What! another Commentary on Zechariah! the reader is ready to exclaim.
Have we not a Lowth and a Blayney? What can learning, talent, or research
effect, that has not been effected already? In a word, I answer—nothing.
But, on the other hand, I ask, what have they effected? With the exception
of particular passages, on which light has been thrown, the general scope
of the prophecy remains as obscure as ever. Sufficient proof of this
appears in the want of consistency in the plan of interpretation, which in
one verse looks to future events, and in another to events long past, for
explanation; in one part supposes the prophet to offer a connected series
of consecutive predictions; in the next supposes him to be carried away by
a transport into a digression bordering upon incoherency; varying,
moreover, continually in the principle of exposition, which is literal or
figurative, political or spiritual by turns. Surely this is not legitimate
exposition, but rather bespeaks some latent error, some radical defect in
the plan, or principle of investigation.
To point out that defect, which the writer fancies he has discovered, is
the object of the present attempt; whether he be right or wrong, the
reader must decide. The traveller who mistakes his road, only goes the
farther astray the more he prolongs his journey. So the commentator on
prophecy, who labours to force the text to a sense which it was not
intended to bear, the more learning and ingenuity he employs, the more he
becomes involved in intricacy and obscurity.
In expounding the prophecies relating to the Jews, commentators have had
chiefly in view their temporal and political state; whereas the writer
conceives, that their moral and religious, that is, their spiritual
condition, is really the main purport of those which relate to the
restoration of Israel. Let any one read the description of the New
Jerusalem in the 21st chapter of Revelations, and ask himself, if this can
possibly apply to a literal city, or political state. It evidently cannot;
and yet it must apply to some state of the Jews on earth; for the
Messiah’s kingdom is always described as a kingdom on earth; and,
therefore, if the description does not apply to their temporal, it must to
their spiritual condition.
The Messiah’s kingdom is allowed to be the chief subject of these
prophecies; but if Christ be the Messiah, his kingdom is a spiritual one,
and what relates to it must be spiritually understood. We marvel at the
blindness which prevents the Jews from perceiving in prophecy the numerous
intimations of a spiritual Messiah, all of which appear to us to have been
distinctly fulfilled in the person of Christ; and yet that very blindness
to their spirituality is what prevents ourselves from understanding other
prophecies relating to the same subject. Let this be steadily and
uniformly kept in view, and most of the difficulties will vanish; and an
interpretation will unfold itself, not only historically minute, and
chronologically accurate, but which is, moreover, as far as scriptural
language admits, literal; for in what relates to spiritual affairs, the
spiritual is the most literal interpretation. This, then, is the principle
of the following exposition, and when it has been found necessary to
correct the translation, it was not for the purpose of finding out more
recondite meanings, but to bring back the words of the text to their
ordinary and literal signification.
With regard to the controversial form under which the treatise appears, a
word of explanation may be requisite. The writer having framed his views
of prophecy on principles most at variance with those of the Jews, and
being only a self-taught Hebraist, was anxious to know how far his
exposition might be controverted by an acknowledged Hebrew scholar of the
Jewish persuasion. Upon inquiry he was referred to his present opponent,
as the fittest person for that purpose; and he had the satisfaction to
find, that however they might differ in the plan of interpretation, yet
his opponent could rarely challenge the accuracy or fidelity of his
translation; which he acknowledged to be more in accordance with the
Christian principle of exposition, than any he had previously met with.
At the same time he declared the views it unfolded, to contain nothing
likely to have any weight with a Jew; and readily pledged himself to
answer those views, should the writer ever be disposed to publish them.
The views and the answer are now before the reader.
[Transcriber’s Note: Single-word Hebrew quotations in the original book
are often rendered here in the form “A (or B)”, with the same word
rendered in “A” and in “B”, but with the letters stored in opposite
orders. This is to allow the same e-book to render properly in both HTML
and PDF. The full-paragraph quotations should appear correct in all
formats.]