Promises of fruitful seasons. A. M. 3484. B. C. 520. Ol. LXV. 1. Anno Tarquinii Superbi, R. Roman., 15. to a heap of twenty measures, unto Haggai in the four and there were but twenty. 17 I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the LORD. 18 Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the LORD's temple was laid, consider it. 19 Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth from this day will I bless you. : A. M. 3484. B. C. 520. 21 Speak to Zerubbabel, 'governor of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth; 22 And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them; and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother. 23 In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will make thee as a signet: for 'I have chosen 20 And again the word of the LORD came thee, saith the LORD of hosts. * Deut. xxviii. 22. 1 Kings viii. 37. Ch. i. 9. Amos iv. 9.- b Ch. i. 11.- c Jer. v. 3. Amos iv. 6, 8, 9, 10, 11. d Zech. viii. 9.- Le Zech. viii. 12.- f Ch. i. 14.- - Ver. blasted you in all the labours of your hands; and yet ye have not turned to me, ver. 17. And will make thee as a signet] I will exalt thee to high dignity, power, and trust, of which the seal was the instrument or sign in those days. Thou shalt be under my peculiar care, and shalt be to me very precious. See Jer. xxii. 24; Cant. viii. 6; and see the notes on these two places. Verse 18. Consider now from this day] I will now change my conduct towards you: from this day that ye have begun heartily to rebuild my temple, and restore my worship, I will bless you. Whatever you sow, whatever you plant, shall be blessed; your land shall be fruitful, and ye shall have abundant crops of all sorts. Verse 20. Again the word of the Lord came] This tection during the whole. was a second communication in the same day. Verse 21. I will shake the heavens and the earth] Calmet supposes that the invasion of Cambyses, and his death, are what the prophet has in view by this shaking of the heavens and the earth: but this invasion and defeat happened three years before they had begun to work at the temple; and how could it be made a matter of interest to Zerubbabel? Calmet For I have chosen thee] He had an important and difficult work to do, and it was necessary that he should be assured of God's especial care and pro On the three last verses of this prophecy a sensible and pious correspondent sends me the following illustration, which I cheerfully insert. Though in many respects different from that given above, yet I believe that the kingdom of Christ is particularly designed in this prophecy. "I think there is an apparent difficulty in this answers this, by translating the words in the past passage, because the wars of the Persians and Babytense; and shows that the fact was recalled to Ze-lonians were not so interesting to the rising commonrubbabel's attention, to fix his confidence in God, &c. Bp. Newcome says we may well understand this and the twenty-second verse of the calamity undergone by Babylon in the reign of Darius; of the Macedonian conquests in Persia; and of the wars which the successors of Alexander waged against each other: others understand it of the Romans. Verse 23. In that day, saith the Lord] Some think, says this same learned writer, that Zerubbabel is put here for his people and posterity: but it may well be said that the commotions foretold began in the rebellion of Babylon, which Darius besieged and took; and exercised great cruelties upon its inhabitants.—Herod. lib. iii., sect. 220. Justin. i. 10. Prideaux places this event in the fifth year of Darius; others, with more probability, in the eighth year. Compare Zech. ii. 9. wealth of the Jews as many subsequent events of less note in the world, but which were more directly levelled at their own national prosperity; and yet neither the one nor the other could be termed ‘a shaking of the heavens and the earth, and an overthrow of the throne of kingdoms.' "I know not if the following view may be ad mitted as an explanation of this difficult passage. take the shaking of the heavens and earth' here (a in ver. 6) to have a more distant and comprehensive meaning than can belong to Zerubbabel's time, or t his immediate posterity; and that it extends only to the overthrow of kingdoms then existing, bus of the future great monarchies of the world; and not excepting even the civil and ecclesiastical establishments of the Jews themselves. For I take ‘the heavens,' in the prophetic language, uniformly to denote the true church, and never the superstitions and idols of the nations. "What, then, are we to understand by the promise made to Zerubbabel, 'I will make thee as a signet.' In the first place, the restitution of the religious and civil polity of the people of Israel, conformably to the promises afterwards given in the four first chapters of Zechariah. And, secondly, as the royal signet is the instrument by which kings give validity to laws, and thereby unity and consistence to their empire; so Jehovah, the God and King of Israel, condescends to promise he will employ Zerubbabel as his instrument of gathering and uniting the people again as a distinguished nation; and that such should be the permanency of their political existence, that, whilst other nations and mighty empires should be overthrown, and their very name blotted out under heaven, the Jews should ever remain a distinct people, even in the wreck of their own government, and the loss of all which rendered their religion splendid and attractive. "In confirmation of this interpretation, I would refer to the threatening denounced against Jeconiah (called Coniah, Jer. xxii.), the last reigning king of Judah, and the progenitor of Zerubbabel. I apprehend I may be authorized to read Jer. xxii. 24 thus: 'As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, be the signet upon my right hand, yet will I pluck thee thence, and I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life,' &c. on this prophecy. "If it be considered that the kings of Judah were in an especial and peculiar manner the delegates of Jehovah, governing in his name and by his authority, a peculiar propriety will appear in their being resembled to signets, or royal seals contained in rings. Compare Gen. xli. 42; Esth. iii. 10, 12, viii. 2, 8; Dan. vi. 7. And the promise to Zerubbabel will be equivalent to those which clearly predict the preservation of