Bible Commentaries
Zechariah 9

Verses 1-17

XXIX

THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH (CONTINUED) PART III

Zechariah 9:1-11:17

We take up now the second part of the book of Zechariah, the more difficult part of the prophecy. It has many parallels with the Revelation of John, and has a great many difficulties, though perhaps, not as many as that book.

The date of these oracles is subsequent to 516 B.C., that is, sometime subsequent to the dedication of the Temple. It represents Zechariah’s inspired look into the far future. It contains the pictures which Zechariah drew of the great principles – political, spiritual, and religious – that were to operate in the future history of his people, Israel. He looks at them through the eye of the Jew, and from the Jewish standpoint, as all prophets did, and pictured those events from materials drawn from Jewish conceptions and Jewish life and ideals. He looked into the centuries and saw the spiritual conflicts which took place, and saw the final outcome, which was very similar to the final outcome portrayed by the other great prophets. As Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah had before them the Assyrian invasion, and as Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk, as well as Ezekiel, had upon the horizon of the world the Babylon invasion, so Zechariah has before him the Greek invasion and the great events which transpired in the history of Israel as a result thereof. It was the rise of these great powers which gave rise to the greatest of the prophecies that we have reserved to us. It requires great occasions to bring forth and develop great men, and when God brings great occasions or great emergencies upon the world, he prepares great men to meet them.

The principal ideas in these last six chapters of Zechanah, are the invasion of the Greeks and the spread of Greek philosophy, religion, literature, and civilization in western Asia. There is a picture of the messianic King, presented as coming like a king of peace, and as a shepherd to tend his sheep; a picture of the preservation of the people of Israel, particularly the preservation of the capital, Jerusalem) and the downfall of their enemies; a picture also of the restoration of the exiled, outcast and scattered people of Israel; a picture also of Israel’s greatest crime, the tragedy of her history, also of the final conversion of the Jews, of the consummation of all things and the glorious and blessed millennial age. Zechariah has in view the great principles that were fighting for supremacy in the history of the centuries and shows their outcome

Now we take up Zechariah 9, the theme of which is The Coming of a King. The destruction of the nations through the advent of the Greeks is set forth in Zechariah 9:1-7. These nations were those immediately north of Israel, in what is known as Syria. They were Damascus, Hadrach, Hamath) Tyre, Sidon, and then all the victorious Greeks swept down the coast of Philistia and its great cities. "The burden of the word of Jehovah," which means an oracle concerning their destruction, an oracle which predicts a burden upon those nations, and means that these nations were to suffer beneath that burden. "Upon the land of Hadrach," he says, "and Damascus, is this burden placed, for there shall it abide and it has abode upon the land of Hadrach ever since. "For the eye of man and of all the tribes of Israel is toward Jehovah," or "For to Jehovah is the eye of man and all the tribes of Israel."

The idea is that these events which he is going to mention, are events ordered of God because he looks upon all those nations, and upon the tribes of Israel also, who shall have an important part in these events. "Hamath also which bordereth thereon; Tyre and Sidon, because they are very wise." Ezekiel says that Tyre was very wise, worldly wise, very shrewd, the most astute commercial people in the world at that time. And he says, "Tyre did build herself a stronghold, and heaped up silver as dust, and fine gold as mire of the streets," just as Solomon did in Jerusalem, as he gathered all the wealth of the nations into Jerusalem to himself, so Tyre gathered all the wealth she could gather from the nations unto herself and it was concentrated there.

He says in regard to Tyre, "Jehovah will dispossess her and will smite her power in the sea and she shall be devoured with fire." That was done in 331 B.C. when Alexander the Great built a mole from the mainland across the strait to the island on which Tyre was situated. Upon Tyre he vented all his wrath: Two thousand of its best citizens were crucified, and six to eight thousand more were butchered, multitudes were sold into slavery, the city was burned with fire and ever since it has been a desolation,

Alexander the Great swept down the coast to Philistia. "Ashkelon," one of the Philistine cities, "shall see it and fear," and well they might fear. "Gaza also shall see it, and be sore pained, and Ekron, for her expectation shall be put to shame; and the king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited." Probably her expectation was Tyre and Sidon, that they would form a bulwark or barrier against the conquering Greeks. "And a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines." That was done, for Alexander swept them almost into oblivion. "And I will take away his blood out of his mouth," that is, "I will stop his eating of blood in his sacrifices and religious ceremonials, and his abominations from between his teeth." I will put a stop to all that eating of abominable flesh in his religious ceremonials. "And he alas shall be a servant for our God." There is hope for a few.

