a double and most joyful promise. (1) Jerusalem will in future dwell, ae. be built, as p’rdzoth. This word means neither “ without walls,” nor loca aperta, but strictly speaking the plains, and is only used in the plural to denote the open, level ground, as contrasted with the fortified cities surrounded by walls: thus ‘aré p’rdzoth, cities of the plain, in Esth. ix. 19, as distinguished from the capital Susa; and ’erets p’rdzoth in Ezek. xxxviii. 11, the land where men dwell “without walls, bolts, and gates;” hence p’rdzi, inhabitant of the plain, in contrast with the inhabitants of fortified cities with high walls (Deut. iii. 5;

1 Sam. vi. 18). The thought is therefore the following:

Jerusalem is in future to resemble an open country covered with unwalled cities and villages; it will no longer be a city closely encircled with walls; hence it will be extraordinarily enlarged, on account of the multitude of men and cattle with which it will be blessed (cf. Isa. xlix. 19, 20; Ezek. xxxviii. 11) Moreover, (2) Jerusalem will then have no protecting wall surrounding it, because it will enjoy a superior protection. Jehovah will be to it a wall of fire round about, that is to say, a defence of fire which will consume every one who ventures to attack it (cf. Isa. iv. 5; Deut. iv. 24). Jehovah will also be the glory in the midst of Jerusalem, that is to say, will fill the city with His glory (cf. Isa. lx. 19). This promise is explained in the following prophetic words which are uttered by the angel of Jehovah, as vers. 8, 9, and 11 clearly show. According to these verses, for example, the speaker is sent by Jehovah, and according to ver. 8 to the nations which have plundered Israel, “after glory,” 2.e. to smite these nations and make them servants to the Israelites. From this shall Israel learn that Jehovah - has sent him. The fact that, according to vers. 3, 4, another angel speaks to the prophet, may be easily reconciled with this. For since this angel, as we have seen above, was sent by the angel of Jehovah, he speaks according to his instructions, and that in such a manner that his words pass imperceptibly into the words of the sender, just as we very frequently find the words of a prophet passing suddenly into the words of God, and carried on as such. For the purpose of escaping from this simple conclusion, Koehler has forcibly broken up this continuous address, and has separated the words of vers. 8, 9, and 11, in which the angel says that Jehovah has sent him, from the words of Jehovah proclaimed by the angel, as being interpolations, but without succeeding in explaining them either simply or naturally.

The prophecy commences thus in vers. 6-9: Ver. 6. “ Ho, ho, flee out of the land of the north, is the saying of Jehovah; for I spread you out as the four winds of heaven, is the saying of Jehovah. Ver. 7. Ho, Zion, save thyself, thou that dwellest with the daughter Babel. Ver. 8. For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, After glory hath he sent me to the nations that have plundered you; for whoever toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye. Ver. 9. For, behold, I swing my hand over them, and they become a spoil to those who served them; and ye will see that Jehovah of hosts hath sent me.’ The summons to flee out of Babylon, in vers. 6 and 7, is addressed to the Israelites, who are all included in the one name Zion in ver. 7; and shows that the address which follows is not a simple continuation of the promise in vers. 4 and 5, but is intended both to explain it, and to assign the reason for it. The summons contains so far a reason for it, that the Israelites are directed to flee out of Babylon, because the judgment is about to burst upon this oppressor of the people of God. The words nasa, flee, and himmal‘ti, save thyself or escape, both point to the judgment, and in ver. 9 the judgment itself is clearly spoken of. The land of the north is Babylon (cf. Jer. i. 14, vi. 22, x. 22; and for the fact itself, Isa. xlviii. 20). The reason for the exclamation “ Flee” is first of all given in the clause, “ for like the four winds have I spread you out,” not “ dispersed you” (Vulg., C. B. Mich., Koehler). For apart from the fact that pérés almost always means to spread out, and has the meaning to disperse at the most in Ps. Ixviii. 15 and Ezek. xvii. 21, this meaning is altogether unsuitable here. For if Israel had been scattered like the four winds, it would of necessity have been summoned to return, not only from the north, but from all quarters of the globe (Hitzig, Kliefoth). Moreover, we should then have yannd, into the feat winds; and the method suggested by Koehler for reconciling Y2982 with his view, viz. by assuming that “like the four winds” is equivalent t6 “as chaff is Ponte and driven away from its place by the four winds,”