the Jewish people by the divine command, see Zech. ii.; and the faithfulness of God to his covenant concerning the Messiah, who should be born of the seed of Abraham, and in the family of David, of whose throne he was the rightful Proprietor. "According to this view, by the promise, 'In that day,-I will make thee as a signet,' &c., must be understood, that the preservation of the Jews as a distinct people, when all the great empires of the heathen were overthrown, would manifest the honour now conferred on Zerubbabel as the instrument of their restoration after the Babylonish captivity. Thus the promise to Abraham, Gen. xii., 'I will make of thee a great nation, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed,' evidently referred to a very distant future period; and the honour connected with it could not be enjoyed by Abraham during his mortal life.” M. A. B. I think, however, that we have lived to see the spirit of this prophecy fulfilled. The earth has been shaken; another shaking, and time shall be swallowed up in eternity. INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ZECHARIAH. ZECHARIAH, the eleventh of the twelve minor prophets, was son of Berechiah, and grandson of Iddo. He returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel; and began to prophesy in the second year of the reign of Darius, son of Hystaspes, in the year of the world 3484; before Christ, 516; before the vulgar æra, 520; in the eighth month of the holy year; and two months after Haggai had begun to prophesy. These two prophets, with united zeal, encouraged at the same time the people to go on with the work of the temple, which had been discontinued for some years. The time and place of the birth of Zechariah are unknown. Some will have him to have been born at Babylon, during the captivity; others think he was born at Jerusalem, before the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were carried away. Some maintain that he was a priest; but others affirm that he was no priest. Many say he was the immediate son of Iddo; others believe, with much more reason, that he was son of Berechiah, and grandson of Iddo. He has been confounded with one Zechariah, the son of Barachiah, who lived in the time. of Isaiah; and with Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist; which opinion is plainly incongruous. Lastly, he has been thought to be Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom our Saviour mentions, and says he was killed between the temple and the altar; though no such thing is any where said of our prophet. A tomb is shown to this day at the foot of the Mount of Olives, which, it is pretended, belongs to the prophet Zechariah. Dorotheus maintains that he was buried in a place called Bethariah, one hundred and fifty furlongs from Jerusalem. Zechariah is the longest and the most obscure of all the twelve minor prophets. His style is interrupted, and without connexion. His prophecies concerning the Messiah are more particular and express than those of the other prophets. Some modern critics, as Mede and Hammond, have been of opinion that the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of this prophet were written by Jeremiah; because in Matthew, chap. xxvii. 9, 10, under the name of Jeremiah, we find quoted Zechariah (chap. xi. 12); and as the aforesaid chapters make but one continued discourse, they concluded from thence that all three belonged to Jeremiah. But it is much more natural to suppose that, by some unlucky mistake, the name of Jeremiah has slipped into the text of St. Matthew instead of that of Zechariah. The prophet Zechariah exactly foretold the siege of Babylon by Darius, son of Hystaspes. This prince laid siege to that rebellious city at the beginning of the fifth year of his reign, and reduced it at the end of twenty months. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had forecold this calamity, and had admonished the Jews that inhabited there to make their escape when they perceived the time draw nigh. Isaiah says to them, "Go ye forth of Babylon, dee from the Chaldeans; with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob." And Jeremiah says, 'Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he-goats before the flocks." And elsewhere, "Flee out of the midst of Babylon, nd deliver every man his soul; be not cut off in her iniquity: for this is the time of the Lord's vengeance, He will render unto her a recompence.' Lastly, Zechariah, a little before he time of her fall, writes thus to the Jews that were still in this city: "Ho, ho, come orth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the Lord; for I have spread you abroad as INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH. the four winds of heaven, saith the Lord. Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon. For thus saith the Lord of hosts, after the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you, for he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of his eye. For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants; and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me.' It is probable that the Jews took advantage of these admonitions, and returned from Babylon into their country; or, at least, withdrew into a place of more security till the city was taken. We do not hear, either from the history or the prophecies, that they suffered any thing by this siege, or that Darius, son of Hystaspes, bore them any grudge for the revolt of Babylon; which seems to indicate that they had no part in it. The Mohammedans do not distinguish between the prophet Zechariah, and Zachariah the father of John the Baptist. Some of them make him to be descended from David; and others, from Levi. By an anachronism that is still more insupportable, these confound Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, with Mary, or Miriam, the sister of Moses, which they derive even from the Koran itself. The author of Tarik Montekhib relates that, when Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin, the prophet Zechariah could not believe that a child could be born without a father; and that, declaring his sentiments upon this point, the Jews entertained a suspicion of him, and obliged him to betake himself to flight. He withdrew; and hid himself in a hollow oak, which the Jews sawed in two. Such is the ignorance of the Mussulmans as regards the history both of the Old and New Testaments. |