Zechariah 12

14. The phrase “the brotherhood between Judah and Israel” is a historic allusion to the case of the two nations after the revolt under Jeroboam. Under their mutual relations, brotherhood was peace; brotherhood broken was civil war. Hence the breaking of this second staff or crook symbolized the withdrawal of those providential agencies which had kept the people together in friendly relations with each other. Those agencies being withdrawn, intestine discoid at once broke out, hostile parties arose, and civil war became their most fearful curse. The history of the period, commencing shortly before the invasion by the Romans, and continuing till the city lay in ruins, is a mournful confirmation of this symbolic prophecy.

15-17. The object here is to show the character, life and doom of the faithless shepherd, including under this term those priests, scribes and magistrates whom the Good Shepherd cut off “in one month” (verse 8). The judgments on this worthless and wicked shepherd fall on those bodily organs most useful to the shepherd, the arm and the eye. As he would not use these in the case of the flock, the Lord withers them utterly and forever. H. C.

Since, through the misapplication of his power and his understanding, signified by his “arm” and his “right eye,” the flock are subjected to desolation or the sword; therefore, as of strict justice, he shall be punished with a deprivation at least of those faculties which he so fatally misused. Blayney.

12:1 THE burden of the word of the LORD concerning Israel.

Thus saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him: Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of reeling unto all the peoples round about, and upon Judah also shall it be in the siege against Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples; all that burden themselves with it shall be sore wounded; and all the nations of the earth shall be gathered together against it. In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the peoples with blindness. And the chieftains of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength in the LORD of hosts their God. In that day will I make the chieftains of Judah like a pan of fire among wood, and like a torch of fire among sheaves; and they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall yet again dwell in 7 her own place, even in Jerusalem. The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem be not magni- 8 fied above Judah. In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be 9 as God, as the angel of the LORD before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I 10 will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they shall look unto me whom they have pierced: and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitter- 11 ness for his firstborn. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the 12 mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of 13 the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Levi apart, 14 and their wives apart; the family of the Shimeites apart, and their wives apart; all the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.

13:1 In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the in- 2 habitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to 3 pass out of the land. And it shall come to pass that, when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD; and his father and his mother that begat him shall 4 thrust him through when he prophesieth. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he prophesieth; neither shall they 5 wear a hairy mantle to deceive: but he shall say, I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the 6 ground; for I have been made a bondman from my youth. And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds between thine arms? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

7. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn mine 8 hand upon the little ones. And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, 9 two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.

THE closing section—12-14—is entitled “The burden of the word of Jehovah for Israel.” Is- rael here is the nation at large, not Israel as dis- tinct from Judah. The prophet beholds the near approach of troublous times, when Jerusa- lem should be hard pressed by enemies. But in that day Jehovah shall come to save them, and all the nations which gather themselves against Jerusalem shall be destroyed. At the same time the deliverance shall not be from outward enemies alone. God will pour out upon them a spirit of grace and supplications. There shall be a deep and true repentance (12: 1-13:6). Then follows a short apostrophe to the sword of the enemy to turn against the shepherds of the people; and a further an- nouncement of searching and purifying judg- ments. The prophecy closes with a grand and stirring picture (chap. 14). All nations are gath- ered together against Jerusalem; and seem already sure of their prey. Half of their cruel work has been accomplished, when Jehovah Himself appears on behalf of His people. He goes forth to war against the adversaries of His people. He establishes His kingdom over all the earth. All nations that are still left shall come up to Jerusalem, as the great centre of religious worship, and the city from that day forward shall be a holy city. Dic. B.

Chap. 12. This chapter manifestly opens a new subject. The first leading inquiry should respect its general scope and spirit, and the period of time to which it relates. In chap. 11 the Jews of our Saviour’s time reject Him, their offered Messiah, and bring upon their city and nation an avalanche of ruin. Now the question may be supposed to arise, Is the king- dom of the Messiah therefore utterly broken down? To this inquiry, chaps. 12, 13 reply: By no means. The Lord has yet a “Judah,”

and a “Jerusalem,” and a “House of David:” He will redeem them from their external enemies (see 12:2-9); and what is yet more to the purpose, He will pour upon them a spirit of grace, supplication and penitence, which shall make them in a far higher and nobler sense His people, and shall insure their glorious prosperity as His people and kingdom.