according to which the winds would be mentioned in the place of the chaff, will hardly meet with approval. The explanation is rather that the perfect pérastz is used prophetically to denote the purpose of God, which had already been formed, even if its realization was still in the future. To spread out like the four winds is the same as to spread out just as the four winds spread out to all quarters of the globe. Because God has resolved upon spreading out His people in this manner, they are to flee out of Babel, that they may not suffer the fate of Babel. That this thought lies at the foundation of the motive assigned, is evident from the further reasons assigned for the summons in vers. 8 and 9. Zion stands for the inhabitants of Zion, namely the people of God, who are for the time being still yoshebheth bath Babel, dwelling with the daughter Babel. As Zion does not mean the city or fortress of Jerusalem, but the inhabitants, so the “daughter Babel” is not the city of Babylon or country of Babylonia personified, but the inhabitants of Babel; and 2% is construed with the accusative of the person, as in Ps. xxii. 4 and 2 Sam. vi. 2. What Jehovah states in explanation of the twofold call to flee out of Babel, does not commence with ver. 9 (Ewald), or with y237 °3 in ver. 8) (Koehler), but with 9) 3133 08, The incorrectness of the two former explanations is seen first of all'in the fact that °3 only introduces a speech in the same manner as 67, when it follows directly upon the introductory formula; but not, as is here assumed, when a long parenthesis is inserted between, without the introduction being resumed by nbyd. And secondly, neither of these explanations furnishes a suitable meaning. If the words of God only followed in ver. 9, pmby in the first clause would be left without any noun to which to refer; and if they commenced with 237 °2 (for he that toucheth), the thought “he that toucheth you,” etc., would assign no reason for the call to flee and save themselves. For if Israel is defended or valued by God as a pupil of the eye, there can be no necessity for it to flee. And lastly, it is impossible to see what can be the meaning or object of the parenthesis, “ After glory hath He sent me,” etc. If it treated “ of the execution of the threat of punishment upon the heathen” (Koehler), it would be inserted in an unsuitable place, since the threat of punishment would not follow till afterwards. All these difficulties vanish if Jehovah’s words commence with ’achar kabhod (after glory), in which case sh‘léchant (He hath sent me) may be very simply explained from the fact that the address is introduced, not in a direct form, but indirectly: Jehovah says, He has sent me after glory. The sender is Jehovah, and the person sent is not the prophet, but the angel of the Lord. Achar kdbhod: behind glory, after glory; not however “after the glory of success” (Hitzig, Ewald, etc.), still less “ with a glorious commission,” but to get glory upon the heathen, ze. to display the glory of God upon the heathen through the judgment by which their power is broken, and the heathen world is made to serve the people of God. The manner in which the next two clauses, commencing with 47 (for), are attached, is the following: The first assigns the subjective motive; that is to say, states the reason why God has sent him to the heathen, namely, because they have plundered His people, and have thereby touched the apple of His eye. fy 23, the apple of the eye (lit. the gate, the opening in which the eye is placed, or more probably the pupil of the eye, pupilla, as being the object most carefully preserved), is a figure used to denote the dearest possession or good, and in this sense is applied to the nation of Israel as early as Deut. xxxii. 10. The second explanatory clause in ver. 9 adds the practical ground for this sending after glory. The speaker is still the angel of the Lord; and his acting is identical with the acting of God. Like Jehovah, he swings his hand over the heathen nations which plundered Israel (cf. Isa. xi. 15, xix. 16), and they become (*7) expressing the consequence), z.c. so that they become, booty to the Israelites, who had previously been obliged to serve them (cf. Isa. xiv. 2). In what way the heathen would serve Israel is stated in ver. 11. By the execution of this judgment Israel would learn that Jehovah had sent His angel, namely to execute upon the heathen His saving purposes for Israel. This is the meaning of these words, not only here and in ver. 11, but also in ch. iv. 9 and vi. 15, where this formula is repeated, not however in the sense imagined by Koehler, namely that he had spoken these words in consequence of a command from Jehovah, and not of his own accord, by which the “sending” is changed into “ speaking.”

