conclusion that as the great disaster happened by God's providence, so all future developments are subject to Him.

The fact that the judgement was past when the apocalyptic Prophet delivered his prophecy supplies the explanation of the extreme brevity of the description of this judgement in xii, 2 and xiv. I, 2. He passes on quickly to the consideration of the present condition of his people: how the threatenings of the nations are to be met; how Judah is to be purified and restored. His problems are similar to those which Zechariah himself faced in i. 18-21; v. I—II; al. The cleansing and preservation of his people and the full restoration of Jerusalem to be the city of JEHOVAH and the religious capital of all the nations are the true subjects of the Apocalyptist's pictures.

His prophecy is a picture or series of pictures of the allegorical kind: the details he gives are chiefly valuable as artistic touches not as literal representations. In manner Zechariah the disciple differs from Zechariah the prophet as a picture-in-words differs from the record of a vision, but in matter the two agree. Both hold up the Jerusalem of the Future as the ideal to be grasped by the faith of the men of the Present. They both "believe in the (Jewish) Church."

In conclusion it may be said that the two halves of the book of Zechariah are connected much more closely both in time and in subject than the two halves of Isaiah. Zech. ix.—xiv. is definitely the sequel of Zech. i.—viii. There is no such relation between Isa. xl.-lxvi. and Isa. i.—xxxix. Deutero-Isaiah was separated in time from Isaiah by some 150 years, and during this period the whole condition of the Chosen People was utterly changed. The author of Zech. ix. xiv. may on the contrary have been the personal disciple of the prophet Zechariah, and his immediate successor in the office. Therefore the title "DeuteroZechariah" which some1 use suggests a misleading analogy, and should be avoided.

1 B. Stade, Deuterozacharja, Z.A. T. W., 1881-2; and B. Duhm, Deuterosacharja, Z.A.T.W., 1911.

§ 4.

THE TEACHING OF ZECHARIAH AND ITS
PRESUPPOSITIONS.

The book of Zechariah might almost be described as a compendium of Old Testament Religion, or at least of Prophetical Religion. In it is seen Judaism almost at its highest, standing ready to serve as an Introduction to Christianity.

Not that even this short book is perfectly homogeneous in the religious ideas which underlie it. Rather it illustrates the truth of the statement with which the Epistle to the Hebrews opens, that God spake of old "by divers portions and in divers manners." The first portion of Zechariah (chs. i.—viii.) differs somewhat from the second (chs. ix.-xiv.) in the form of its religious teaching. This first portion is here first considered. The prophetic "Creed" which can be reconstructed from it is remarkably full; it may be stated under the following heads.

I. THE DOCTRINE OF THE NATURE OF GOD HELD BY ZECHARIAH. Zechariah is not a theologian, but a prophet; his function is to warn and to encourage; his sphere is practical religion. But his addresses to the people are based on certain beliefs as to the nature and the working of the God in whose name he speaks. What then, we may ask, were these beliefs?

But first it must be noted that the beliefs are convictions. The Prophet speaks as a messenger who knows well from whom he comes. JEHOVAH has sent him. And if any had challenged Zechariah with Pharaoh's question, Who is JEHOVAH (Exod. v. 2), the Prophet would have been ready with an answer. JEHOVAH was He who had sent to Judah the earlier prophets with warnings which had been abundantly justified by the events of the Captivity (Zech. i. 1-6). Zechariah is so strongly possessed with conscious. ness of the God of Israel, that he is almost unconscious in his confession of Him. All his teaching is based on the conviction that there is a God who watched over Israel in the past, and watches still to chastise or to bless according to Israel's need.

In the three opening verses (vv. 2—4; v. I contains the Superscription only) Zechariah uses the name JEHOVAH no fewer than six times. This emphatic use is of course significant; the Prophet speaks as a restorer of old ways; he seeks to bring his people back to a more earnest loyalty to the God whom they know. He makes no vague references (after the manner of Greek moralists) to the gods" or "the Divinity," but he recalls his people to their duty to JEHOVAH their God and the God of their fathers. For Zechariah and the prophets there is no unknown God; JEHOVAH is a person and known through the history of Israel.

