“_THE SEED OF PEACE_”
ZECHARIAH vii., viii.
The Visions have revealed the removal of the guilt of the land, the
restoration of Israel to their standing before God, the revival of the
great national institutions, and God’s will to destroy the heathen
forces of the world. With the Temple built, Israel should be again in
the position which she enjoyed before the Exile. Zechariah, therefore,
proceeds to exhort his people to put away the fasts which the Exile had
made necessary, and address themselves, as of old, to the virtues and
duties of the civic life. And he introduces his orations to this end by
a natural appeal to the experience of the former days.
The occasion came to him when the Temple had been building for two
years, and when some of its services were probably resumed.[931] A
deputation of Jews appeared in Jerusalem and raised the question of the
continuance of the great Fasts of the Exile. Who the deputation were is
not certain: probably we ought to delete _Bethel_ from the second
verse, and read either _El-sar’eser sent Regem-Melekh and his men to
the house of Jehovah to propitiate Jehovah_, or else _the house of
El-sar’eser sent Regem-Melekh and his men to propitiate Jehovah_. It
has been thought that they came from the Jews in Babylon: this would
agree with their arrival in the ninth month to inquire about a fast in
the fifth month. But Zechariah’s answer is addressed to Jews in Judæa.
The deputation limited their inquiry to the fast of the fifth month,
which commemorated the burning of the Temple and the City, now
practically restored. But with a breadth of view which reveals the
prophet rather than the priest, Zechariah replies, in the following
chapter, upon all the fasts by which Israel for seventy years had
bewailed her ruin and exile. He instances two, that of the fifth month,
and that of the seventh month, the date of the murder of Gedaliah, when
the last poor remnant of a Jewish state was swept away.[932] With a
boldness which recalls Amos to the very letter, Zechariah asks his
people whether in those fasts they fasted at all to their God. Jehovah
had not charged them, and in fasting they had fasted for themselves,
just as in eating and drinking they had eaten and drunken to
themselves. They should rather hearken to the words He really sent
them. In a passage, the meaning of which has been perverted by the
intrusion of the eighth verse, that therefore ought to be deleted,
Zechariah recalls what those words of Jehovah had been in the former
times when the land was inhabited and the national life in full course.
They were not ceremonial; they were ethical: they commanded justice,
kindness, and the care of the helpless and the poor. And it was in
consequence of the people’s disobedience to those words that all the
ruin came upon them for which they now annually mourned. The moral is
obvious if unexpressed. Let them drop their fasts, and practise the
virtues the neglect of which had made their fasts a necessity. It is a
sane and practical word, and makes us feel how much Zechariah has
inherited of the temper of Amos and Isaiah. He rests, as before, upon
the letter of the ancient oracles, but only so as to bring out their
spirit. With such an example of the use of ancient Scripture, it is
deplorable that so many men, both among the Jews and the Christians,
should have devoted themselves to the letter at the expense of the
spirit.
_And it came to pass in the fourth year of Darius the king, that the
Word of Jehovah came to Zechariah on the fourth of the ninth month,
Kislev. For there sent to _the_ house _of Jehovah,_ El-sar’eser and
Regem-Melekh and his men,[933] to propitiate[934] Jehovah, to ask of
the priests which were in the house of Jehovah of Hosts and of the
prophets as follows: Shall I weep in the fifth month with fasting as I
have now done so many years? And the Word of Jehovah of Hosts came to
me: Speak now to all the people of the land, and to the priests,
saying: When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh
month,[935] and this for seventy years, did ye fast at all to Me? And
when ye eat and when ye drink, are not ye the eaters and ye the
drinkers? Are not these[936] the words which Jehovah proclaimed by the
hand of the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and at peace,
with her cities round about her, and the Negeb and the Shephelah were
inhabited?_
[937]_Thus spake Jehovah of Hosts: Judge true judgment, and practise
towards each other kindness and mercy; oppress neither widow nor
orphan, stranger nor poor, and think not evil in your hearts towards
one another. But they refused to hearken, and turned a rebellious
shoulder,[938] and their ears they dulled from listening. And their
heart they made adamant, so as not to hear the Torah and the words
which Jehovah of Hosts sent through His Spirit by the hand of the
former prophets; and there was great wrath from Jehovah of Hosts. And
it came to pass that, as He had called and they heard not, so they
shall call and I will not hear, said Jehovah of Hosts, but I will
whirl[939] them away among nations whom they know not. And the land was
laid waste behind them, without any to pass to and fro, and they made
the pleasant land desolate._
There follow upon this deliverance ten other short oracles: chap. viii.