Vers. 10-13. The daughter Zion is to rejoice at this sending of the angel of the Lord. Ver. 10. “ Eault and rejoice, O daughter Zion: for, behold, I come, and dwell in the midst of thee, is the saying of Jehovah. Ver.11. And many nations will attach themselves to Jehovah in that day, and become a people tome: and I dwell in the midst of thee; and thou wilt know that Jehovah of hosts hath sent me to thee.” The daughter Zion, or the church of the Lord, delivered out of Babel, is to rejoice with joy, because her glorification is commencing now. The Lord comes to her in His angel, in whom are His name (Ex. xxiii. 21) and His face (Ex. xxxiii. 14), i.e. the angel of His face (Isa. lsiii. 9), who reveals His nature, to dwell in the midst of her. This dwelling of Jehovah, or of His angel, in the midst of Zion, is essentially different from the dwelling of Jehovah in the Most

Holy Place of His temple. It commences with the coming of ‘the Son of God in the flesh, and is completed by His return in glory (John i. 14 and Rev. xxi. 3). Then will many, or powerful, nations, attach themselves to Jehovah, and become His people (cf. ch. viii. 20, 21; Isa. xiv.-1). This kingdom of God, which has hitherto thee restricted to Israel, will We spread out and glorified by the reception of the neetions nations which are seeking God (Mic. iv. 2). The repetition of the expression, “J dwell in the midst of thee,’ merely serves as a stronger asseveration of this brilliant promise; and the same a applies to the repetition of 3) AY (and thou shalt know): at ver. 13. Jerusalem will thereby receive the expansion eee to the prophet in ver. 4; and through the dwelling of God in the midst of her, the promise in ver. +5 will also he fulfilled. The next verse refers to this.

Ver. 12. “ And Jehovah will take possession of Judah as His portion in the holy land, and will yet choose Jerusalem. Ver. 138. Be still, all flesh, before Jehovah; for He has risen up out of His holy habitation.” The first hemistich of ver. 12 rests upon Deut. xxxii. 9, where Israel, as the chosen nation, is called the chéley and nachalah of Jehovah. This appointment of Israel to be the possession of Jehovah will become perfect truth and reality in the future, through the coming of the Lord. Y*haddah is Judah as delivered, ¢.¢. the remnant of the whole of the covenant nation. This remnant, after being gathered out of Babel, will dwell upon holy ground, or in a holy land, as the possession of the Lord. The holy land is the land of Jehovah (Hos. ix. 3); but this is not to be set down without reserve as identical with Palestine. On the contrary, every place where Jehovah may be is holy ground (cf. Ex. iii. 5); so that even Palestine is only holy when the Lord dwells there. And we must not limit the idea of the holy land in this passage to Palestine, because the idea of the people of God will be so expanded by the addition of many nations, that it will not have room enough within the limits of Palestine; and according to ver. 4, even Jerusalem will no longer be a city with limited boundaries. The holy land reaches just as far as the nations, which have become the people of Jehovah by attaching themselves to Judah, spread themselves out over the surface of the earth. The words “ choose Jerusalem again” round off the promise, just as in ch. i. 17;

but in ver. 13 the admonition is added, to wait in reverential silence for the coming of the Lord to judgment, after Hab. it. 20; and the reason assigned is, that the judgment will soon begin. WY2, niphal of 3p (compare Ewald, §140, a; Ges. § 72, Anm. 9), to wake up, or rise up from His rest (cf. Ps. xliv. 24). wtp v2, the holy habitation of God, is heaven, as in Deut. xxvi. 15, Jer. xxv. 30. The judgment upon the heathen worldpower began to burst in a very short time. When Babylon revolted against the king of Persia, under the reign of Darius, a great massacre took place within the city after its re-capture, and its walls were destroyed, so that the city could not rise again to its ancient grandeur and importance. Compare with this the remark made in the comm. on Haggai (p. 196), concerning the overthrow of the Persian empire and those which followed it. We have already shown, at p. 107, note, what a groundless hypothesis the opinion is, that the fulfilment was interrupted in consequence of Israel’s guilt; and that as the result of this, the completion of it has been deferred for centuries, or even thousands of years.