There is manifestly a close analogy between the order of subjects in the first six chapters (made up of a series of visions) on the one hand, and chaps. 7-14 (not such visions) on the other. As chaps. 1-4 promise good to Zion, so do chaps. 7-10. As chap. 5, on the other hand, predicts the sin and doom of the guilty, so does chap. 11; and then as chap. 6:1-8 returns again to God’s loving care and protection of His people, and specifically as manifested against hostile nations, so does this chap. 12, and also chap. 14. As the last part of chap. 6 is eminently Messianic, predicting also the ultimate reception of the nations into His kingdom, so we find the same idea in these chaps. 12-14, and especially in chap. 14. Manifestly we are in chap. 12 borne on beyond the date of chap. 9, for there the Lord was protecting His people against Alexander and His Syrian successors; here against “all nations” (verses 2, 3, 9); and, moreover, here we have passed the crucifixion of Christ (which is essentially involved in chap. 11), for the people bewail their guilt in that act (see verse 10). The location of these events in time must therefore be onward, after the advent of Messiah.

It is a question of no trifling importance whether the terms “Israel,” “Judah,” “Jerusalem,” “the house of David,” are to be taken here literally or figuratively. Is “Judah” in these chapters (12-14) the very Judah of Zechariah’s time; are her people the lineal descendants of Abraham; and does the lineal Jew here, as then and there, represent and embody the earthly kingdom of God? Is Jerusalem still, as of old, her capital, and the centre and throne of Messiah’s kingdom? Do the Gentile hosts besiege her literally, as the Chaldeans had done so recently when Zechariah was writing? I cannot think so, for these reasons: 1. With the events predicted (chap. 11), the literal Judah and Jerusalem ceased to be the recognized visible Church and kingdom of God on earth. It is the precise purpose of chap. 11 to affirm this fact. Consequently, ever since the apostolic age, Church history has taken on a new type. No Church historian thinks of looking for the Christian Church in the Jewish line. 2. Whatever Old Testament prophecy is clearly shown to refer to the New Testament age must, by all legitimate rules of interpretation, be construed in accordance with New Testament light, with Gospel ideas, with the new principles of Messiah’s kingdom, then first fully brought out. Hence the Judah and Jerusalem of Gospel prophecy, standing as types and symbols of Messiah’s kingdom, must be construed, not literally, but figuratively—just as “the temple” is no longer, as of old, the one place of God’s dwelling, and of all acceptable worship, but the Christian “temple” is the living pious heart. 3. That the Jews shall return again to Judaism restored after the order of Moses; that Jerusalem shall again become the living centre of all visible worship, and of all the true religion of the world—this worship conforming itself, as of old, to the Mosaic ritual; and that, as such, Judah shall be invaded and Jerusalem besieged by all the Gentile nations of the earth, according to the literal construction of chaps. 12, 14, are not things even supposable. If the New Testament is held to be of any account, Judaism, after the order of Moses, is dead, and those ideas must hence be rejected. For, practically, that state of things must ignore all the Christianity of the Gentile world—all the actual Christianity of the whole world as it now is, and as it has been since the death of Christ. Can any sane man believe that all the Gentile Christian churches are at some future period to be annihilated; the religious world be put back to its condition and relations as in the age of Zechariah; bloody sacrifices and passovers and feasts of tabernacles be restored, and Judah and Jerusalem stand as the sole representatives of the Church of God upon the earth? Or can it be believed that all the great nations of the present or of any future age shall gather in one vast crusade against the converted Christian Jews in their own land to besiege Jerusalem, and to exterminate all true religion from the face of the earth? The literal construction of chaps. 12-14 would hold us to such results: therefore the literal construction must be promptly rejected. 4. Nor let it be thought that we do violence to the laws of language when we reject the literal and adopt the figurative sense under such circumstances as these. Let the reader ask himself, How should a Jewish prophet, writing in the midst of Judaism, with no other history of the Church before him, and no other conception of the Church in his mind but that of Judaism, with no other first readers but Jews, write of the future Church and kingdom of God in the Gospel age? Shall we demand that he write of the Christian

