_THE VISIONS OF ZECHARIAH_
ZECHARIAH i. 7—vi.
The Visions of Zechariah do not lack those large and simple views
of religion which we have just seen to be the charm of his other
prophecies. Indeed it is among the Visions that we find the most
spiritual of all his utterances:[777] _Not by might, and not by force,
but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts_. The Visions express the need
of the Divine forgiveness, emphasise the reality of sin, as a principle
deeper than the civic crimes in which it is manifested, and declare the
power of God to banish it from His people. The Visions also contain
the remarkable prospect of Jerusalem as the City of Peace, her only
wall the Lord Himself.[778] The overthrow of the heathen empires is
predicted by the Lord’s own hand, and from all the Visions there are
absent both the turmoil and the glory of war.
We must also be struck by the absence of another element, which is a
cause of complexity in the writings of many prophets—the polemic
against idolatry. Zechariah nowhere mentions the idols. We have already
seen what proof this silence bears for the fact that the community to
which he spoke was not that half-heathen remnant of Israel which had
remained in the land, but was composed of worshippers of Jehovah who at
His word had returned from Babylon.[779] Here we have only to do with
the bearing of the fact upon Zechariah’s style. That bewildering
confusion of the heathen pantheon and its rites, which forms so much of
our difficulty in interpreting some of the prophecies of Ezekiel and
the closing chapters of the Book of Isaiah, is not to blame for any of
the complexity of Zechariah’s Visions.
Nor can we attribute the latter to the fact that the Visions are
dreams, and therefore bound to be more involved and obscure than the
words of Jehovah which came to Zechariah in the open daylight of his
people’s public life. In chaps. i. 7—vi. we have not the narrative of
actual dreams, but a series of conscious and artistic allegories—the
deliberate translation into a carefully constructed symbolism of the
Divine truths with which the prophet was entrusted by his God. Yet this
only increases our problem—why a man with such gifts of direct speech,
and such clear views of his people’s character and history, should
choose to express the latter by an imagery so artificial and involved?
In his orations Zechariah is very like the prophets whom we have known
before the Exile, thoroughly ethical and intent upon the public
conscience of his time. He appreciates what they were, feels himself
standing in their succession, and is endowed both with their spirit and
their style. But none of them constructs the elaborate allegories which
he does, or insists upon the religious symbolism which he enforces as
indispensable to the standing of Israel with God. Not only are their
visions few and simple, but they look down upon the visionary temper as
a rude stage of prophecy and inferior to their own, in which the Word
of God is received by personal communion with Himself, and conveyed to
His people by straight and plain words. Some of the earlier prophets
even condemn all priesthood and ritual; none of them regards these as
indispensable to Israel’s right relations with Jehovah; and none
employs those superhuman mediators of the Divine truth, by whom
Zechariah is instructed in his Visions.
1. THE INFLUENCES WHICH MOULDED THE VISIONS.
The explanation of this change that has come over prophecy must be
sought for in certain habits which the people formed in exile. During
the Exile several causes conspired to develop among Hebrew writers
the tempers both of symbolism and apocalypse. The chief of these was
their separation from the realities of civic life, with the opportunity
their political leisure afforded them of brooding and dreaming.
Facts and Divine promises, which had previously to be dealt with
by the conscience of the moment, were left to be worked out by the
imagination. The exiles were not responsible citizens or statesmen,
but dreamers. They were inspired by mighty hopes for the future, and
not fettered by the practical necessities of a definite historical
situation upon which these hopes had to be immediately realised. They
had a far-off horizon to build upon, and they occupied the whole
breadth of it. They had a long time to build, and they elaborated the
minutest details of their architecture. Consequently their construction
of the future of Israel, and their description of the processes by
which it was to be reached, became colossal, ornate and lavishly
symbolic. Nor could the exiles fail to receive stimulus for all this
from the rich imagery of Babylonian art by which they were surrounded.
Under these influences there were three strong developments in Israel.
One was that development of Apocalypse the first beginnings of which we
traced in Zephaniah—the representation of God’s providence of the world
and of His people, not by the ordinary political and military processes
of history, but by awful convulsions and catastrophes, both in nature
and in politics, in which God Himself appeared, either alone in sudden
glory or by the mediation of heavenly armies. The second—and it was but
a part of the first—was the development of a belief in Angels:
superhuman beings who had not only a part to play in the apocalyptic
wars and revolutions; but, in the growing sense, which characterises
the period, of God’s distance and awfulness, were believed to act as
His agents in the communication of His Word to men. And, thirdly, there
was the development of the Ritual. To some minds this may appear the
strangest of all the effects of the Exile. The fall of the Temple, its
hierarchy and sacrifices, might be supposed to enforce more spiritual
conceptions of God and of His communion with His people. And no doubt
it did. The impossibility of the legal sacrifices in exile opened the
mind of Israel to the belief that God was satisfied with the sacrifices
of the broken heart, and drew near, without mediation, to all who were
humble and pure of heart. But no one in Israel therefore understood
that these sacrifices were for ever abolished. Their interruption was
regarded as merely temporary even by the most spiritual of Jewish
writers. The Fifty-First Psalm, for instance, which declares that _the
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O
Lord, Thou wilt not despise_, immediately follows this declaration by
the assurance that _when God builds again the walls of Jerusalem_, He
will once more take delight in _the legal sacrifices: burnt offering
and whole burnt offering, the oblation of bullocks upon Thine
altar_.[780] For men of such views the ruin of the Temple was not its
abolition with the whole dispensation which it represented, but rather
the occasion for its reconstruction upon wider lines and a more
detailed system, for the planning of which the nation’s exile afforded
the leisure and the carefulness of art described above. The ancient
liturgy, too, was insufficient for the stronger convictions of guilt
and need of purgation, which sore punishment had impressed upon the
people. Then, scattered among the heathen as they were, they learned to
require stricter laws and more drastic ceremonies to restore and
preserve their holiness. Their ritual, therefore, had to be expanded
and detailed to a degree far beyond what we find in Israel’s earlier
systems of worship. With the fall of the monarchy and the absence of
civic life the importance of the priesthood was proportionately
enhanced; and the growing sense of God’s aloofness from the world,
already alluded to, made the more indispensable human, as well as
superhuman, mediators between Himself and His people. Consider these
things, and it will be clear why prophecy, which with Amos had begun a
war against all ritual, and with Jeremiah had achieved a religion
absolutely independent of priesthood and Temple, should reappear after
the Exile, insistent upon the building of the Temple, enforcing the
need both of priesthood and sacrifice, and while it proclaimed the
Messianic King and the High Priest as the great feeders of the national
life and worship, finding no place beside them for the Prophet
himself.[781]
The force of these developments of Apocalypse, Angelology and the
Ritual appears both in Ezekiel and in the exilic codification of the
ritual which forms so large a part of the Pentateuch. Ezekiel carries
Apocalypse far beyond the beginnings started by Zephaniah. He
introduces, though not under the name of angels, superhuman mediators
between himself and God. The Priestly Code does not mention angels, and
has no Apocalypse; but like Ezekiel it develops, to an extraordinary
degree, the ritual of Israel. Both its author and Ezekiel base on the
older forms, but build as men who are not confined by the lines of an
actually existing system. The changes they make, the innovations they
introduce, are too numerous to mention here. To illustrate their
influence upon Zechariah, it is enough to emphasise the large place
they give in the ritual to the processes of propitiation and cleansing
from sin, and the increased authority with which they invest the
priesthood. In Ezekiel Israel has still a Prince, though he is not
called King. He arranges the cultus,[782] and sacrifices are offered
for him and the people,[783] but the priests teach and judge the
people.[784] In the Priestly Code[785] the priesthood is more
rigorously fenced than by Ezekiel from the laity, and more regularly
graded. At its head appears a High Priest (as he does not in Ezekiel),
and by his side the civil rulers are portrayed in lesser dignity and
power. Sacrifices are made, no longer as with Ezekiel for Prince and
People, but for Aaron and the Congregation; and throughout the
narrative of ancient history, into the form of which this Code projects
its legislation, the High Priest stands above the captain of the host,
even when the latter is Joshua himself. God’s enemies are defeated not
so much by the wisdom and valour of the secular powers, as by the
miracles of Jehovah Himself, mediated through the priesthood. Ezekiel
and the Priestly Code both elaborate the sacrifices of atonement and
sanctification beyond all the earlier uses.