THE FOURTH VISION: THE HIGH PRIEST JOSHUA IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGEL OF THE LORD.—CHAP. III.

In this and the following visions the prophet is shown the future glorification of the church of the Lord. Ver. 1. “ And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of Jehovah, and Satan stood at his right hand to oppose him. Ver. 2. And Jehovah said to Satan, Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; and Jehovah who chooseth Jerusalem rebuke thee. Is not this a brand saved out of the fire? Ver. 3. And Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. Ver. 4. And he answered and spake to those who stood before him thus: Take away the filthy garments from him. And he said to him, Behold, I have taken away thy guilt from thee, and clothe thee in festal raiment. Ver. 5. And I said, Let them put a clean mitre upon his head. Then they put the clean mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of Jehovah stood by.” The subject to 28% is Jehovah, and not the mediating angel, for his work was to explain the visions to the prophet, and not to introduce them; nor the angel of Jehovah, because he appears in the course of the vision, although in these visions he is sometimes identified with Jehovah, and sometimes distinguished from Him. The scene is the following: Joshua stands as high priest before the angel of the Lord, and Satan stands at his (Joshua’s) right hand as accuser. Satan (hassdtdn) is the evil spirit so well known from the book of Job, and the constant accuser of men before God (Rev. xii. 10), and not Sanballat and his comrades (Kimchi, Drus., Ewald). He comes forward here as the enemy and accuser of Joshua, to accuse him in his capacity of high priest. The scene is therefore a judicial one, and the high priest is not in the sanctuary, the building of which had commenced, or engaged in supplicating the mercy of the angel of the Lord for himself and the people, as Theodoret and Hengstenberg suppose. The expression BD 4¥ furnishes no tenable proof of this, since it cannot be shown that this expression would be an inappropriate one to denote the standing of an accused person before the judge, or that the Hebrew language had any other expression for this. Satan stands on the right side of Joshua, because the accuser was accustomed to stand at the right hand of the accused (cf. Ps. cix. 6). Joshua is opposed by Satan, however, not on account of any personal offences either in his private or his domestic life, but in his official capacity as high priest, and for sins which were connected with his office, or for offences which would involve the nation (Lev. iv. 3); though not as the bearer of the sins of the people before the Lord, but as laden with his own and his people’s sins. The dirty clothes, which he had on, point to this (ver. 3). But Jehovah, i.e. the angel of Jehovah, repels the accuser with the words, “ Jehovah rebuke thee;... Jehovah who chooseth Jerusalem.”! The words are repeated for the sake of emphasis, and with the repetition the motive which led Jehovah to reject the accuser

1 The application made in the Epistle of Jude (ver. 9) of the formula “ Jehovah rebuke thee,” namely, that Michael the archangel did not venture to execute upon Satan the xplois PrxoQnuias, does not warrant the conclusion that the angel of the Lord places himself below Jehovah by these words. The words ‘‘ Jehovah rebuke thee” are a standing formula for the utterance of the threat of a divine judgment, from which no conclusion can be drawn as to the relation in which the ‘person using it stood to God. Moreover, Jude had not our vision in his mind, but another event, which has not been preserved in the canonical Scriptures.