Church and of millennial times in New Testament words and phrases, and with fully developed New Testament ideas? Let us remember that the time had not come for such ideas. Let us recall the striking fact that more than three years’ personal communion with Jesus Himself, and no small amount of His personal labor, quite failed to convert His disciples from Jewish to Christian ideas; that only the shock given to the old system by His death, aided by the subsequent teaching of the Holy Ghost, availed, and then rather slowly, to effect this great change. How absurd, then, to expect that the Hebrew prophets and their first readers could readily reach those new ideas and take in the sense of Christian as contrasted with Jewish phraseology! Plainly, those Jewish prophets and their first readers must think of Christianity only as of Judaism extended and purified; must conceive of a world converted only as a world coming up to Jerusalem to worship; and must conceive of irreligion, infidelity, every form of hostility to Christ, as the gathering of nations for war against Jerusalem and Judah, to crush them from the face of the earth. Hence when we speak of Jewish costume and drapery as clothing Gospel ideas in these sublimely grand and glorious prophecies, we are not parting company with common sense. We are simply interpreting in harmony with the stern necessities of their condition. Jewish minds, with no other than Jewish training, must think so and speak so, by the inevitable laws of human thought.

Consequently, it is no longer a question whether, in these remaining prophecies of Zechariah (chaps. 12-14), we are to find blessings for the Gentile world; even the extension of the Gospel to all the nations of the earth. If these prophecies relate to times subsequent to the death of Christ, they must predict the prosperity of the Christian Church, the conversion of the world to Immanuel. It might be a much more difficult question (were it needful to be settled) whether the lineal Jew is here, and if so, where and by what marks we shall identify him. If he were named here alongside of his brother Gentile, as Paul names them in Rom. 11, it would be easy to make this discrimination. But it is at least supposable that in the greater part of these three chapters there is no intention to discriminate between Jew and Gentile. If so, how can it be expected that a discreet interpreter should make any distinction? Interpreters should not be asked to make prophecy, nor to put into it what was not there before; but only to unfold the sense already there. It may be well to remember also that the change wrought in the transition from Judaism to Christianity, fitly described as a “breaking down of the middle wall of partition between us” (Eph. 2:14), aimed not to thrust the Jew out, but to let the Gentile in; to abolish henceforth all distinction as to Christian rights and privileges, and make both one henceforth in Christ Jesus. Why, then, may not Old Testament prophecy assume precisely this state of the future kingdom of the Messiah?

Chap. 12 is naturally in two parts, of which the first (verses 1-9) represents Judah as invaded and Jerusalem as besieged by the combined powers of all nations; but the Lord delivers them. The second part (verses 10-14) represents the house of David and the people of Jerusalem as deeply penitent for their sins, especially the sin of crucifying their Messiah.

1. This prophecy is a “burden upon Israel” only to a limited extent, for the assault of all nations upon her and the siege of Jerusalem were transient, ending soon in complete victory on Zion’s side. That help comes from the Lord alone, who is mighty to save, is indicated by the allusion to His great and glorious works of creation. H. C.

Which stretcheth forth the heavens, etc. This solemn assertion of the creative power of Jehovah is an implicit claim to Divine inspiration. He who has done such wonders in creation has power to give effect to the words spoken by His prophet and messenger. (Cf. Isa. 42:5; 44:24; Jer. 10:12, 13; Amos 4:13; 9:6.) B. C.

2. All the nations are thought of as gathered against Judah and Jerusalem. In the last clause the sense is, that what the Lord had said of Jerusalem should be true of Judah also in the siege of her capital. H. C.

3. In that day. When the enemies of Judah and Jerusalem shall be brought to judgment; and their designs against the city and people of Jehovah frustrated. B. C.—Jerusalem is compared to a stone of great weight, which, being too heavy for those who attempt to lift it up or remove it, falls back upon them and crushes them to pieces. Blayney.

4. The warring enemies of God’s people come on horses, this animal being associated with human pride and rebellion against God. This astonishment and madness are among the effects of the cup of intoxication given to God’s enemies to drink. Note the beautiful antithesis. God smites with blindness the warring powers of His foes, but opens His own eyes wide on His people to see and provide for their wants.