What about Jerusalem? Shall Jerusalem fall under Alexander the Great? No, as Zechariah 9:8 says, "I will encamp about my house against the army, that none pass through or return; and no oppressor shall pass through them any more; for now have I seen with mine eyes." And that is what happened. Alexander the Great passed down the coast of the Mediterranean, and according to Josephus was marching up to Jerusalem, when he met the high priest, Jadua, at the head of a procession of priests; they met him in their white robes, showed him the oracle, perhaps this very prophecy) which said he should not take Jerusalem. Alexander bowed before him, went into Jerusalem, offered sacrifice, and Jerusalem was saved exactly as it says here. Whether Josephus’ story is true or not, one thing is certain, he spared Jerusalem.

In Zechariah 9:9-10 we have a prophecy of peace among the nations by the advent of Israel’s king. Having thus predicted the destruction of those nations and the safety of Jerusalem, and having prepared the way for the king, he now paints his immortal picture of the coming king: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee; he is just and having salvation; lowly and riding upon an ass, even a colt the foal of an ass." This is a picture of a king coming in peace, a contrast to what he had just been picturing. Now this is one of the passages that have been literally fulfilled, and we know the story of how Jesus sent his disciples to prepare the colt upon which he sat and rode into Jerusalem amidst the acclamation of the multitudes.

What is the result of his entrance upon the city? Zechariah 9:10 says that he will put an end to all strife and war and bloodshed: "I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim," the chariots which they employed for war, "and the horse from Jerusalem," which Micah says was the cause of her sin and downfall, "and the battle now shall be cut off; and he shall speak peace unto the nations; and his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth." That was not all literally fulfilled when Jesus entered Jerusalem, but has its fulfilment in all the history of Christianity. It is a picture of the onward march of Jesus Christ, looked at from a standpoint of a king of peace.

Next he sees the inevitable conflict between the religion of the Jews and the religion of the Greeks (Zechariah 9:11-17). The history of the contact between the Greek and Hebrew cults is very voluminous and in every way full of interest. It may be noted without present comment that certain Jewish books attribute to a king of Sparta the curious statement based on alleged records, that the Spartans, with the Jews, "are of the stock of Abraham" (1 Maccabees 12:21). These Apocryphal books, 1 and 2 Maccabees, recount with thrilling interest the heroic struggles of the Jews against the Syrian subdivision of the Greek Empire.

As above mentioned, Josephus has a marvelous account of the march of Alexander, himself, against Jerusalem, and of the supernatural reasons which constrained that world conqueror not to forge his threatened vengeance against the Holy City, but to confer great privileges upon the Jewish people. He also tells us a stirring story of the continuation of Grecian favor accorded by the Ptolemies who subsequently ruled over the Egyptian part of Alexander’s divided empire, and particularly of the translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language, thus giving to the world a royal patronage more helpful than that which later immortalized King James, the famous version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, from which Jesus himself sometimes, and the New Testament writers more frequently quote. Indeed, Alexandria, established by Alexander himself at the mouth of the Nile, by the liberal policy toward this hated people, became a second Jerusalem, which evidenced for centuries in the religious and philosophical literature of its Jewish residents the modifying influence of Greek culture.

The book of Daniel forecasts much concerning the rise, extent, subdivisions, and influences of the coming Greek Empire, and its relation to the kingdom of the Messiah. The records of the New Testament are all preserved for us in the Greek language. Jesus himself, somewhat, and his apostles much more at a later date, came in personal contact with Greek people. And the simplicity of the gospel which they preached throughout the world, met, at every turn, the opposing forces of Greek culture, Greek philosophy and Greek idolatry.

Some of the most noted of Paul’s apostolic labors, sufferings, conflicts and triumphs were in Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and other famous Greek cities, and very much of the argument and exhortation of his letters was called forth for the solution of practical problems of Christian life arising from Greek environment.

The second largest ecclesiastical organization of the professing Christian world today is called the Greek Church – whose religious primate is the patriarch of Constantinople and whose secular head and champion is the Czar of all the Russias. There exists also today a galvanized Greek government, kept upon its feet by the buttressing of foreign powers, but in no way fulfilling the ideal for which Marcos Bozzaris fought and Byron sang.