is added. Because Jehovah has chosen Jerusalem, and maintains His choice in its integrity (this is implied in the participle bochér). He must rebuke Satan, who hopes that his accusation will have the effect of repealing the choice of Jerusalem, by deposing the high priest. For if any sin of the high priest, which inculpated the nation, had been sufficient to secure his removal or deposition, the office of high priest would have ceased altogether, because no man is without sin. 3, to rebuke, does not mean merely to nonsuit, but to reprove for a thing; and when used of God, to reprove by action, signifying to sweep both him and his accusation entirely away. The motive for the repulse of the accuser is strengthened by the clause which follows: Is he (Joshua) not a brand plucked out of the fire? z.e. one who has narrowly escaped the threatening destruction (for the figure, see Amos iv. 11). These words, again, we must not take as referring to the high priest as an individual; nor must we restrict their meaning to the fact that Joshua had been brought back from captivity, and reinstated in the office of high priest. Just as the accusation does not apply to the individual, but to the office which Joshua filled, so do these words also apply to the supporter of the official dignity. The fire, out of which Joshua had been rescued as a brand, was neither the evil which had come upon Joshua through neglecting the building of the temple (Koehler), nor the guilt of allowing his sons to marry foreign wives (Targ., Jerome, Rashi, Kimchi): for in the former case the accusation would have come too late, since the building of the temple had been resumed five months before (Hag. i. 15, compared with Zech. i. 7); and in the latter it would have been much too early, since these misalliances did not take place till fifty years afterwards. And, in general, guilt which might possibly lead to ruin could not be called a fire; still less could the cessation or removal of this sin be called deliverance out of the fire. Fire is a figurative expression for punishment, not for sin. The fire out of which Joshua had been saved like a brand was the captivity, in which both Joshua and the nation had been brought to the verge of destruction. Out of this fire Joshua the high priest had been rescued. But, as Kliefoth has aptly

observed, “the priesthood of Israel was concentrated in the high priest, just as the character of Israel as the holy nation was concentrated in the priesthood. The high priest represented the holiness and priestliness of Israel, and that not merely in certain official acts and functions, but so that as a particular Levite and Aaronite, and as the head for the time being of the house of Aaron, he represented in his own person that character of holiness and priestliness which had been graciously bestowed by God upon the nation of Israel.” This

serves to explain how the hope that God must rebuke the accuser could be made to rest upon the election of Jerusalem, i.e. upon the love of the Lord to the whole of His nation. The pardon and the promise do not apply to Joshua personally any more than the accusation; but they refer to him in his official position, and to the whole nation, and that with regard to the special attributes set forth in the high priesthood— namely, its priestliness and holiness. We cannot, therefore, find any better words with which to explain the meaning of this vision than those of Kliefoth. “The character of Israel,”

he says, “as the holy and priestly nation of God, was violated —violated by the general sin and guilt of the nation, which God had been obliged to punish with exile. This guilt of the nation, which neutralized the priestliness and holiness of Israel, is pleaded by Satan in the accusation which he brings before the Maleach of Jehovah against the high priest, who was its representative. A nation so guilty and so punished could no longer be the holy and priestly nation: its priests could no longer be priests; nor could its high priests be high priests any more. But the Maleach of Jehovah sweeps away the accusation with the assurance that Jehovah, from His grace, and for the sake of its election, will still give validity to Israel’s priesthood, and has already practically manifested this purpose of His by bringing it out of its penal condition of exile.”