2. GENERAL FEATURES OF THE VISIONS.
It was beneath these influences that Zechariah grew up, and to them we
may trace, not only numerous details of his Visions, but the whole of
their involved symbolism. He was himself a priest and the son of a
priest, born and bred in the very order to which we owe the
codification of the ritual, and the development of those ideas of guilt
and uncleanness that led to its expansion and specialisation. The
Visions in which he deals with these are the Third to the Seventh. As
with Haggai there is a High Priest, in advance upon Ezekiel and in
agreement with the Priestly Code. As in the latter the High Priest
represents the people, and carries their guilt before God.[786] He and
his colleagues are pledges and portents of the coming Messiah. But the
civil power is not yet diminished before the sacerdotal, as in the
Priestly Code. We shall find indeed that a remarkable attempt has been
made to alter the original text of a prophecy appended to the
Visions,[787] in order to divert to the High Priest the coronation and
Messianic rank there described. But any one who reads the passage
carefully can see for himself that the crown (a single crown, as the
verb which it governs proves[788]) which Zechariah was ordered to make
was designed for Another than the priest, that the priest was but to
stand at this Other’s right hand, and that there was to be concord
between the two of them. This Other can only have been the Messianic
King, Zerubbabel, as was already proclaimed by Haggai.[789] The altered
text is due to a later period, when the High Priest became the civil as
well as the religious head of the community. To Zechariah he was still
only the right hand of the monarch in government; but, as we have seen,
the religious life of the people was already gathered up and
concentrated in him. It is the priests, too, who by their perpetual
service and holy life bring on the Messianic era.[790] Men come to the
Temple to propitiate Jehovah, for which Zechariah uses the
anthropomorphic expression _to make smooth_ or _placid His face_.[791]
No more than this is made of the sacrificial system, which was not in
full course when the Visions were announced. But the symbolism of the
Fourth Vision is drawn from the furniture of the Temple. It is
interesting that the great candelabrum seen by the prophet should be
like, not the ten lights of the old Temple of Solomon, but the
seven-branched candlestick described in the Priestly Code. In the Sixth
and Seventh Visions, the strong convictions of guilt and uncleanness,
which were engendered in Israel by the Exile, are not removed by the
sacrificial means enforced in the Priestly Code, but by symbolic
processes in the style of the visions of Ezekiel.
The Visions in which Zechariah treats of the outer history of the world
are the first two and the last, and in these we notice the influence of
the Apocalypse developed during the Exile. In Zechariah’s day Israel
had no stage for their history save the site of Jerusalem and its
immediate neighbourhood. So long as he keeps to this Zechariah is as
practical and matter-of-fact as any of the prophets, but when he has to
go beyond it to describe the general overthrow of the heathen, he is
unable to project that, as Amos or Isaiah did, in terms of historic
battle, and has to call in the apocalyptic. A people such as that poor
colony of exiles, with no issue upon history, is forced to take refuge
in Apocalypse, and carries with it even those of its prophets whose
conscience, like Zechariah’s, is most strongly bent upon the practical
present. Consequently these three historical Visions are the most vague
of the eight. They reveal the whole earth under the care of Jehovah and
the patrol of His angels. They definitely predict the overthrow of the
heathen empires. But, unlike Amos or Isaiah, the prophet does not see
by what political movements this is to be effected. The world _is_
still _quiet and at peace_.[792] The time is hidden in the Divine
counsels; the means, though clearly symbolised in _four smiths_ who
come forward to smite the horns of the heathen,[793] and in a chariot
which carries God’s wrath to the North,[794] are obscure. The prophet
appears to have intended, not any definite individuals or political
movements of the immediate future, but God’s own supernatural forces.
In other words, the Smiths and Chariots are not an allegory of history,
but powers apocalyptic. The forms of the symbols were derived by
Zechariah from different sources. Perhaps that of the _smiths_ who
destroy the horns in the Second Vision was suggested by the _smiths of
destruction_ threatened upon Ammon by Ezekiel.[795] In the horsemen of
the First Vision and the chariots of the Eighth, Ewald sees a
reflection of the couriers and posts which Darius organised throughout
the empire; they are more probably, as we shall see, a reflection of
the military bands and patrols of the Persians. But from whatever
quarter Zechariah derived the exact aspect of these Divine messengers,
he found many precedents for them in the native beliefs of Israel. They
are, in short, angels, incarnate as Hebrew angels always were, and in
fashion like men. But this brings up the whole subject of the angels,
whom he also sees employed as the mediators of God’s Word to him; and
that is large enough to be left to a chapter by itself.[796]
We have now before us all the influences which led Zechariah to the
main form and chief features of his Visions.
3. EXPOSITION OF THE SEVERAL VISIONS.
For all the Visions there is one date, _in the twenty-fourth day of the
eleventh month, the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius_, that
is January or February 519; and one Divine impulse, _the Word of
Jehovah came to the prophet Zekharyah, son of Berekhyahu, son of Iddo,
as follows_.
THE FIRST VISION: THE ANGEL-HORSEMEN (i. 7-17).
The seventy years which Jeremiah had fixed for the duration of the
Babylonian servitude were drawing to a close. Four months had elapsed
since Haggai promised that in a little while God would shake all
nations.[797] But the world was not shaken: there was no political
movement which promised to restore her glory to Jerusalem. A very
natural disappointment must have been the result among the Jews.
In this situation of affairs the Word came to Zechariah, and both
situation and Word he expressed by his First Vision.
It was one of the myrtle-covered glens in the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem:[798] Zechariah calls it _the_ Glen or Valley-Bottom, either
because it was known under that name to the Jews, or because he was
himself wont to frequent it for prayer. He discovers in it what seems
to be a rendezvous of Persian cavalry-scouts,[799] the leader of the
troop in front, and the rest behind him, having just come in with their
reports. Soon, however, he is made aware that they are angels, and with
that quick, dissolving change both of function and figure, which marks
all angelic apparitions,[800] they explain to him their mission. Now it
is an angel-interpreter at his side who speaks, and now the angel on
the front horse. They are scouts of God come in from their survey of
the whole earth. The world lies quiet. Whereupon _the angel of Jehovah_
asks Him how long His anger must rest on Jerusalem and nothing be done
to restore her; and the prophet hears a kind and comforting answer. The
nations have done more evil to Israel than God empowered them to do.