Whether all of this decalogue are to be dated from the same time as the
answer to the deputation about the fasts is uncertain. Some of them
appear rather to belong to an earlier date, for they reflect the
situation, and even the words, of Haggai’s oracles, and represent the
advent of Jehovah to Jerusalem as still future. But they return to the
question of the fasts, treating it still more comprehensively than
before, and they close with a promise, fitly spoken as the Temple grew
to completion, of the coming of the heathen to worship at Jerusalem.
We have already noticed the tender charm and strong simplicity of these
prophecies,[940] and there is little now to add except the translation
of them. As with the older prophets, and especially the great
Evangelist of the Exile, they start from the glowing love of Jehovah
for His people, to which nothing is impossible;[941] they promise a
complete return of the scattered Jews to their land, and are not
content except with the assurance of a world converted to the faith of
their God. With Haggai Zechariah promises the speedy end of the poverty
of the little colony; and he adds his own characteristic notes of a
reign of peace to be used for hearty labour, bringing forth a great
prosperity. Only let men be true and just and kind, thinking no evil of
each other, as in those hard days when hunger and the fierce rivalry
for sustenance made every one’s neighbour his enemy, and the petty
life, devoid of large interests for the commonweal, filled their hearts
with envy and malice. For ourselves the chief profit of these beautiful
oracles is their lesson that the remedy for the sordid tempers and
cruel hatreds, engendered by the fierce struggle for existence, is
found in civic and religious hopes, in a noble ideal for the national
life, and in the assurance that God’s Love is at the back of all, with
nothing impossible to it. Amid these glories, however, the heart will
probably thank Zechariah most for his immortal picture of the streets
of the new Jerusalem: old men and women sitting in the sun, boys and
girls playing in all the open places. The motive of it, as we have
seen, was found in the circumstances of his own day. Like many another
emigration, for religion’s sake, from the heart of civilisation to a
barren coast, the poor colony of Jerusalem consisted chiefly of men,
young and in middle life. The barren years gave no encouragement to
marriage. The constant warfare with neighbouring tribes allowed few to
reach grey hairs. It was a rough and a hard society, unblessed by the
two great benedictions of life, childhood and old age. But this should
all be changed, and Jerusalem filled with placid old men and women, and
with joyous boys and girls. The oracle, we say, had its motive in
Zechariah’s day. But what an oracle for these times of ours! Whether in
the large cities of the old world, where so few of the workers may hope
for a quiet old age, sitting in the sun, and the children’s days of
play are shortened by premature toil and knowledge of evil; or in the
newest fringes of the new world, where men’s hardness and coarseness
are, in the struggle for gold, unawed by reverence for age and
unsoftened by the fellowship of childhood,—Zechariah’s great promise is
equally needed. Even there shall it be fulfilled if men will remember
his conditions—that the first regard of a community, however straitened
in means, be the provision of religion, that truth and whole-hearted
justice abound in the gates, with love and loyalty in every heart
towards every other.