After the repulse of the accuser, Joshua is cleansed from the guilt attaching to him. When he stood before the angel of the Lord he had dirty clothes on. The dirty clothes are not the costume of an accused person (Drus., Ewald); for this Roman custom (Lev. ii. 54, vi. 20) was unknown to the Hebrews. Dirt is a figurative representation of sin; so that dirty clothes represent defilement with sin and guilt (cf. Isa. Ixiv. 5, iv. 4; Prov. xxx. 12; Rev. iii. 4, vii. 14). The Lord had indeed refined His nation in its exile, and in His grace had preserved it from destruction; but its sin was not thereby wiped away. The place of grosser idolatry had been taken by the more refined idolatry of self-righteousness, selfishness, and conformity to the world. And the representative of the nation before the Lord was affected with the dirt of these sins, which gave Satan a handle for his accusation. But the Lord would cleanse His chosen people from this, and make it a holy and glorious nation. This is symbolized by what takes place in vers. 4 and 5. The angel of the Lord commands those who stand before Him, i.e. the angels who serve Him, to take off the dirty clothes from the high priest, and put on festal clothing; and then adds, by way of explanation to Joshua, Behold, I ae caused thy guilt to pass away from thee, that is to say, I have forgiven a sin, and justified thee (cf. 2 Sam. xii. 13, xxiv. 10), oad clothe thee with festal raiment. The inf. abs. halbésh stands, as it frequently does, for the finite verb, and has its norm in ‘A72yn (see at Hag.i. 6). The last mene are either spoken to the attendant angels as well, or else, what is more likely, they are simply passed over in the command given to them, and mentioned for the first time here. Machdldtsdth, costly clothes, which were only worn on festal occasions (see at Isa. ii. 22). They are not symbols of innocence and righteousness (Chald.), which are symbolized by clean or white raiment (Rev. ili. 4, vii. 9); nor are they figurative representations of joy (Koehler), but are rather symbolical of glory. The high priest, and the nation in him, are not only to be cleansed from sin, and justified, but to be sanctified and glorified as well.—Ver. 5. At this moment the prophet feels compelled to utter the prayer that they may also put a clean mitre upon Joshua’s head, which prayer is immediately granted. The prayer appears at first. to be superfluous, inasmuch as the mitre would certainly not be forgotten when the dirty clothes were taken away and the festal dress was put on. Nevertheless, the fact that it is granted shows that it was not superfluous. The meaning of thé prayer was hardly that the high priest might be newly attired from head to foot, as Hengstenberg supposes, but is rather connected with the significance of the mitre. Tsdniph is ‘not a turban, such as might be worn by anybody (Koehler), but the headdress of princely persons and kings (Job xxix. 14; Isa. Ixii. 3), and is synonymous with mitsnepheth, the technical word for the tiara prescribed for the high priest in the law (Ex. and Lev.), as we may see from Ezek. xxi. 31, where the regal diadem, which is called tsdniph in Isa. Ixii. 8, is spoken of under the name of mitsnepheth. The turban of the high priest was that portion of his dress in which he carried his office, so to speak, upon his forehead; and the clean turban was the substratum for the golden plate that was fastened upon it, and by which he was described as holy to the Lord, and called to bear the guilt of the children of Israel (Ex. xxviii. 38). The prayer for a clean mitre to be put upon his head, may therefore be accounted for from the wish that Joshua oni not only be splendidly decorated, but should be shown to be holy, and qualified to ech the expiation of the people. Purity, as the earthly type of holiness, forms the foundation for glory. In the actual performance of the matter, therefore, the putting on of the clean mitre is mentioned first, and then the clothing with festal robes. This took place in the presence of the angel of the Lord. That is the meaning of the circumstantial clause, “and the angel of the Lord stood” (rttwm tanquam herus imperans, probans et preesentia sua ornans, C. B. Mich.), and not merely that the angel of the Lord, who had hitherto been sitting in the judge’s seat, rose up from his seat for the purpose of speaking while the robing was going on (Hofmann, Koehler). 7®¥ does not mean to stand up, but simply to remain standing.