Their aggravations have changed His wrath against her to pity, and in
pity He is come back to her. She shall soon be rebuilt and overflow
with prosperity. The only perplexity in all this is the angels’ report
that the whole earth lies quiet. How this could have been in 519 is
difficult to understand. The great revolts against Darius were then in
active progress, the result was uncertain and he took at least three
more years to put them all down. They were confined, it is true, to the
east and north-east of the empire, but some of them threatened Babylon,
and we can hardly ascribe the report of the angels to such a limitation
of the Jews’ horizon at this time as shut out Mesopotamia or the lands
to the north of her. There remain two alternatives. Either these
far-away revolts made only more impressive the stagnancy of the tribes
of the rest of the empire, and the helplessness of the Jews and their
Syrian neighbours was convincingly shown by their inability to take
advantage even of the desperate straits to which Darius was reduced; or
else in that month of vision Darius had quelled one of the rebellions
against him, and for the moment there was quiet in the world.
_By night I had a vision, and behold! a man riding a brown horse,[801]
and he was standing between the myrtles that are in the Glen;[802] and
behind him horses brown, bay[803] and white. And I said, What are
these, my lord? And the angel who talked with me said, I will show you
what these are. And the man who was standing among the myrtles answered
and said, These are they whom Jehovah hath sent to go to and fro
through the earth. And they answered the angel of Jehovah who stood
among the myrtles,[804] and said, We have gone up and down through the
earth, and lo! the whole earth is still and at peace.[805] And the
angel of Jehovah answered and said, Jehovah of Hosts, how long hast
Thou no pity for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which[806]
Thou hast been wroth these seventy years? And Jehovah answered the
angel who talked with me,[807] kind words and comforting. And the angel
who talked with me said to me, Proclaim now as follows: Thus saith
Jehovah of Hosts, I am zealous for Jerusalem and for Zion, with a great
zeal; but with great wrath am I wroth against the arrogant Gentiles.
For I was but a little angry_ with Israel, _but they aggravated the
evil.[808] Therefore thus saith Jehovah, I am returned to Jerusalem
with mercies. My house shall be built in her—oracle of Jehovah of
Hosts—and the measuring line shall be drawn over Jerusalem. Proclaim
yet again, saying: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, My cities shall yet
overflow with prosperity, and Jehovah shall again comfort Zion, and
again make choice of Jerusalem._.
Two things are to be noted in this oracle. No political movement is
indicated as the means of Jerusalem’s restoration: this is to be the
effect of God’s free grace in returning to dwell in Jerusalem, which is
the reward of the building of the Temple. And there is an interesting
explanation of the motive for God’s new grace: in executing His
sentence upon Israel, the heathen had far exceeded their commission,
and now themselves deserved punishment. That is to say, the restoration
of Jerusalem and the resumption of the worship are not enough for the
future of Israel. The heathen must be chastised. But Zechariah does not
predict any overthrow of the world’s power, either by earthly or by
heavenly forces. This is entirely in harmony with the insistence upon
peace which distinguishes him from other prophets.
THE SECOND VISION: THE FOUR HORNS AND THE
FOUR SMITHS (ii. 1-4 Heb., i. 18-21 Eng.).
The Second Vision supplies what is lacking in the First, the
destruction of the tyrants who have oppressed Israel. The prophet sees
four horns, which, he is told by his interpreting angel, are the powers
that have scattered Judah. The many attempts to identify these with
four heathen nations are ingenious but futile. “_Four_ horns were seen
as representing the totality of Israel’s enemies—her enemies from all
quarters.”[809] And to destroy these horns four smiths appear. Because
in the Vision the horns are of iron, in Israel an old symbol of power,
the first verb used of the action can hardly be, as in the Hebrew text,
to terrify. The Greek reads _sharpen_, and probably some verb meaning
_to cut_ or _chisel_ stood in the original.[810]
_And I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! four horns. And I said to
the angel who spoke with me, What are these? And he said to me, These
are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem.[811]
And Jehovah showed me four smiths. And I said, What are these coming to
do? And He spake, saying, These are the horns which scattered Judah, so
that none lifted up his head;[812] and these are come to ...[813] them,
to strike down the horns of the nations, that lifted the horn against
the land of Judah to scatter it._
THE THIRD VISION: THE CITY OF PEACE (ii. 5-9 Heb., ii. 1-5 Eng.).
Like the Second Vision, the Third follows from the First, another, but
a still more significant, supplement. The First had promised the
rebuilding of Jerusalem, and now the prophet beholds _a young man_—by
this term he probably means _a servant_ or _apprentice_—who is
attempting to define the limits of the new city. In the light of what
this attempt encounters, there can be little doubt that the prophet
means to symbolise by it the intention of building the walls upon the
old lines, so as to make Jerusalem again the mountain fortress she had
previously been. Some have considered that the young man goes forth
only to see, or to show, the extent of the city in the approaching
future. But if this had been his motive, there would have been no
reason in interrupting him with other orders. The point is, that he has
narrow ideas of what the city should be, and is prepared to define it
upon its old lines of a fortress. For the interpreting angel who _comes
forward_[814] is told by another angel to run and tell the young man
that in the future Jerusalem shall be a large unwalled town, and this,
not only because of the multitude of its population, for even then it
might still have been fortified like Niniveh, but because Jehovah
Himself shall be its wall. The young man is prevented, not merely from
making it small, but from making it a citadel. And this is in
conformity with all the singular absence of war from Zechariah’s
Visions, both of the future deliverance of Jehovah’s people and of
their future duties before Him. It is indeed remarkable how Zechariah
not only develops none of the warlike elements of earlier Messianic
prophecies, but tells us here of how God Himself actually prevented
their repetition, and insists again and again only on those elements of
ancient prediction which had filled the future of Israel with peace.
_And I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! a man with a measuring rope
in his hand. So I said, Whither art thou going? And he said to me, To
measure Jerusalem: to see how much its breadth and how much its length
should be. And lo! the angel who talked with me came forward,[815] and
another angel came forward to meet him. And he said to him, Run and
speak to yonder young man thus:_ Like _a number of open villages shall
Jerusalem remain, because of the multitude of men and cattle in the
midst of her. And I Myself will be to her—oracle of Jehovah—a wall of
fire round about, and for glory will I be in her midst._
In this Vision Zechariah gives us, with his prophecy, a lesson in the
interpretation of prophecy. His contemporaries believed God’s promise
to rebuild Jerusalem, but they defined its limits by the conditions of
an older and a narrower day. They brought forth their measuring rods,
to measure the future by the sacred attainments of the past. Such
literal fulfilment of His Word God prevented by that ministry of angels
which Zechariah beheld. He would not be bound by those forms which His
Word had assumed in suitableness to the needs of ruder generations. The
ideal of many of the returned exiles must have been that frowning
citadel, those gates of everlastingness,[816] which some of them
celebrated in Psalms, and from which the hosts of Sennacherib had been
broken and swept back as the angry sea is swept from the fixed line of
Canaan’s coast.[817] What had been enough for David and Isaiah was
enough for them, especially as so many prophets of the Lord had
foretold a Messianic Jerusalem that should be a counterpart of the
historical. But God breaks the letter of His Word to give its spirit a
more glorious fulfilment. Jerusalem shall not _be builded as a city
that is compact together_,[818] but open and spread abroad village-wise
upon her high mountains, and God Himself her only wall.
The interest of this Vision is therefore not only historical. For
ourselves it has an abiding doctrinal value. It is a lesson in the
method of applying prophecy to the future. How much it is needed
we must feel as we remember the readiness of men among ourselves
to construct the Church of God upon the lines His own hand drew
for our fathers, and to raise again the bulwarks behind which they
sufficiently sheltered His shrine. Whether these ancient and sacred
defences be dogmas or institutions, we have no right, God tells us, to
cramp behind them His powers for the future. And the great men whom
He raises to remind us of this, and to prevent by their ministry the
timid measurements of the zealous but servile spirits who would confine
everything to the exact letter of ancient Scripture—are they any less
His angels to us than those ministering spirits whom Zechariah beheld
preventing the narrow measures of the poor apprentice of his dream?