Far more significant than this weakling of a government – rendered doubly ridiculous by its recent fiasco with Turkey, is a widespread and menacing revival of ancient Greek philosophy – wrongfully supposed to lie hopelessly dead in the graves of Epicurus, Lucretius, and Demacritus. The tombs of the heathen Greeks have been robbed – their philosophy exhumed and rehabilitated – and now, like the soulless giant, Prometheus, that sprang from the brain of Godwin’s daughter, it stalks in colossal strides across affrighted continents or like Nebuchadnezzar’s huge and incongruous dream image, stands an imposing titan in the path of the rolling stone of the Messiah’s kingdom.

Following this comes an inquiry into the import of this passage – for somewhere on historic ground must we find the time, place, and need for divine intervention in stirring up the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece in Zechariah 9:13. From some points in historical background must flash the light that illumines this passage and reveals the fulfilment of this prophecy.

The difficulty here is not one of the exegesis but of interpretation, the grammatical construction is simple, and every term of the prophecy easily defined. The question is, What does it mean? Are we to understand by "sons of Zion" Israel according to the flesh, or spiritual Israel? Are "Sons of Greece" limited to men of Greek nationality? Is the conflict to which God purposes and promises to incite the one against the other an ordinary war between nations, a strife for tribute, territory, or conquest? Unquestionably, the grammatical construction admits the natural and literal interpretation.

In such case, however, we must look far back into the past to find fulfilment of the prophecy, far beyond the birth of Christ – for when Jesus came, the scepter had departed from Greece, and Rome ruled the world. The literal interpretation forces us back to a time when both Jews and Greeks had national existence and grounds of quarrel.

Therefore, to the question, When and by what events is the prophecy fulfilled, most commentators promptly answer: When the Maccabees waged heroic and triumphant war against Antiochus Epiphanes and his successors, a thrilling account of which struggle is recounted in Josephus and the Apocryphal books of the Maccabees. But to my mind, the objections to this limited and local interpretation are insurperable. Not merely because the course of Antiochus Epiphanes was the one exception to the otherwise uniform kind treatment of the Jews by Greek nations and is more than counterbalanced by the course of Alexander himself and of the Ptolemies – simply because the Maccabean war is an insignificant and inconsequential climax to so great a prophecy – nor even mainly because this war is manifestly irrelevant to the messianic features of the prophecy – chiefly because the context, separately in all its parts, and altogether as a whole, absolutely forbids it, both as to time and events.

Let us look somewhat at this context. Immediately preceding the text, intimately and necessarily associated with it indeed its only proper introduction, is this unquestioned messianic prophecy: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy king cometh unto thee; he is just, and having salvation; lowly and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt and foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off; and he shall speak peace unto the nations; and his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. As for thee, also, because of the blood of thy covenant, I have set free thy prisoners from the pit wherein is no water. Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope; even to-day do I declare that I will render double unto thee. For I have bent Judah for me, I have filled the bow with Ephraim, and I will stir up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and will make thee as the sword of a mighty man" (Zechariah 9:9-13).

This preceding context – on the face of it, and in every particular excludes the literal interpretation under consideration. It expressly cuts off the use of the carnal weapons employed in the Maccabean war – it proclaims peace and not war to the opposing heathen – its captives are prisoners of hope to be saved by the blood of the covenant – the dominion attained is too wide to fit the territory redeemed by the Maccabean victories. The inspiration of the New Testament expressly interprets the coming of the king described in it to mean Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (See Matthew 21:1-11). The bending of Judah as a bow and the fitting of Ephraim to it as a narrow, prior to the stirring up of the sons of Zion, has no fulfilment in Maccabean times, but finds plausible interpretation in the apostles who, except Judas that perished, belonged to the tribe of Ephraim rather than of Judah – but who proclaimed the word of the law from Jerusalem, when the ascended Jesus, the great archer, shot them forth as arrows to the ends of the earth. They were his spiritual children, "an heritage of the Lord," who became "as arrows in the hand of a mighty man."

As the preceding, so the succeeding but more remote context. It is all messianic. There we behold "the wounds in his hands received in the house of his friends." There we see the "weighing out of the thirty pieces of silver as his price." There we hear the divine apostrophe: "Awake, O Sword, against the Shepherd," and there we foresee "the pouring out on the house of David and the city of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications and of mourning when they look on him whom they had pierced," and there the consequent "opening of a fountain for sin and uncleanness in the city of David."

