Zechariah 4

I waked me. Or, “aroused me,” from the meditations suggested by the preceding vision.

2 candlestick. “lampstand.”

seven pipes to the seven lamps. The Hebrew idiom is different from ours, and the meaning is “seven pipes to the lamps,” or one pipe to each lamp. The seven lamps indicate perfect light.

3 two olive trees. Not as a reservoir of oil, which might be emptied, but a living and inexhaustible supply. Cp. Rev. xi. 4.

6. Not by might, nor by power. Let not your weakness and poverty dishearten you in rebuilding the Temple. His providence and grace will furnish unlooked-for supplies; just as the unseen oil in the trees and in the bowl feeds the lamps. Your difficulties shall vanish, and your work shall be completed with grateful joy (7).

This promise of Divine power to overcome difficulties has often been fulfilled in the lives of individual Christians and in the history of the Church, especially in modern missions. In India, China, Japan, Uganda, Fiji, Madagascar, and many other countries, the mountain has become a plain.

7 headstone. “Top-stone.”

10 [with] those seven, etc. Rather, “And those seven eyes of Jehovah, those that run to and fro in all the earth, rejoice and see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel”: cp. R.V. God’s all-watchful providence (iii. 9; Prov. xx. 3) beholds with joy and favour the work of Zerubbabel; and however some may “despise” the small beginning. He will take care that the work shall be gloriously completed.

14 the two anointed ones (Heb., “two sons of oil”). Some suppose these “two who supplied oil” to be Zerubbabel and Joshua—symbolising the civil government and the priesthood. Calvin thinks that they denote, in general, the abundance and constancy with which God supplies grace to His people.