To the Third Vision there has been appended the only lyrical piece
which breaks the prose narrative of the Visions. We have already seen
that it is a piece of earlier date. Israel is addressed as still
scattered to the four winds of heaven, and still inhabiting Babylon.
While in Zechariah’s own oracles and visions Jehovah has returned to
Jerusalem, His return according to this piece is still future. There
is nothing about the Temple: God’s holy dwelling from which He has
roused Himself is Heaven. The piece was probably inserted by Zechariah
himself: its lines are broken by what seems to be a piece of prose,
in which the prophet asserts his mission, in words he twice uses
elsewhere. But this is uncertain.
_Ho, ho! Flee from the Land of the North (oracle of Jehovah);
For as the four winds have I spread you abroad[819] (oracle
of Jehovah).
Ho! to Zion escape, thou inhabitress of Babel._[820]
_For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts[821] to the nations that plunder you
(for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye), that, lo! I
am about to wave My hand over them, and they shall be plunder to their
own servants, and ye shall know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me._
_Sing out and rejoice, O daughter of Zion;
For, lo! I come, and will dwell in thy midst (oracle
of Jehovah).
And many nations shall join themselves to Jehovah in that day,
And shall be to Him[822] a people.
And I will dwell in thy midst
(And thou shalt know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me to thee).
And Jehovah will make Judah His heritage,
His portion shall be upon holy soil,
And make choice once more of Jerusalem.
Silence, all flesh, before Jehovah;[823]
For He hath roused Himself up from His holy dwelling._
THE FOURTH VISION: THE HIGH PRIEST AND THE
SATAN (Chap. iii.).
The next Visions deal with the moral condition of Israel and their
standing before God. The Fourth is a judgment scene. The Angel of
Jehovah, who is not to be distinguished from Jehovah Himself,[824]
stands for judgment, and there appear before him Joshua the High Priest
and the Satan or Adversary who has come to accuse him. Now those who
are accused by the Satan—see next chapter of this volume upon the
Angels of the Visions—are, according to Jewish belief, those who have
been overtaken by misfortune. The people who are standing at God’s bar
in the person of their High Priest still suffer from the adversity in
which Haggai found them, and the continuance of which so disheartened
them after the Temple had begun. The evil seasons and poor harvests
tormented their hearts with the thought that the Satan still slandered
them in the court of God. But Zechariah comforts them with the vision
of the Satan rebuked. Israel has indeed been sorely beset by calamity,
a brand much burned, but now of God’s grace plucked from the fire. The
Satan’s role is closed, and he disappears from the Vision.[825] Yet
something remains: Israel is rescued, but not sanctified. The nation’s
troubles are over: their uncleanness has still to be removed. Zechariah
sees that the High Priest is clothed in filthy garments, while he
stands before the Angel of Judgment. The Angel orders his servants,
those _that stand before him_,[826] to give him clean festal robes. And
the prophet, breaking out in sympathy with what he sees, for the first
time takes part in the Visions. _Then I said, Let them also put a clean
turban on his head_—the turban being the headdress, in Ezekiel of the
Prince of Israel, and in the Priestly Code of the High Priest.[827]
This is done, and the national effect of his cleansing is explained to
the High Priest. If he remains loyal to the law of Jehovah, he, the
representative of Israel, shall have right of entry to Jehovah’s
presence among the angels who stand there. But more, he and his
colleagues the priests are a portent of the coming of the Messiah—_the
Servant of Jehovah, the Branch_, as he has been called by many
prophets.[828] A stone has already been set before Joshua, with seven
eyes upon it. God will engrave it with inscriptions, and on the same
day take away the guilt of the land. Then shall be the peace upon which
Zechariah loves to dwell.
_And he showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the Angel of
Jehovah, and the Satan[829] standing at his right hand to accuse
him.[830] And Jehovah[831] said to the Satan: Jehovah rebuke thee, O
Satan! Jehovah who makes choice of Jerusalem rebuke thee! Is not this a
brand saved from the fire? But Joshua was clothed in foul garments
while he stood before the Angel. And he_—the Angel—_answered and said
to those who stood in his presence, Take the foul garments from off him
(and he said to him, See, I have made thy guilt to pass away from
thee),[832] and clothe him[833] in fresh clothing. And I said,[834] Let
them put a clean turban[835] on his head. And they put the clean turban
upon his head, and clothed him with garments, the Angel of Jehovah
standing up_ the while.[836] _And the Angel of Jehovah certified unto
Joshua, saying: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, If in My ways thou
walkest, and if My charges thou keepest in charge, then thou also shall
judge My house, and have charge of My courts, and I will give thee
entry[837] among these who stand in My presence. Hearken now, O Joshua,
high priest, thou and thy fellows who sit before thee are men of omen,
that, lo! I am about to bring My servant, Branch. For see the stone
which I have set before Joshua, one stone with seven eyes.[838] Lo, I
will etch the engraving upon it (oracle of Jehovah), and I will wash
away the guilt of that land in one day. In that day (oracle of Jehovah
of Hosts) ye will invite one another in under vine and under fig-tree._
The theological significance of the Vision is as clear as its
consequences in the subsequent theology and symbolism of Judaism. The
uncleanness of Israel which infests their representative before God is
not defined. Some[839] hold that it includes the guilt of Israel’s
idolatry. But they have to go back to Ezekiel for this, and we have
seen that Zechariah nowhere mentions or feels the presence of idols
among his people. The Vision itself supplies a better explanation.
Joshua’s filthy garments are replaced by festal and official robes. He
is warned to walk in the whole law of the Lord, ruling the Temple and
guarding Jehovah’s court. The uncleanness was the opposite of all this.
It was not ethical failure: covetousness, greed, immorality. It was, as
Haggai protested, the neglect of the Temple, and of the whole worship
of Jehovah. If this be now removed, in all fidelity to the law, the
High Priest shall have access to God, and the Messiah will come. The
High Priest himself shall not be the Messiah—this dogma is left to a
later age to frame. But before God he will be as one of the angels, and
himself and his faithful priesthood omens of the Messiah. We need not
linger on the significance of this for the place of the priesthood in
later Judaism. Note how the High Priest is already the religious
representative of his people: their uncleanness is his; when he is
pardoned and cleansed, _the uncleanness of the land_ is purged away. In
such a High Priest Christian theology has seen the prototype of Christ.
The stone is very difficult to explain. Some have thought of it as the
foundation-stone of the Temple, which had already been employed as a
symbol of the Messiah and which played so important a part in later
Jewish symbolism.[840] Others prefer the top-stone of the Temple,
mentioned in chap. iv. 7,[841] and others an altar or substitute for
the ark.[842] Again, some take it to be a jewel, either on the
breastplate of the High Priest,[843] or upon the crown afterwards
prepared for Zerubbabel.[844] To all of these there are objections. It
is difficult to connect with the foundation-stone an engraving still to
be made; neither the top-stone of the Temple, nor a jewel on the
breastplate of the priest, nor a jewel on the king’s crown, could
properly be said to be set _before_ the High Priest. We must rather
suppose that the stone is symbolic of the finished Temple.[845] The
Temple is the full expression of God’s providence and care—His _seven
eyes_. Upon it shall His will be engraved, and by its sacrifices the
uncleanness of the land shall be taken away.
THE FIFTH VISION: THE TEMPLE CANDLESTICK AND
THE TWO OLIVE-TREES (Chap. iv.).