5-7. Only the Lord will make Judah safe and mighty against her foreign foes, as a hearth of fire to its fuel, which itself burns not, but only facilitates the burning of the wood, or as a torch of fire to a sheaf, which consumes it with no danger to itself. So shall they devour the gathered nations who assail them. The Lord saves Judah first that He may forestall the pride of self-reliance on the strength and glory of the city. So vital to true religion is it to crucify all human glorying, to cherish the spirit of absolute dependence on the Lord alone, and to give Him forevermore all the glory as the source of all spiritual life and of all power for good to Zion.

8. The Lord defends Jerusalem, yet not without their own concurrent agency. The doctrine that God saves His people must not be abused to human inaction. He saves rather by augmenting and reanimating their strength than by superseding their agency. So here, the feeble shall be as David, who is the type of a most athletic warrior; and the men of David’s cast and power shall be now as God, even as the angel of Jehovah—the uncreated one who had so often appeared in forms of majesty and power. This is a strong figure, and must represent a vast augmentation of spiritual force in the people of God.

10. These terms are strongly in contrast with those in verse 9. God will seek to pour out vengeance and ruin on those hostile nations; but grace, mercy and blessings on Jerusalem. To “pour out” is to bestow in large and abundant measure. It is the usual phrase for the effusions of the Holy Spirit, as in Joel 2:28, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh.” In this passage, “the Spirit” is the Holy Spirit of God, and not a quality or grace in man. It is thought of, however, as producing piety and prayer in the hearts of men, and hence is called “the Spirit of grace and of supplications”—meaning that Divine Spirit, whose special work it is to beget as to one’s self a tender, prayerful frame of mind, and as to others a loving compassion for the souls of men, and earnest prayer for their salvation. “Grace” in man stands for that which is specially pleasing to God, and which secures His favor. In the case of sinners, the first buddings of grace are penitence and prayer, a broken and contrite spirit, which inspires prayer both for our own pardon and for mercy on other sinners also. The close connection between the gift of this Spirit, begetting such grace and supplications, and the “looking upon Him whom they have pierced,” shuts us up to this sense of the paspage—its leading thought being the conversion of sinners. To “look on Me whom they have pierced” can mean nothing else than thinking of their guilt in crucifying the Lord of glory. They now look upon the Crucified One with bitter penitence and grief for the sin of piercing His heart, and with imploring cries for pardon. Thousands have felt this bitterness of grief for their sins against the Crucified One, made doubly keen by the sense of His enduring and forgiving love, despite of guilt so black and ingratitude so vile! This mourning for sin is as when one mourns over an only son, lost in death; its bitterness is as that over a first-born. H. C.

The speaker here must be the great God Himself; for He says in the beginning of the verse, “I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications;” and who can send down this Spirit from heaven but the great King of heaven, the everlasting Jehovah? What prophet or angel would dare to say that he would send Him? But then we read here that He who thus pours forth the Spirit has been “pierced;” and this represents Him in another and lower character, as a creature, a vulnerable man. And by this seeming contradiction, the text discovers to us at once who is speaking to us. It is the Lord Jesus Christ; He who is God and man in one flesh; He who is so high that He can give the Holy Spirit to whomsoever He pleases, and who was once so low that the vilest arm on the earth might wound Him; and wounded He was. “They pierced My hands and My feet,” He says. John settles this point beyond all dispute. “One of the soldiers,” he says, “with a spear pierced His side;” and then he immediately tells us why he was allowed of God to do so—that this very Scripture should be fulfilled, “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.” C. Bradley.

I will pour the Spirit. There are, perhaps, none of us who do not know from personal experience that ever and anon there come to the soul times of visitation—hours of softened feeling and deepened thoughtfulness, when the things of time lose their hold upon us, and the eternal world rolls nearer, with all its grand realities, to the Spirit’s eye. And are not these the springtides of the soul, the seasons propitious to the spiritual husbandry, every moment of which gathers round it the importance of that eternal harvest to which the rapid hours are bringing us? Are not these, in one word, the times when the spiritual gales blow freshest and fairest from the heavens, and the soul, instinct with life, feels every expanded energy yielding to the almost sensible impulses of the Spirit of Truth and Love? How precious such moments! Who that reflects on their worth would not long and pray and watch for their coming, and, while they continue, strain every energy to catch to the last breath the blessing which they bring? Caird.

