Practically all the distinctive features of the first eight chapters
disappear in ix.-xiv. The style and the historical presuppositions
are altogether different. There are two new superscriptions, ix. 1,
xii. 1, but there is no reference to Zerubbabel, Joshua, or the
situation of their time. There the immediate problem was the
building of the temple; here, more than once, Jerusalem is
represented as in a state of siege. A sketch of the contents will
show how unlike the one situation is to the other.
The general theme of ix. 1-xi. 3 is the destruction of the world-powers
and the establishment of the kingdom of God. Judgment is declared at
the outset upon Damascus, Phoenicia and Philistia, while Jerusalem is
to enjoy the divine protection and to be the seat of the Messianic King,
ix. 1-9. Greece, the great enemy, will be overcome by Judah and Ephraim,
who are but weapons in Jehovah's hand, ix. 10-17. Then follows[1] a
passage in which "the shepherds" are threatened with a dire fate. Judah
receives a promise of victory, and Ephraim is assured that her exiles
will be gathered and brought home from Egypt and Assyria to Gilead and
Lebanon; the cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan--types perhaps of
foreign rulers--will be laid low, x. 3-xi. 3.
[Footnote 1: Ch. x. 1, 2 appears to stand by itself. It is an
injunction to bring the request for rain to Jehovah and to put no
faith in teraphim and diviners.]
The next section is of a different kind. In it the prophet is
divinely commissioned to tend the flock which has been neglected and
impoverished by other shepherds. To this end he takes two staves,
named Favour and Unity, to indicate respectively the favour enjoyed
by Judah in her relations with her neighbours, and the unity
subsisting between her and Israel (or Jerusalem, according to two
codices); and thus invested with the instruments of the pastoral
office he destroyed three shepherds in a short time. But the flock
grew tired of him, and, in consequence he broke the staves, i.e. the
relations of favour and unity were ruptured. A foolish and careless
shepherd is then raised up, who abuses the flock, and over him a woe
is pronounced, xi. 4-17, more minutely defined in xiii. 7-9, which
appears to have been misplaced. Jehovah will slay the shepherd and
scatter the sheep; a third of the flock after being purified by fire
will constitute the people of Jehovah.
The next section, xii. 1-xiii. 6, introduces us to a siege of
Jerusalem by the heathen, abetted by Judah. Suddenly, however, Judah
changes sides; by the help of Jehovah they destroy the heathen, and
Jerusalem is saved, xii. 1-8. Then the people and their leaders are
moved by the outpouring of the spirit to confess and entreat
forgiveness for some judicial murder which they have committed and
which they publicly and bitterly lament, xii. 9-14. The prayer is
answered; people and leaders are cleansed in a fountain opened, with
the result that idolatry and prophecy of the ancient public type are
abjured, xiii. 1-6.
The theme of the last section also (xiv.) is a heathen attack upon
Jerusalem, but this time the city is destroyed and half the
inhabitants exiled. Then Jehovah intervenes, and by a miracle upon
the Mount of Olives the rest of the people effect their escape, and
Jehovah Fights with all His angels against the heathen. Those
glorious Messianic days, when Jehovah will be King over all the
earth, will know no heat or cold, or change from light to darkness.
Jerusalem will be secure and the land about her level and fruitful,
watered east and west by a living stream. Those who have made war
against her will waste away, while the rest of the world will make
pilgrimages to the holy city to worship Jehovah and celebrate the
feast of booths. Then the mighty war-horses, once the object of His
hatred, will be consecrated to His service, and the number of
pilgrims will be so great that every pot in the city and in the
province of Judah will be needed for ceremonial purposes.
Few problems in the Old Testament are more perplexing than that of the
origin and relation of the sections composing, ix.-xiv. to one another.
The utmost that can be said with comparative certainty is that the
prophecy, in its present form, is post-exilic, while certain elements
in it, especially in ix.-xi., are, if not pre-exilic, at any rate
imitations or reminiscences of pre-exilic prophecy. Many scholars even
deny that ix.-xiv. is a unity and assign it to at least two authors.
Though the superscription in xii. 1, which seems to justify this
distinction, was probably added, like Malachi i. i, by a later hand,
the presence of certain broad distinctions between ix.-xi. and
xii.-xiv. can hardly be denied. In the former section, Ephraim is
occasionally mentioned in combination with Judah, cf. ix. 13; in the
latter, Judah alone is mentioned, and partly, on the strength of this,
the former section is assigned to a period between Tiglath Pileser's
invasion of the north of Palestine in 734 (xi. 1-3) and the fall of the
northern kingdom in 721, while the latter is assigned to a period between
the death of Josiah in 609, to which the mourning in Megiddo is supposed
to allude, xii. 11, and the fall of the southern kingdom in 586.