As the Fourth Vision unfolded the dignity and significance of the High
Priest, so in the Fifth we find discovered the joint glory of himself
and Zerubbabel, the civil head of Israel. And to this is appended a
Word for Zerubbabel himself. In our present text this Word has become
inserted in the middle of the Vision, vv. 6_b_-10_a_; in the
translation which follows it has been removed to the end of the
Vision, and the reasons for this will be found in the notes.
The Vision is of the great golden lamp which stood in the Temple. In
the former Temple, light was supplied by ten several candlesticks.[846]
But the Levitical Code ordained one seven-branched lamp, and such
appears to have stood in the Temple built while Zechariah was
prophesying.[847] The lamp Zechariah sees has also seven branches, but
differs in other respects, and especially in some curious fantastic
details only possible in dream and symbol. Its seven lights were fed by
seven pipes from a bowl or reservoir of oil which stood higher than
themselves, and this was fed, either directly from two olive-trees
which stood to the right and left of it, or, if ver. 12 be genuine, by
two tubes which brought the oil from the trees. The seven lights are
the seven eyes of Jehovah—if, as we ought, we run the second half of
ver. 10 on to the first half of ver. 6. The pipes and reservoir are
given no symbolic force; but the olive-trees which feed them are called
_the two sons of oil which stand before the Lord of all the earth_.
These can only be the two anointed heads of the community—Zerubbabel,
the civil head, and Joshua, the religious head. Theirs was the equal
and co-ordinate duty of sustaining the Temple, figured by the whole
candelabrum, and ensuring the brightness of the sevenfold revelation.
The Temple, that is to say, is nothing without the monarchy and the
priesthood behind it; and these stand in the immediate presence of God.
Therefore this Vision, which to the superficial eye might seem to be a
glorification of the mere machinery of the Temple and its ritual, is
rather to prove that the latter derive all their power from the
national institutions which are behind them, from the two
representatives of the people who in their turn stand before God
Himself. The Temple so near completion will not of itself reveal God:
let not the Jews put their trust in it, but in the life behind it. And
for ourselves the lesson of the Vision is that which Christian theology
has been so slow to learn, that God’s revelation under the old covenant
shone not directly through the material framework, but was mediated by
the national life, whose chief men stood and grew fruitful in His
presence.
One thing is very remarkable. The two sources of revelation are the
King and the Priest. The Prophet is not mentioned beside them. Nothing
could prove more emphatically the sense in Israel that prophecy was
exhausted.
The appointment of so responsible a position for Zerubbabel demanded
for him a special promise of grace. And therefore, as Joshua had his
promise in the Fourth Vision, we find Zerubbabel’s appended to the
Fifth. It is one of the great sayings of the Old Testament: there is
none more spiritual and more comforting. Zerubbabel shall complete the
Temple, and those who scoffed at its small beginnings in the day of
small things shall frankly rejoice when they see him set the top-stone
by plummet in its place. As the moral obstacles to the future were
removed in the Fourth Vision by the vindication of Joshua and by his
cleansing, so the political obstacles, all the hindrances described by
the Book of Ezra in the building of the Temple, shall disappear.
_Before Zerubbabel the great mountain shall become a plain._ And this,
because he shall not work by his own strength, but the Spirit of
Jehovah of Hosts shall do everything. Again we find that absence of
expectation in human means, and that full trust in God’s own direct
action, which characterise all the prophesying of Zechariah.
_Then the angel who talked with me returned and roused me like a man
roused out of his sleep. And he said to me, What seest thou? And I
said, I see, and lo! a candlestick all of gold, and its bowl upon the
top of it, and its seven lamps on it, and seven[848] pipes to the lamps
which are upon it. And two olive-trees stood over against it, one on
the right of the bowl,[849] and one on the left. And I began[850] and
said to the angel who talked with me,[851] What be these, my lord? And
the angel who talked with me answered and said, Knowest thou not what
these be? And I said, No, my lord! And he answered and said to me,[852]
These seven are the eyes of Jehovah, which sweep through the whole
earth. And I asked and said to him, What are these two olive-trees on
the right of the candlestick and on its left? And again I asked and
said to him, What are the two olive-branches which are beside the two
golden tubes that pour forth the oil[853] from them?[854] And he said
to me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord! And he
said, These are the two sons of oil which stand before the Lord of all
the earth._
_This is Jehovah’s Word to Zerubbabel, and it says:[855] Not by might,
and not by force, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts. What art
thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel be thou level! And he[856]
shall bring forth the top-stone with shoutings, Grace, grace to
it![857] And the Word of Jehovah came to me, saying, The hands of
Zerubbabel have founded this house, and his hands shall complete it,
and thou shall know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me to you. For
whoever hath despised the day of small things, they shall rejoice when
they see the plummet[858] in the hand of Zerubbabel._
THE SIXTH VISION: THE WINGED VOLUME (Chap. v. 1-4).
The religious and political obstacles being now removed from the future
of Israel, Zechariah in the next two Visions beholds the land purged of
its crime and wickedness. These Visions are very simple, if somewhat
after the ponderous fashion of Ezekiel.
The first of them is the Vision of the removal of the curse brought
upon the land by its civic criminals, especially thieves and
perjurers—the two forms which crime takes in a poor and rude community
like the colony of the returned exiles. The prophet tells us he beheld
a roll flying. He uses the ordinary Hebrew name for the rolls of skin
or parchment upon which writing was set down. But the proportions of
its colossal size—twenty cubits by ten—prove that it was not a
cylindrical but an oblong shape which he saw. It consisted, therefore,
of sheets laid on each other like our books, and as our word “volume,”
which originally meant, like his own term, a roll, means now an oblong
article, we may use this in our translation. The volume is the record
of the crime of the land, and Zechariah sees it flying from the land.
But it is also the curse upon this crime, and so again he beholds it
entering every thief’s and perjurer’s house and destroying it. Smend
gives a possible explanation of this: “It appears that in ancient times
curses were written on pieces of paper and sent down the wind into the
houses”[859] of those against whom they were directed. But the figure
seems rather to be of birds of prey.
_And I turned and lifted my eyes and looked, and lo! a volume[860]
flying. And he said unto me, What dost thou see? And I said, I see a
volume flying, its length twenty cubits and its breadth ten. And he
said unto me, This is the curse that is going out upon the face of all
the land. For every thief is hereby purged away from hence,[861] and
every perjurer is hereby purged away from hence. I have sent it
forth—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts—and it shall enter the thief’s house,
and the house of him that hath sworn falsely by My name, and it shall
roost[862] in the midst of his house and consume it, with its beams and
its stones._[863]
THE SEVENTH VISION: THE WOMAN IN THE BARREL
(Chap. v. 5-11).
It is not enough that the curse fly from the land after destroying
every criminal. The living principle of sin, the power of temptation,
must be covered up and removed. This is the subject of the Seventh
Vision.
The prophet sees an ephah, the largest vessel in use among the Jews,
of more than seven gallons capacity, and round[864] like a barrel.
Presently the leaden top is lifted, and the prophet sees a woman
inside. This is Wickedness, feminine because she figures the power
of temptation. She is thrust back into the barrel, the leaden lid is
pushed down, and the whole carried off by two other female figures,
winged like the strong, far-flying stork, into the land of Shin‘ar,
“which at that time had the general significance of the counterpart of
the Holy Land,”[865] and was the proper home of all that was evil.