The prophet declares that the future restoration of the communion of the covenant people with the Lord will be effected on His part by the outpouring of the spirit of grace and supplication, and on that of the people by contrition and repentance. Thus much is clear in this much misused passage, that the piercing of one, in whose person the Lord is as it were Himself pierced, is spoken of. The pierced One must be one who may be likened to King Josiah, with whom, when he was mortally wounded in the valley of Megiddo, the last hope of the nation fell. And who else can this be than that Shepherd and fellow of Jehovah, who, according to 13:7, fell by the sword after the last effort of deliverance which God made through Him had proved vain, nay, had been shamefully requited (11:4-14). Justice was so far done to the Messianic interpretation by the older Jewish theology, that since the acknowledgment of a suffering and dying son of David could not from its standpoint be conceded, it invented for this passage a second Messiah, “the Messiah, the son of Joseph,” who was to fall in the conflict with Gog and Magog. O.

They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced. John plainly quotes these words (chap. 19:37) and applies them to our blessed Saviour, of whom alone they can be understood, for none could speak them but One who was both God and man. That He was God is plain from the former part of the verse, “I will pour upon the house of David . . . the spirit of grace and of supplications;” for the spirit of grace is not at the disposal of any creature, and it is only in the power of God to bestow it. That He was man appears from the following words, “Me whom they have pierced;” for if He had not been man He would not have been capable of being pierced by them. These words therefore were spoken by Christ, the only person in the world that ever was or pretended to be both God and man. Bp. Beveridge.

The Jews themselves have applied this text to the Messiah. David before described His sufferings under the figure of “piercing His hands and His feet” (Ps. 22:16); and Isaiah foretold He should be “wounded for our transgressions” (chap. 53:5). W. Lowth.

In these words, as applied by the apostle, reference is made by the prophetic spirit of Jesus as the Incarnate Son, very God and very man (John 19:34; Rev. 1:7). “They shall look upon Me . . . they shall mourn for Him.” In Isaiah mention is made of His death, but not by whom He is slain; here it is ascribed to His own people. Andrews.

Whom they have pierced. John applies this passage to the piercing of the side of our Lord upon the cross, and to the attractive power which the spectacle of Christ crucified exercises upon “all kindreds of the earth,” when those who have pierced Him with their sins turn to Him in contrition and faith, and look to Him as the Israelites looked upon the brazen serpent, and were saved. B. C.

The “consummation of the ages” was reached in the crucifixion of the Son of God. The sacrifice of atonement among the Jews summarized and gave efficacy to all the rest. In that great rite the high priest gathered up and carried forward through the veil, and to a result, the divers services which otherwise had been incipient and incomplete. The liturgic element in Abel’s sacrifice; the covenant in Abraham’s; the redemption in the Passover lamb; the propitiatory in the “sin offering” of the outer court—all blend and are crowned in the “great day” of Israel’s atonement. So Christ becomes “temple,” “altar,” “high priest,” “veil,” and “offering,” “all and in all.” Abel, Melchizedek and Aaron—bullock, scapegoat and incense—so unlike in themselves, contribute their single elements to an accordant harmony in one cross, in which all contradictions are reconciled. J. B. T.

With the Christian believer, at the feet of “Christ crucified,” will the Jew yet find a place to bow, in brokenness of heart, and in humbled and lively faith, and obtain pardon, peace and salvation. His nation, with all the Gentile nations—blessed be God, whose promises fail not!—shall yet be assembled around the cross of Christ Jesus. They whose fathers said, “Away with Him! away with Him! crucify Him! crucify Him!” and imprecated His blood upon themselves and upon their children, through infinite grace shall yet behold and rejoice in His as “a name which is above every name,” “Immanuel, God with us;” and in Christ Jesus, shining in glory unspeakable to their eyes, even as He who is “called Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” Anon.