Indeed, not one circumstance – not one detail of time nor event in all the context can be applied without gross violence to the times of Antiochus and the Maccabees. Moreover, Zechariah must line up with Daniel when he also forecasts the same messianic kingdom and its foes. In the great and luminous image of Nebuchadnezzar and in the four beasts of his vision Daniel is made to see four successive world empires – three of them naturally defunct in the beginning of fulfilment – but all of them alive in their characteristic spirit and genius, and all of them in this genius and spirit to be opposed and overturned by the universal kingdom set up by the God of heaven. The Assyria – the Persia – the Greece – as well as the Rome which Daniel saw, were to be equally alive at one and the same time and constituted one colossal image of opposition to the messianic kingdom.

When God stirs up the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece, he does not array an ancient Jewish army against the Macedonian phalanx, nor a modern Jewish army against the lean, springing battalions of the poor little make-believe government now at Athens cowering under Turkish sovereignty. The question then recurs: What events fulfil this prophecy?

Is it merely a coincidence that just after John’s vivid description of the fulfilment of the first part of this prophecy, he strangely interjects the story of the coming of certain Greeks to see Jesus and how Jesus more strangely replies: "The hour has come, that the Son of man should be glorified . . . now is the (crisis) of this world" (John 12:12-22)?

At any rate, Paul’s dispute at Athens with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers was no mere coincidence. And, singularly enough, the New Testament record of that conflict verbally fulfilled the prophecy: "I will stir up thy sons, O Zion," says this passage, and "while Paul waited for them at Athens his spirit was stirred in him," says the New Testament record. Under that stirring up of his spirit he smote the Grecian philosophy which affirms the eternity of matter – which denied immortality to man – which enthroned chance or fate – which declares all existing forms to be the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms – which claims that the highest and most complex of living organisms, including man, were evolved in long processes of time from the lowest forms.

Let us re-examine the teaching of Epicurus as embodied in Lucretius’ song, "De Rerum Nature," or read that Epicurean and Stoic composite by Democritus and ask ourselves, "What essentially new and fundamental thought has been added in our day to the ancient Grecian theory of evolution, by Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, Tyndall, or Spencer? And then let us note how Paul, the son of Zion, when divinely stirred in spirit, smote the whole business, hip and thigh, by that grandest of all compound propositions, commencing, "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and earth."

Here, indeed, was a coming controversy between the sons of Zion and the sons of Greece, huge enough to cast its shadow before upon the prophetic eye. Beside this heaven-covering and earth-darkening cloud – the Maccabean war was merely a minute speck in the sky of the future. That controversy with Antiochua Epiphanes ended long ago and was soon swallowed up from human sight by far grander and more momentous events. But this Grecian war is still on, and this mightier Antiochus, does now in moments of temporary victory set up a "real abomination of desolation in the holy place."

Paul again states the case as he found it in Corinth, another Greek city: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent will I reject. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling block and unto Gentiles foolishness, but unto them that are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:10-25).

Yes, even now, as of old, the Greeks seek after wisdom. By their own wisdom they propose to solve all of life’s problems. And now, as then, their wisdom leads to the same God-denying and man-dishonoring conclusion: Man is only a developed beast. He is soulless. Death ends him. There is no God, no judgment – no heaven – no hell. Pleasure is man’s chief good.

The Grecian philosophers at Athens mocked when Paul spake of the resurrection. And they are right as to the chief good if Paul is wrong. So he himself argued: "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32).

In the Christians of today we find the "Sons of Zion," and in modern evolutionists and materialists we find the "Sons of Greece." And now, as much as in Paul’s time, the sons of Zion need to be stirred up against the sons of Greece.

In Zechariah 10 we have the true shepherd punishing all evil shepherds and gathering together his flock. The true shepherd, Jehovah, is spoken of first, and then the foreign rulers. The word "shepherd" as used by Jeremiah and Ezekiel means the political and religious leaders. Jehovah here calls attention to himself as the true shepherd: "Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain, even of Jehovah that maketh lightnings ; and he will give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field." But they will not ask Jehovah nor look to Jehovah, because Greek philosophy, Greek religion, and Greek civilization premeated the nation’s life and almost swept it away into Greek thought and life and religion.

He had in mind, perhaps, the Greek religion that threatened to sweep away Judaism. "For the teraphim [the household gods] have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; and they have told false dreams, they comfort in vain: therefore they go their way like sheep." Under these leaders, the Hellenists, Egyptians, and others, they have been led astray, as multitudes of the Jews did become corrupted. They were afflicted because there was no shepherd, and they had no true religious leader, and had not had for a long period. Now Jehovah speaks against those shepherds: "Mine anger is kindled against the shepherds, and I will punish the he-goats." These were undershepherds having a charge of a certain number of goats or sheep, under a shepherd. So he speaks about the political leaders and the religious leaders under them, "For Jehovah of hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and will make them as his goodly horse in the battle." Judah shall be safe, for "From him shall come the corner-stone, from him the nail," the sure peg in the wall that will hold the burden upon it, "from him the battle bow; from him every ruler together." The leaders of Israel did come from Judah; for, during one hundred years or more, God raised them up to be the leaders of the shepherds of Israel and they saved the nation.