_And the angel of Jehovah who spake with me came forward[866] and said
to me, Lift now thine eyes and see what this is that comes forth. And I
said, What is it? And he said, This is a bushel coming forth. And he
said, This is their transgression[867] in all the land.[868] And
behold! the round leaden _top_ was lifted up, and lo![869] a woman
sitting inside the bushel. And he said, This is the Wickedness, and he
thrust her back into the bushel, and thrust the leaden disc upon the
mouth of it. And I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! two women came
forth with the wind in their wings, for they had wings like storks’
wings, and they bore the bushel betwixt earth and heaven. And I said to
the angel that talked with me, Whither do they carry the bushel? And he
said to me, To build it a house in the land of Shin‘ar, that it may be
fixed and brought to rest there on a place of its own._[870]
We must not allow this curious imagery to hide from us its very
spiritual teaching. If Zechariah is weighted in these Visions by the
ponderous fashion of Ezekiel, he has also that prophet’s truly moral
spirit. He is not contented with the ritual atonement for sin, nor with
the legal punishment of crime. The living power of sin must be banished
from Israel; and this cannot be done by any efforts of men themselves,
but by God’s action only, which is thorough and effectual. If the
figures by which this is illustrated appear to us grotesque and heavy,
let us remember how they would suit the imagination of the prophet’s
own day. Let us lay to heart their eternally valid doctrine, that sin
is not a formal curse, nor only expressed in certain social crimes, nor
exhausted by the punishment of these, but, as a power of attraction and
temptation to all men, it must be banished from the heart, and can be
banished only by God.
THE EIGHTH VISION: THE CHARIOTS OF THE FOUR WINDS
(Chap. vi. 1-8).
As the series of Visions opened with one of the universal providence
of God, so they close with another of the same. The First Vision had
postponed God’s overthrow of the nations till His own time, and this
the Last Vision now describes as begun, the religious and moral needs
of Israel having meanwhile been met by the Visions which come between,
and every obstacle to God’s action for the deliverance of His people
being removed.
The prophet sees four chariots, with horses of different colour in
each, coming out from between two mountains of brass. The horsemen of
the First Vision were bringing in reports: these chariots are coming
forth with their commissions from the presence of the Lord of all the
earth. They are the four winds of heaven, servants of Him who maketh
the winds His angels. They are destined for different quarters of the
world. The prophet has not been admitted to the Presence, and does not
know what exactly they have been commissioned to do; that is to say,
Zechariah is ignorant of the actual political processes by which the
nations are to be overthrown and Israel glorified before them. But his
Angel-interpreter tells him that the black horses go north, the white
west, and the dappled south, while the horses of the fourth chariot,
impatient because no direction is assigned to them, are ordered to roam
up and down through the earth. It is striking that none are sent
eastward.[871] This appears to mean that, in Zechariah’s day, no power
oppressed or threatened Israel from that direction; but in the north
there was the centre of the Persian Empire, to the south Egypt, still a
possible master of the world, and to the west the new forces of Europe
that in less than a generation were to prove themselves a match for
Persia. The horses of the fourth chariot are therefore given the charge
to exercise supervision upon the whole earth—unless in ver. 7 we should
translate, not _earth_, but _land_, and understand a commission to
patrol the land of Israel. The centre of the world’s power is in the
north, and therefore the black horses, which are dispatched in that
direction, are explicitly described as charged to bring God’s spirit,
that is His anger or His power, to bear on that quarter of the world.
_And once more[872] I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! four
chariots coming forward from between two mountains, and the mountains
were mountains of brass. In the first chariot were brown horses, and in
the second chariot black horses, and in the third chariot white horses,
and in the fourth chariot dappled ...[873] horses. And I broke in and
said to the angel who talked with me, What are these, my lord? And the
angel answered and said to me, These be the four winds of heaven that
come forth from presenting themselves before the Lord of all the
earth._[874] That _with the black horses goes forth to the land of the
north, while the white go out west_[875] (?), _and the dappled go to
the land of the south. And the ...[876] go forth and seek to go, to
march up and down on the earth. And he said, Go, march up and down on
the earth; and they marched up and down on the earth. And he called me
and spake to me, saying, See they that go forth to the land of the
north have brought my spirit to bear[877] on the land of the north._
THE RESULT OF THE VISIONS: THE CROWNING OF THE
KING OF ISRAEL (Chap. vi. 9-15).
The heathen being overthrown, Israel is free, and may have her king
again. Therefore Zechariah is ordered—it would appear on the same day
as that on which he received the Visions—to visit a certain deputation
from the captivity in Babylon, Heldai, Tobiyah and Yedayah, at the
house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah, where they have just arrived; and
to select from the gifts they have brought enough silver and gold to
make circlets for a crown. The present text assigns this crown to
Joshua, the high priest, but as we have already remarked, and will
presently prove in the notes to the translation, the original text
assigned it to Zerubbabel, the civil head of the community, and gave
Joshua, the priest, a place at his right hand—the two to act in perfect
concord with each other. The text has suffered some other injuries,
which it is easy to amend; and the end of it has been broken off in the
middle of a sentence.
_And the Word of Jehovah came to me, saying: Take from the Gôlah,[878]
from Heldai[879] and from Tobiyah and from Yeda‛yah; and do thou go on
the same day, yea, go thou to the house of Yosiyahu, son of Ṣephanyah,
whither they have arrived from Babylon.[880] And thou shall take silver
and gold, and make a crown, and set it on the head of....[881] And say
to him: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, Lo! a man called Branch; from his
roots shall a branch come, and he shall build the Temple of Jehovah.
Yea, he shall build Jehovah’s Temple,[882] and he shall wear the royal
majesty and sit and rule upon his throne, and Joshua[883] shall be
priest on his right hand,[884] and there will be a counsel of peace
between the two of them.[885] And the crown shall be for Heldai[886]
and Tobiyah and Yeda‛yah, and for the courtesy[887] of the son of
Ṣephanyah, for a memorial in the Temple of Jehovah. And the far-away
shall come and build at the Temple of Jehovah, and ye shall know that
Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me to you; and it shall be if ye hearken lo
the voice of Jehovah your God...._[888]
FOOTNOTES:
[777] iv. 6. Unless this be taken as an earlier prophecy. See above, p.
260.
[778] ii. 9, 10 Heb., 5, 6 LXX. and Eng.
[779] See above, p. 214, where this is stated as an argument against
Kosters’ theory that there was no Return from Babylon in the reign of
Cyrus.
[780] Vv. 17 and 19.
[781] See Zechariah’s Fifth Vision.
[782] xliv. 1 ff.
[783] xlv. 22.
[784] xliv. 23, 24.
[785] Its origin was the Exile, whether its date be before or after the
First Return under Cyrus in 537 B.C.
[786] Fourth Vision, chap. iii.
[787] vi. 9-15.
[788] See ver. 11.
[789] ii. 20-23.
[790] iii. 8.
[791] חִלָּה אֶת־פְּנֵי יהוה. The verb (Piel) originally means _to make
weak_ or _flaccid_ (the Kal means _to be sick_), and so _to soften_ or
_weaken by flattery_. 1 Sam. xiii. 12; 1 Kings xiii. 6, etc.
[792] First Vision, chap. i. 11.
[793] Second Vision, ii. 1-4 Heb., i. 18-21 LXX. and Eng.
[794] Eighth Vision, chap. vi. 1-8.
[795] xxi. 36 Heb., 31 Eng.: _skilful to destroy_.
[796] See next chapter.
[797] Jer. xxv. 12; Hag. ii. 7.
[798] Myrtles were once common in the Holy Land, and have been recently
found (Hasselquist, _Travels_). For their prevalence near Jerusalem see
Neh. viii. 15. They do not appear to have any symbolic value in the
Vision.