Vers. 6-10. In these verses there follows a prophetic address, in which the angel of the Lord describes the symbolical action of the re-clothing of the high priest, according to its typical significance in nelation to ihn pki, aa the future of mie kingdom of God. Ver. 6. “ And the angel of the Lord besiege to Joshua, and said, Ver. 7. Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, If thou shalt walk in my ways, and keep my charge, thou shalt both judge my house and keep my courts, and I will give thee ways among these standing here. Ver. 8. [Hear then, thow high priest Joshua, thou, and thy comrades who sit before thee: yea, men of wonder are they: for, behold, I bring my servant Zemach (Sprout). Ver. 9. or behold the stone which LT have laid before Joshua; upon one stone are seven eyes: behold I engrave its carving, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts, and I clear away the iniquity of this land in one day. Ver. 10. In that day, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts, ye will invite one another under the vine and under the fig-tree.” In ver. 7 not only is the high priest confirmed in his office, but the perpetuation and glorification of his official labours are promised. As Joshua appears in this vision as the supporter of the office, this promise does not apply to Joshua himself so much as to the office, the continuance of which is indeed bound up with the fidelity of those who sustain it. The promise in ver. 7 therefore begins by giving prominence to this condition: If thou wilt walk in my ways, etc. Walking in the ways of the Lord refers to the personal attitude of the priests towards the Lord, or to fidelity in their personal relation to God; and keeping the charge of Jehovah, to the faithful performance of their official duties (shémar mishmarti, noticing what has to be observed in relation to Jehovah; see at Lev. vill. 35). The apodosis begins with TAS O,.and not with ‘nn, This is required not only by ‘the auiplane ’attah, but also by the clauses commencing with v’gam; whereas the circumstance, that the tense ae changes with v’ndthatti, and that ta@din and tishmor are still imperfects, has its simple explanation in the fact, that on account of the gam, the verbs could not be linked together with Vav, and placed at the head of the clauses. Taken by themselves, the clauses v’gam tadin and v’gam tishmor might express a duty of the high priest quite as well asa privilege. If they were taken as apodoses, they would express an obligation; but in that case they would appear somewhat superfluous, because the obligations of the high priest are fully explained in the two previous clauses. If, on the other hand, the apodosis commences with them, they contain, in the form of a promise, a privilege which is set before the high priest as awaiting him in the future—namely, the privilege of still further attending to the service of the house of God, which had been called in question by Satan’s accusation. ‘M278 4, to judge the house of God, i.e. to administer right in relation to the house of God, namely, 1 in relation to the auads devolving upon the high priest in the sanctuary as such; hence the right adniinminatae of the service in the holy place and the holy of holies. This limitation is obvious from the parallel clause, to keep the courts, in which the care of the ordinary performance of worship in the courts, and the keeping of everything of an idolatrous nature from the house of God, are transferred to him. And to this a new and important promise is added in the last clause (‘131 *73). The meaning of this depends upon the explanation given to the word psd, Many commentators regard this as a Chaldaic form of the hiphil participle (after Dan. iii. 25, iv. 34), and take it either in the intransitive sense of “ those walking” (LXX., Pesh., Vulg., Luth., Hofm., etc.), or in the transitive sense of those conducting the leaders (Ges., Hengst., etc.). But apart from the fact that the hiphil of Fen in Hebrew is always written either pin or pon, and has never anything but a transitive meaning, this view is precluded by the }'3, for which we should expect [2 or }2, since the meaning could only be, “I give thee walkers or leaders between those standing here,” ¢.e. such as walk to and fro between those standing here (Hofmann), or, “JT will give thee leaders among (from) these angels who are standing here” (Hengstenberg). In the former case, the high priest would receive a promise that he should always have angels to go to and fro between himself and Jehovah, to carry up his prayers, and bring down revelations from God, and supplies of help (John i. 52; Hofmann). This thought would be quite a suitable one; but it is not contained in the words, “since the angels, even if they walk between the standing angels and in the midst of them, do not go to and fro between Jehovah and Joshua” (Kliefoth). In the latter case the high priest would merely receive a general assurance of the assistance of superior angels; and for such a thought as this the expression would be an extremely marvellous one, and the [2 would be used incorrectly. We must therefore follow Calvin and others, who take prabm as a substantive, from a singular 327, formed after AYN, TDN, 101, or else as a plural of eM, to be pointed prDena (Ros., Hitzig, Kliefoth). The words then add to the promise, which ensured to the people the continuance of the priesthood and of the