_And the Word of Jehovah of Hosts came, saying:—_
1. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: I am jealous for Zion with a great
jealousy, and with great anger am I jealous for her._
2. _Thus saith Jehovah: I am returned to Zion, and I dwell in the midst
of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the City of Troth,[942]
and the mountain of Jehovah of Hosts the Holy Mountain._
3. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Old men and old women shall yet sit in
the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand, for fulness of days;
and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in
her streets._
4. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Because it seems too wonderful to the
remnant of this people in those days, shall it also seem too wonderful
to Me?—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._
5. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Lo! I am about to save My people out
of the land of the rising and out of the land of the setting of the
sun; and I will bring them home, and they shall dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem, and they shall be to Me for a people,[943] and I will be to
them for God, in troth and in righteousness._
6. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Strengthen your hands, O ye who have
heard in such days such words from the mouth of the prophets,
since[944] the day when the House of Jehovah of Hosts was founded: the
sanctuary was to be built! For before those days there was no gain for
man,[945] and none to be made by cattle; and neither for him that went
out nor for him that came in was there any peace from the adversary,
and I set every man’s hand against his neighbour. But not now as in the
past days am I towards the remnant of this people—oracle of Jehovah of
Hosts. For I am sowing the seed of peace.[946] The vine shall yield her
fruit, and the land yield her increase, and the heavens yield their
dew, and I will give them all for a heritage to the remnant of this
people. And it shall come to pass, that as ye have been a curse among
the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so will I save you
and ye shall be a blessing! Be not afraid, strengthen your hands!_
7. _For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: As I have planned to do evil to
you, for the provocation your fathers gave Me, saith Jehovah of Hosts,
and did not relent, so have I turned and planned in these days to do
good to Jerusalem and the house of Judah. Be not afraid! These are
the things which ye shall do: Speak truth to one another; truth and
wholesome judgment decree ye in your gates; and plan no evil to each
other in your hearts, nor take pleasure in false swearing: for it is
all these that I hate—oracle of Jehovah._
_And the Word of Jehovah of Hosts came to me, saying:—_
8. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the
fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the
tenth, shall become to the house of Judah joy and gladness and happy
feasts.[947] But love ye truth and peace._
9. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: There shall yet come peoples and
citizens of great cities; and the citizens of one city[948] will go to
another city, saying: “Let us go to propitiate Jehovah, and to seek
Jehovah of Hosts!” “I will go too!” And many peoples and strong nations
shall come to seek Jehovah of Hosts in Jerusalem and to propitiate
Jehovah._
10. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: In those days ten men, of all
languages of the nations, shall take hold of the skirt of a Jew and
say, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you._
FOOTNOTES:
[931] Cf. chap. vii. 3: _the priests which were of the house of
Jehovah_.
[932] Jer. xli. 2; 2 Kings xxv. 25.
[933] The Hebrew text is difficult if not impossible to construe: _For
Bethel sent Sar’eser_ (without sign of accusative) _and Regem-Melekh
and his men_. Wellhausen points out that Sar’eser is a defective name,
requiring the name or title of deity in front of it, and Marti proposes
to find this in the last syllable of Bethel, and to read ’El-sar’eser.
It is tempting to find in the first syllable of Bethel the remnant of
the phrase _to the house of Jehovah_.
[934] To stroke the face of.
[935] The fifth month Jerusalem fell, the seventh month Gedaliah was
murdered: Jer. lii. 12 f.; 2 Kings xxv. 8 f., 25.
[936] So LXX. Heb. has acc. sign before _words_, perhaps implying _Is
it not rather necessary to do the words?_ etc.
[937] Omit here ver. 8, _And the Word of Jehovah came to Zechariah,
saying_. It is obviously a gloss by a scribe who did not notice that
the כה אמר of ver. 9 is God’s statement by the former prophets.
[938] Cf. the phrase _with one shoulder_, _i.e._ unanimously.
[939] So Heb. and LXX.; but perhaps we ought to point _and I whirled
them away_, taking the clause with the next.
[940] See above, pp. 271 f.
[941] Cf. especially Isa. xl. ff.
[942] Isa. i. 26.
[943] Not merely _My people_ (Wellhausen), but their return shall
constitute them a people once more. The quotation is from Hosea ii. 25.
[944] So LXX.
[945] _But he that made wages made them to put them into a bag with
holes_, Haggai i. 6.
[946] Read כי אזרעה השלום for כי זרע השלום of the text, _for the seed
of peace_. The LXX. makes זרע a verb. Cf. Hosea ii. 23 ff., which the
next clauses show to be in the mind of our prophet. Klostermann and
Nowack prefer זַרְעָהּ שָׁלוֹם, _her_ (the remnant’s) _seed shall be
peace_.
[947] In the tenth month the siege of Jerusalem had begun (2 Kings
xxv. 1); on the ninth of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jer.
xxxix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth City and Temple were burnt down
(2 Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was assassinated and
the poor relics of a Jewish state swept from the land (Jer. xli.). See
above, pp. 30 ff.
[948] LXX. _the citizens of five cities will go to one_.
“_MALACHI_”
_Have we not all One Father? Why then are we unfaithful to each other?_
_The lips of a Priest guard knowledge, and men seek instruction from
his mouth, for he is the Angel of Jehovah of Hosts._