[799] For a less probable explanation see above, p. 282.
[800] See pp. 311, 313, etc.
[801] Ewald omits _riding a brown horse_, as “marring the lucidity of
the description, and added from a misconception by an early hand.” But
we must not expect lucidity in a phantasmagoria like this.
[802] מְצֻלָה, Meṣullah, either _shadow_ from צלל, or for מְצוּלָה,
_ravine_, or else a proper name. The LXX., which uniformly for
הֲדַסִּים, _myrtles_, reads הרים, _mountains_, renders אשר במצלה by τῶν
κατασκίων. Ewald and Hitzig read מְצִלָּה, Arab, mizhallah, _shadowing_
or _tent_.
[803] Heb. שרקים, only here. For this LXX. gives two kinds, καὶ ψαροὶ
καὶ ποικίλοι, _and dappled and piebald_. Wright gives a full treatment
of the question, pp. 531 ff. He points out that the cognate word in
Arabic means sorrel, or yellowish red.
[804] _Who stood among the myrtles_ omitted by Nowack.
[805] Isa. xxxvii. 29; Jer. xlviii. 11; Psalm cxxiii. 4; Zeph. i. 12.
[806] Or _for_.
[807] _Who talked with me_ omitted by Nowack.
[808] Heb. _helped for evil_, or _till it became a calamity_.
[809] Marcus Dods, _Hag., Zech. and Mal._, p. 71. Orelli: “In
distinction from Daniel, Zechariah is fond of a simultaneous survey,
not the presenting of a succession.”
[810] For the symbolism of iron horns see Micah iv. 13, and compare
Orelli’s note, in which it is pointed out that the destroyers must
be smiths as in Isa. xliv. 12, _workmen of iron_, and not as in LXX.
_carpenters_.
[811] Wellhausen and Nowack delete _Israel and Jerusalem_; the latter
does not occur in Codd. A, Q, of Septuagint.
[812] Wellhausen reads, after Mal. ii. 9, כפי אשר, _so that it lifted
not its head_; but in that case we should not find ראׁׁשׁוֹ, but
ראׁׁשָׁהּ.
[813] החריד, but LXX. read החדיד, and either that or some verb of
cutting must be read.
[814] The Hebrew, literally _comes forth_, is the technical term
throughout the Visions for the entrance of the figures upon the stage
of vision.
[815] LXX. ἵστηκει, _stood up_: adopted by Nowack.
[816] Psalm xxiv.
[817] Isa. xvii. 12-14.
[818] Psalm cxxii. 3.
[819] Some codd. read _with the four winds_. LXX. _from the four winds
will I gather you_ (σὺνάξω ὑμᾶς), and this is adopted by Wellhausen and
Nowack. But it is probably a later change intended to adapt the poem to
its new context.
[820] _Dweller of the daughter of Babel._ But בת, _daughter_, is mere
dittography of the termination of the preceding word.
[821] A curious phrase here occurs in the Heb. and versions, _After
glory hath He sent me_, which we are probably right in omitting. In any
case it is a parenthesis, and ought to go not with _sent me_ but with
_saith Jehovah of Hosts_.
[822] So LXX. Heb. _to me_.
[823] Cf. Zeph. i. 7; Hab. ii. 20. “Among the Arabians, after the
slaughter of the sacrificial victim, the participants stood for some
time in silence about the altar. That was the moment in which the Deity
approached in order to take His share in the sacrifice.” (Smend, _A. T.
Rel. Gesch._, p. 124).
[824] Cf. vv. 1 and 2.
[825] See below, p. 318.
[826] In this Vision the verb _to stand before_ is used in two
technical senses: (_a_) of the appearance of plaintiff and defendant
before their judge (vv. 1 and 3); (_b_) of servants before their
masters (vv. 4 and 7).
[827] See below, p. 294, n. 835.
[828] Isa. iv. 2, xi. 1; Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15; Isa. liii. 2.
Stade (_Gesch. des Volkes Isr._, II. 125), followed by Marti (_Der
Proph. Sach._, 85 n.), suspects the clause _I will bring in My Servant
the Branch_ as a later interpolation, entangling the construction and
finding in this section no further justification.
[829] Or _Adversary_; see p. 317.
[830] _To Satan him_: _slander_, or _accuse, him_.
[831] That is _the Angel of Jehovah_, which Wellhausen and Nowack read;
but see below, p. 314.
[832] This clause interrupts the Angel’s speech to the servants. Wellh.
and Nowack omit it. העביר cf. 2 Sam. xii. 13; Job vii. 21.
[833] So LXX. Heb. has a degraded grammatical form, _clothe thyself_
which has obviously been made to suit the intrusion of the previous
clause, and is therefore an argument against the authenticity of the
latter.
[834] LXX. omits _I said_ and reads _Let them put_ as another
imperative, _Do ye put_, following on the two of the previous verse.
Wellhausen adopts this (reading שימו for ישימו). Though it is difficult
to see how ואמר dropped out of the text if once there, it is equally so
to understand why if not original it was inserted. The whole passage
has been tampered with. If we accept the Massoretic text, then we have
a sympathetic interference in the vision of the dreamer himself which
is very natural; and he speaks, as is proper, not in the direct, but
indirect, imperative, _Let them put_.
[835] צָנִיף, the headdress of rich women (Isa. iii. 23), as of
eminent men (Job xxix. 14), means something wound round and round the
head (cf. the use of צנף to form like a ball in Isa. xxii. 18, and the
use of חבשׁ (to wind) to express the putting on of the headdress (Ezek.
xvi. 10, etc.)). Hence _turban_ seems to be the proper rendering.
Another form from the same root, מצנפת, is the name of the headdress of
the Prince of Israel (Ezek. xxi. 31); and in the Priestly Codex of the
Pentateuch the headdress of the high priest (Exod. xxviii. 37, etc.).
[836] Wellhausen takes the last words of ver. 5 with ver. 6, reads
עָמַד and renders _And the Angel of Jehovah stood up or stepped
forward_. But even if עָמַד be read, the order of the words would
require translation in the pluperfect, which would come to the same as
the original text. And if Wellhausen’s proposal were correct the words
_Angel of Jehovah_ in ver. 6 would be superfluous.
[837] Read מַהֲלָכִים (Smend, _A. T. Rel. Gesch._, p. 324, n. 2).
[838] Or _facets_.
[839] _E.g._ Marti, _Der Prophet Sacharja_, p. 83.
[840] Hitzig, Wright and many others. On the place of this stone in the
legends of Judaism see Wright, pp. 75 f.
[841] Ewald, Marcus Dods.
[842] Von Orelli, Volck.
[843] Bredenkamp.
[844] Wellhausen, _in loco_, and Smend, _A. T. Rel. Gesch._, 345.
[845] So Marti, p. 88.
[846] 1 Kings vii. 49.
[847] 1 Macc. i. 21; iv. 49, 50. Josephus, XIV. _Ant._ iv. 4.
[848] LXX. Heb. has _seven sevens_ of pipes.
[849] Wellhausen reads _its right_ and deletes _the bowl_.
[850] ואען. ענה is not only _to answer_, but to take part in a
conversation, whether by starting or continuing it. LXX. rightly
ἐπηρώτησα.
[851] Heb. _saying_.
[852] In the Hebrew text, followed by the ancient and modern versions,
including the English Bible, there here follows 6_b_-10_a_, the Word
to Zerubbabel. They obviously disturb the narrative of the Vision, and
Wellhausen has rightly transferred them to the end of it, where they
come in as naturally as the word of hope to Joshua comes in at the end
of the preceding Vision. Take them away, and, as can be seen above,
ver. 10_b_ follows quite naturally upon 6_a_.