blessings which it conveyed, this new feature, that the high priest would also receive a free access to God, which had not yet been conferred upon him by his office. This points to a time when the restrictions of the Old Testament will be swept away. The further address, in vers. 8 and 9, announces how God will bring about this new time or future. To show the importance of what follows, Joshua is called upon to “hear.” It is doubtful where what VOL. II. R he is to hear commences; for the idea, that after the summons to attend, the successive, chain-like explanation of the reason for this summons passes imperceptibly into that to which he is to give heed, is hardly admissible, and has only been adopted because it was found difficult to discover the true commencement of the address. The earlier theologians (Chald., Jerome, Theod. Mops., Theodoret, and Calvin), and even Hitzig and Ewald, take 8132 1227 °2 (for behold I will bring forth). But these seh are evidently explanatory of 7 nati WIN (men of wonder, etc.). Nor can it commence with amashti (and I remove), as Hofmann supposes (Weiss. u. Hrfiill. i. 339), or with ver. 9, “ for behold the stone,” as he also maintains in his Schriftbeweis (ii. 1, pp. 292-3, 508-9). The first of -these is precluded not only by the fact that the address would be cut far too short, but also by the cop. Vav before mashti; and the second by the fact that the words, “ for behold the stone,” etc., in ver. 9, are unmistakeably a continuation and further explanation of the words, “ for behold I will bring forth my servant Zemach,” in ver. 8. The address begins with “ thou and thy fellows,” since the priests could not be called upon to hear, inasmuch as they were not present. Joshua’s comrades who sit before him are the priests who sat in the priestly meetings in front of the high priest, the president of the assembly, so that yoshébh liphné corresponds to our “ assessors.” The following kt introduces the substance of the address; and when the subject is placed at the head absolutely, it is used in the sense of an asseveration, “ yea, truly” (cf. Gen. xviii. 20; Ps. exviii. 10-12, cxxviil. 2; and Ewald, § 330, 6). ’Anshé mophéth, men of miracle, or of a miraculous sign, as mdphéth, 7d tépas, portentum, miraculum, embraces the idea of nix, onetov (cf. Isa. viii. 18), are men who attract attention to themselves by something striking, and are types of what is to come, so that mopheth really corresponds to tuos T&v wedAdOvTwV (see at Ex. iv. 21, Isa. viii. 18). 137 stands for OM, the words passing over from the second person to the third on the resuming of the subject, which is placed at the head absolutely, just as in Zeph. ii. 12, and refers not only to T0, but to Joshua and his comrades. They are men of typical sign, but not simply on account of the office which they hold, viz. because their mediatorial priesthood points to the mediatorial office and atoning work of the Messiah, as most of the commentators assume. For “this applies, in the first place, not only to Joshua and his priests, but to the Old Testament priesthood generally; and secondly, there was nothing miraculous in this mediatorial work of the priesthood, which must have been the case if they were to be mopheth. The miracle, which is to be seen in Joshua and his priests, consists rather in the fact that the priesthood of Israel is laden with guilt, but by the grace of God it has been absolved, and accepted by God again, as the deliverance from exile shows,” and Joshua and his priests are therefore brands plucked by the omnipotence of grace from the fire of merited judgment (Kliefoth). This miracle of grace which has been wrought for them, points beyond itself to an incomparably greater and better act of the sin-absolving grace of God, which is still in the future. This is the way in which the next clause, “for I bring my servant Zemach,” which is explanatory of ’anshé mapheth (men of miracle), attaches itself. The word Tsemach is used by Zechariah simply as a proper name of the Messiah; and the combination ‘abhdi Tsemach (my servant Tsemach) is precisely the same as ‘abhdi David (my servant David) in Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24, xxxvii. 24, or “my servant Job” in Jobi. 8, ii. 3, ete. The objection raised by Koehler—namely, that if tsemach, as a more precise definition of ‘abhdi (my servant), or as an announcement what servant of Jehovah is intended, were used as a proper name, it would either be construed with the article (N84), or else we should have in¥ ngy "ay as in ch. vi. 12—is quite groundless. For “if poets or prophets f form new proper names at pleasure, such names, even when deprived of the article, easily assume the distinguishing sign of most proper names, like bégodaéh and m’shibhah in Jer. iii.” (Ewald, § 277, c.) It is different with io’ in ch. vi. 12; there sh’mé is needed for the sake of the sense, as in 1 Sam.i.1 and Job i. 1, and does not serve to designate the preceding word as a proper name, but simply to define the person spoken of more precisely by mentioning his name. Zechariah has formed the name Tsemach, Sprout, or Shoot, primarily from Jer. xxl. 5 and xxxiii. 15, where the promise is given that a righteous Sprout (tsemach tsaddiq), or a Sprout of righteousness, “shall be raised up to Jacob. And Jeremiah took the figurative description of the great descendant of David, who will create righteousness upon the earth, as