From Zechariah 10:8 on he says, he is going to call all the scattered, wandering people of the Jews home, and they are going to find their land again: "I will hiss for them, and gather them; for I have redeemed them; and they shall increase as they have increased. And I will sow them among the peoples; and they shall remember me in far countries; and they shall live with their children, and shall return." One would think he was reading the prophecies of the three exile prophets, predicting the return of the exiles form Babylonia. At this time there were thousands upon thousands of Jews in Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, Assyria, Asia Minor, and almost all the world. He says, "I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of Assyria; and I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon; and place shall not be found for them." In Zechariah 10:11 we have a remarkable expression: "And he will pass through the sea of affliction, and will smite the waves in the sea, and all the depths of the Nile shall dry up; and the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt shall depart." The figure of passing through the sea is taken from passing through the Red Sea when Israel escaped from Egypt, but God is going to make them pass through the sea of affliction, and save them out of that as he saved them in the sea of Egypt. The sea of affliction! What a suggestive expression! "The depths of the Nile shall dry up, the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt shall depart. And I will strengthen them in Jehovah; and they shall walk up and down in his name, saith Jehovah." All this finds fulfilment in the return of the Jews just before the millennium.

In Zechariah 11, Zechariah goes back and takes a look at those foreigners, especially those north of Judah, the tyrants that were at Antioch: the Seleucidae, among whom were Demetrius, Antigonus, Antiochus Epiphanes, and others. In poetic imagery he speaks about the destruction that was to come upon them: "Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars. Wail, O fir-tree, for the cedar is fallen." The cedar was the greatest of all the forest trees, and if the cedar goes down, the cypress may well be afraid. "Wail, O ye oaks of Basilin, for the strong forest is come down." This is a terrible picture of the affliction that shall come upon the nation by the Parthians and Romans who crushed them to the earth. The effect is given in Zechariah 11:3: "A voice of the wailing of the shepherds! for their glory is destroyed: a voice of the roaring of young lions! for the pride of the Jordan is laid waste." The fulfilment of that took place in those terrible invasions of the Parthians and Romans who swept over that part of the world and destroyed it.

Then comes the allegory of the shepherd and his flock, one of the most important messianic prophecies of Zechariah. It is the story of the shepherd sent to tend Israel, and the fate he met with in his work. The shepherd is Jehovah, but the view changes and at last it becomes Jesus himself. It is given to us in the form of a monologue. It pictures to us the greatest spiritual tragedy of Israel’s history. The tragedy of the ages (Zechariah 11:4-14).

We have here a picture of the false shepherds devouring the flock, the work and rejection of the good shepherd, the breaking of the two staves "Beauty" and "Bands" and the selling of the good shepherd. Here is a remarkable expression, "The flock of slaughter," and yet it is true to their history. If we read the history of Israel in the second and third centuries before Christ and afterward, we see how that was literally fulfilled, for they were as a flock of slaughter. Syria from the north, Egypt from the south, internal strife among the people themselves; there were war, turmoil, and bloodshed, and death for two centuries.

It was the flock of slaughter indeed. "Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty; and they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich; and their own shepherds pity them not." The expression "they that sell," refers to selling them into slavery, which was carried on in wholesale fashion during this period. The slave dealer says, "Blessed be Jehovah, for I am rich." That is how they treated Israel, they thanked God that he had given them an opportunity to rob them. "Their own shepherds pitty them not” – ie. their own shepherds were not shepherds of tenderness, and the people of Israel were not faithful to their Great Shepherd, for here he portrays one of the most pitiable situations in the life of Israel: she failed in fidelity to her religion. He says in Zechariah 11:6, "I will deliver the men every one into his neighbor’s hand, and into the hand of his king; and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver them." For a century or two he seemed to have left them almost to their enemies.