[853] Heb. _gold_. So LXX.
[854] Wellhausen omits the whole of this second question (ver. 12) as
intruded and unnecessary. So also Smend as a doublet on ver. 11 (_A. T.
Rel. Gesch._, 343 n.). So also Nowack.
[855] Heb. _saying_.
[856] LXX. _I_.
[857] Or _Fair, fair is it!_ Nowack.
[858] _The stone, the leaden_. Marti, _St. u. Kr._, 1892, p. 213 n.,
takes _the leaden_ for a gloss, and reads simply _the stone_, _i.e._
the top-stone; but the plummet is the last thing laid to the building
to test the straightness of the top-stone.
[859] _A. T. Rel. Gesch._, 312 n.
[860] מגלה _roll_ or _volume_. LXX. δρέπανον, _sickle_, מַגָּל.
[861] A group of difficult expressions. The verb נִקָּה is Ni. of a
root which originally had the physical meaning to _clean out of a
place_, and this Ni. is so used of a plundered town in Isa. iii. 26.
But its more usual meaning is to be spoken free from guilt (Psalm
xix. 14, etc.). Most commentators take it here in the physical sense,
Hitzig quoting the use of καθαρίζω in Mark vii. 19. מִזֶה כָמוֹהָ are
variously rendered. מזה is mostly understood as locative, _hence_,
_i.e._ from the land just mentioned, but some take it with _steal_
(Hitzig), some with _cleaned out_ (Ewald, Orelli, etc.). כָמוֹהָ is
rendered _like it_—the flying roll (Ewald, Orelli), which cannot be,
since the roll flies upon the face of the land, and the sinner is to be
purged out of it; or in accordance with the roll or its curse (Jerome,
Köhler). But Wellhausen reads מִזֶה כַמֶּה, and takes נִקָּה in its
usual meaning and in the past tense, and renders _Every thief has for
long remained unpunished_; and so in the next clause. So, too, Nowack.
LXX. _Every thief shall be condemned to death_, ἕως θανάτου ἐκδιθήσεται.
[862] Heb. _lodge_, _pass the night_: cf. Zeph. ii. 14 (above, p. 65),
_pelican and bittern shall roost upon the capitals_.
[863] Smend sees a continuation of Ezekiel’s idea of the guilt of man
overtaking him (iii. 20, xxxiv.). Here God’s curse does all.
[864] This follows from the shape of the disc that fits into it. Seven
gallons are seven-eighths of the English bushel: that in use in Canada
and the United States is somewhat smaller.
[865] Ewald.
[866] Upon the stage of vision.
[867] For Heb. עֵינָם read עוֹנָם with LXX.
[868] By inserting איפה after מה in ver. 5, and deleting
ויאמר ... היוצאת in ver. 6, Wellhausen secures the more concise
text: _And see what this bushel is that comes forth. And I said, What is
it? And he said, That is the evil of the people in the whole land_. But
to reduce the redundancies of the Visions is to delete the most
characteristic feature of their style. Besides, Wellhausen’s result
gives no sense. The prophet would not be asked to see what a bushel is:
the angel is there to tell him this. So Wellhausen in his translation
has to omit the מה of ver. 5, while telling us in his note to replace
האיפה after it. His emendation is, therefore, to be rejected. Nowack,
however, accepts it.
[869] LXX. Heb. _this_.
[870] In the last clause the verbal forms are obscure if not corrupt.
LXX. καὶ ἕτοιμασαι καὶ θήσουσιν αὐτο ἐκεῖ = לְהָכִין וַהֲנִיחֻהָ שָׁם; but see
Ewald, _Syntax_, 131 _d_.
[871] Wellhausen suggests that in the direction assigned to the white
horses, אחריהם (ver. 6), which we have rendered _westward_, we might
read ארץ הקדם, _land of the east_; and that from ver. 7 _the west_ has
probably fallen out after _they go forth_.
[872] Heb. _I turned again and_.
[873] Hebrew reads אֲמֻּצִּים, _strong_; LXX. ψαροί, _dappled_, and for the
previous בְּרֻדּים, _spotted_ or _dappled_, it reads ποικίλοι, _piebald_.
Perhaps we should read חמצים (cf. Isa. lxiii. 1), _dark red_ or
_sorrel_, with _grey spots_. So Ewald and Orelli. Wright keeps
_strong_.
[874] Wellhausen, supplying ל before ארבע, renders _These go forth to
the four winds of heaven after they have presented themselves_, etc.
[875] Heb. _behind them_.
[876] אמצים, the second epithet of the horses of the fourth
chariot, ver. 3. See note there.
[877] Or _anger to bear_, Heb. _rest_.
[878] The collective name for the Jews in exile.
[879] LXX. παρὰ τῶν ἀρχόντων, מִחֹרִים; but since an accusative
is wanted to express the articles taken, Hitzig proposes to read
מַחֲמַדַּי, _My precious things_. The LXX. reads the other two names
καὶ παρὰ τῶν χρησίμων αὐτῆς καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἐπεγνωκότων αὐτήν.
[880] The construction of ver. 10 is very clumsy; above it is rendered
literally. Wellhausen proposes to delete _and do thou go ... to the
house of_, and take Yosiyahu’s name as simply a fourth with the others,
reading the last clause _who have come from Babylon_. This is to cut,
not disentangle, the knot.
[881] The Hebrew text here has _Joshua son of Jehosadak, the high
priest_, but there is good reason to suppose that the crown was meant
for Zerubbabel, but that the name of Joshua was inserted instead in a
later age, when the high priest was also the king—see below, note. For
these reasons Ewald had previously supposed that the whole verse was
genuine, but that there had fallen out of it the words _and on the head
of Zerubbabel_. Ewald found a proof of this in the plural form עטרות,
which he rendered _crowns_. (So also Wildeboer, _A. T._ _Litteratur_,
p. 297.) But עטרות is to be rendered _crown_; see ver. 11, where it is
followed by a singular verb. The plural form refers to the several
circlets of which it was woven.
[882] Some critics omit the repetition.
[883] So Wellhausen proposes to insert. The name was at least
understood in the original text.
[884] So LXX. Heb. _on his throne_.
[885] With this phrase, vouched for by both the Heb. and the Sept.,
the rest of the received text cannot be harmonised. There were two:
one is the priest just mentioned who is to be at the right hand of the
crowned. The received text makes this crowned one to be the high priest
Joshua. But if there are two and the priest is only secondary, the
crowned one must be Zerubbabel, whom Haggai has already designated as
Messiah. Nor is it difficult to see why, in a later age, when the high
priest was sovereign in Israel, Joshua’s name should have been inserted
in place of Zerubbabel’s, and at the same time the phrase _priest at
his right hand_, to which the LXX. testifies in harmony with _the two
of them_, should have been altered to the reading of the received text,
_priest upon his throne_. With the above agree Smend, _A. T. Rel.
Gesch._, 343 n., and Nowack.
[886] Heb. חֵלֶם, Hēlem, but the reading Heldai, חלדי, is proved by
the previous occurrence of the name and by the LXX. reading here, τοῖς
ὑπομένουσιν, _i.e._ from root חלד, _to last_.
[887] חן, but Wellhausen and others take it as abbreviation or
misreading for the name of Yosiyahu (see ver. 10).
[888] Here the verse and paragraph break suddenly off in the middle of
a sentence. On the passage see Smend, 343 and 345.