Even within these sections there are differences which are held to
be incompatible with the unity of each section. The most notable
difference is perhaps that affecting the siege of Jerusalem. In ch.
xii. the heathen are destroyed before Jerusalem, while the city
itself remains secure; in ch. xiv. the houses are rifled, the women
ravished, and half of the people go into captivity before Jehovah
intervenes to protect the remainder. These and other differences are
unmistakable, yet it may be questioned whether they are so serious
as to be fatal to the unity of the whole section, ix.-xiv. It is not
impossible that they may be due to the eclectic spirit of an author
who gathered from many quarters material for his eschatological
pictures. Besides, the sections which have been by some scholars
relegated to different authors, occasionally seem to imply each
other. The general assault on Jerusalem in ch. xii., e.g., is the
natural result of the breaking of the staves, Favour and Unity, in
ch. xi. But, even if ix.-xiv. be a unity, it is well to remember, as
Cornill reminds us, that there is "much in these chapters which will
ever remain obscure and unintelligible, because our knowledge of the
whole post-exilic and especially of the early Hellenic period is
extremely deficient."
This leads to the question of date. The last section (xii.-xiv.) at
any rate is obviously post-exilic. The idea of the general assault
on Jerusalem is undoubtedly suggested by Ezekiel xxxviii.; the
curiously condemnatory attitude to prophecy in xiii. 2-6 would have
been impossible in pre-exilic times; the phrase, "Uzziah _king of
Judah_," xiv. 5, rather implies that the dynasty is past, and the
reference to the earthquake in his reign has the flavour of a
learned reminiscence.[1] These and other circumstances practically
necessitate a post-exilic date, and the objection based upon xii. 11
falls to the ground, as that verse alludes, in all probability, not
to lamentations for the death of Josiah, which would no doubt have
taken place in Jerusalem, but to laments which accompanied the
worship of the Semitic Adonis. Nor can any objection be grounded
upon the allusion to idolatry in xiii. 2, as idolatry persisted into
post-exilic times.[2]
[Footnote 1: Even if the earliest possible date (about 600) for this
section be accepted, the earthquake had taken place a century and a
half before.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Job xxxi. 2eff. and perhaps also Ps. xvi.]
If ix.-xiv. be a unity, a definite _terminus a quo_ is provided
in ix. 13 by the mention of the Greeks, whose sons are opposed to
the sons of Zion. Such a relation of Jews to Greeks is not
conceivable before the time of Alexander the Great, and this fact
alone would throw the prophecy, at the earliest, into the fourth
century B.C. But there are other facts which seem to some to make
for a pre-exilic date: e.g. the mention of Judah and Ephraim
together, ix. 13 (cf. ix. 10), seems to presuppose the existence of
both kingdoms, and Egypt and Assyria are placed side by side, x. 10,
11, precisely in the manner of Hosea (ix. 3, xi. 5). But these
facts, significant as they may seem, are by no means decisive in
favour of a pre-exilic date. Assyria was the first great world power
with which Israel came into hostile contact, and the name was not
unnaturally transferred by later ages to the hostile powers of their
own day--to Babylon in Lam. v. 6, to Persia in Ezra vi. 22, and
possibly to Syria in Isaiah xxvii. 13. Consequently, in a context
which assigns the passage, at the earliest, to the Greek period,
Assyria and Egypt would very naturally designate the Seleucid and
Ptolemaic kingdoms respectively, and the prophecy might be safely
relegated to the third century, B.C.[1] The allusion to Ephraim is
not incompatible with this date, for the prophecy presupposes a
general dispersion, x. 9, which must be later than the fall of Judah
in 586, considering that residence in Egypt, x. 10, is implied (cf.
Jer. xlii.-xliv.). Nothing more need be implied by the allusion to
Ephraim than that there will be a general restoration of all the
tribes that were once driven into exile and are now scattered
throughout the world.
[Footnote 1: Marti puts it as late as 160. One of the most important
clues would be furnished by xi. 8--"I cut off the three shepherds in
one month"--if the reference were not so cryptic. Advocates of a
pre-exilic date find in the words an allusion to three successors of
Jeroboam II. of Israel--Zechariah, Shallum and some unknown
pretender (about 740); others, to the rapid succession of high
priests before the Maccabean wars (about 170). One month probably
signifies generally a brief time.]
If chs. ix.-xiv. belong to the third century B.C., they give us an
interesting glimpse into the aspirations and defects of later Judaism.
They reveal an unbounded faith in the importance of Jerusalem, and in
the certainty of its triumph over the assaults of heathenism; on the
other hand, they are inspired by a fine universalism, xiv. 16ff. But
this universalism has a distinctly Levitical and legalistic colouring,
xiv. 21. Membership in the kingdom of God involves abstinence from
food proscribed by the Levitical law, ix. 7; and even for the heathen
the worship of Jehovah takes the form of the celebration of the feast
of booths, xiv. 16. There is in the prophecy a noble appreciation of the
world-wide destiny of the true religion, but hardly of its essentially
spiritual nature.