Then follows Jehovah performing his duty as a shepherd through persons we know not, possibly the Maccabean family or the Asmonean dynasty, who under God acted as the shepherd for the people of Israel for a hundred years. Jehovah is above it all and he is the real shepherd. He thus pictures it: "So I fed the flock of slaughter, verily the poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves," as every shepherd in Palestine had, one with a hook to control, and the other a club to fight the enemies. "Thy rod and thy staff," as the psalmist says.

"I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock. . . . And I took my staff, Beauty, a symbol of Jehovah’s grace toward Ephraim and Judah, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. And it was broken in that day; and thus the poor of the flock that gave heed unto me knew that it was the word of Jehovah. And I said unto them, If ye think good) give me my hire. . . . so they weighed for my hire thirty pieces of silver," the price of a common slave. That was a fine salary to pay a first class shepherd of a nation for years! They gave Jehovah, the shepherd of Israel, as his hire, only thirty pieces of silver. "And Jehovah said unto me, Cast unto the potter the goodly price that I was prized at by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them unto the potter, in the house of Jehovah." According to the Lord’s commandment, they were thrown unto the potter. "Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands," a symbol of the love of Ephraim and Judah, "that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel."

We note the order here: Bands, the brotherhood, cannot be broken till Beauty, the grace of God, has first been broken. Brotherhood is truly based open grace. The fulfilment of this passage was literal. Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, and when he flung it down at their feet after seeing what he had done, they would not receive it, but used it to buy a potter’s field. The symbolic action here is impressive. The breaking of these staves symbolized the withdrawal of God’s grace from and the disunion of Judah and Israel because of their rejection of the shepherd. They are left to confusion and capture by the Romans, which took place in A.D. 70.

Here arises a question of textual criticism. How harmonize Matthew 27:9 with Zechariah 11:12-13? To this question there are four possible answers, either of which satisfies the conditions. These are as follows: (1) The copyist by error changed Zechariah to Jeremiah; (2) Matthew did not give the name of the prophet but the copyist wrote it in the margin of the manuscript and from that it thus crept into the text of Matthew’s Gospel; (3) Jeremiah was at the head of the prophetic list with the Jews, and the word "Jeremiah" refers to a collection of Old Testament prophecies including Zechariah; (4) Jeremiah discusses the potter’s field (Zechariah 12:1-9); Zechariah discusses the price of the field, and Matthew runs the two together, mentioning the first author only, but not discussing anything said by the second. This is my own personal view.

In Zechariah 11:15-17 we have symbolic action of the foolish shepherd prescribed for the prophet. Because of this rejection of the good shepherd Jehovah says, "Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd. For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, who will not visit those that are cut off, neither will seek those that are scattered, nor heal that which is broken, nor feed that which is sound; but he will eat the flesh of the fat sheer, and will tear their hoofs in pieces,” as a beast devours even to the hoof. Such was the fate of Israel under such a shepherd when they cast off the true shepherd, and it came true, for Rome did that very thing to her. But the curse that goes against this false shepherd is added, Zechariah 11:17: "Woe unto the worthless shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened." The Lord may give an evil shepherd, but woe to the shepherd that is thus evil. So Rome in turn received her just recompense of reward.

QUESTIONS

1. What was the problem with reference to Zechariah 9:9-14, who was the author and what was the date of this prophecy?

2. In general, what was the principal predictions in these last six chapters of Zechariah?

3. What were the predictions of Zechariah 9:1-7 and what of their fulfilment?

4. What special prophecy of Zechariah 9:8 and what of its fulfilment?

5. What was the vision of Zechariah 9:10 and what of its fulfilment?

6. What prophecies of Zechariah 9:11-17, what covenant referred to, what is the meaning of "render double unto thee," and what is the meaning of bending Judah as a bow and filling the bow with Ephraim?

7. What of the stirring up of the Sons of Zion against the sons of Greece and what were the far-reaching results which followed?

8. How is Zechariah 10 introduced and what was the contrast of Zechariah 10:1-2?

9. Who were the shepherds referred to in Zechariah 10:3, what the prediction concerning Judah and Ephraim, and where do we find the fulfilment?

10. What was the prophecy of Zechariah 10:8-12 and what the fulfilment?

11. What the apostrophes of Zechariah 9:1-3 and what is the application of this paragraph ?

12. Describe the scenes of Zechariah 9:4-14, who was the shepherd here, what was the shepherd’s two staves and what was their meaning?

13. What was the symbolic act of the shepherd and what was the farreaching meaning and fulfilment?

14. How do you harmonize Matthew 27:9 with Zechariah 11:12-17

15. What was the symbolic action prescribed for the prophet in Zechariah 11:15-17 and what was the application?