But Zechariah does not think of JEHOVAH merely as the national God. Had this been the case he would not have felt the need of using any other name beside JEHOVAH, the "proper" name (as it may be called) of Israel's God. But in fact a double name JEHOVAH-Zebaoth ("the LORD of hosts," E.V.) is constantly in the mouth of both Haggai and Zechariah; cp. Hag. i. 2, note; Zech. xiv. 9, note. In this name two conceptions of God are united. As peculiarly the God of Israel He is called JEHOVAH; as filling all the Universe and possessing all the power and authority ascribed by the heathen to the heavenly bodies he is styled Zěbāōth1. The LXX perceiving this have rightly rendered Zebaoth by Tavток páтwp, “Ruler of all things." This rule, Zechariah teaches, is actively exercised. The chariots of JEHOVAH go through the whole earth, like the messengers of a king, and the LORD Himself decides the fate both of Jerusalem and of the nations which oppress her.

Further, when Zechariah describes JEHOVAH as acting specially on behalf of his people, he sometimes veils his language by speaking of the agent as the Angel of JEHOVAH. This Angel of JEHOVAH is no angel in the ordinary sense,

دو

1 So when Zechariah ascribes to JEHOVAH "seven eyes it is most probable that he is implicitly claiming for the one true God the seven-fold power ascribed by the Babylonians to the Pleiades (cp. Job xxxviii. 31) and also to the "planets" as known to them (i.e. the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). On the planets and the connexion of the number" seven see H. Zimmern in E. Schrader, die Keilinschriften, pages 620 ff.

but he is JEHOVAH Himself "present in definite time and particular place1." Yet separate rôles are ascribed to JEHOVAH and His Angel in Zechariah. Thus in Zech. i. 12 the Angel of JEHOVAH addresses JEHOVAH in intercessory prayer for Jerusalem, and in Zech. iii. 6, 7 the Angel introduces his promise to the high priest with the formula, "Thus saith JEHOVAH." Thus the Angel of JEHOVAH acts as a kind of Divine mediator for his people with JEHOVAH. This subtle distinction is carried further by later Jewish thought in the Midrash2 and the Targum, in which the Quality of Justice (Heb. middath haddin) is distinguished from the Quality of Mercy (Heb. middath rahămīm), and both are personified. With the latter we may certainly compare the Angel of JEHOVAH who pleads for mercy on Jerusalem.

Very important is Zechariah's teaching as to the spirit of God. The "spirit" represents in the Prophet's teaching the Divine energy which brings great things to pass. It is not personified. Zechariah contemplates the tremendous material force of the nations which have oppressed Judah, but he does not blench before the prospect, but rather insists that the spirit of JEHOVAH is sufficient (unaided by human means) to meet and overcome this force. He, like Isaiah, is the prophet of the Invisible. When the Jews trusted in Pharaoh to save them from Sennacherib, Isaiah warned them that the Egyptians were "men and not God, and their horses flesh, and not spirit" (Isa. xxxi. 3). So two centuries later when the Jews hoped that wars and tumults within the empire of Darius would give them the opportunity of establishing their old independence by force of arms, Zechariah urged upon them afresh the older prophet's lesson. His message to the house of David was, “Not by an army, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith JEHOVAHZebaoth" (iv. 6). The world is governed and events are ordered by an invisible divine Ruler; such is Zechariah's teaching.

Zechariah taught further that the character of JEHOVAH 1 A. B. Davidson, Theology of O.T., pp. 297-8. 2 e.g. Midrash Rabbah, ch. xii. § 15.

is moral. Among the Gentiles on the contrary some deities were unmoral, in that they did good and evil according to their caprice, and because they demanded from their worshippers simply the performance of religious rites apart from the possession of any moral qualities, while other deities were positively immoral in that they accepted forms of worship which were cruel or licentious. But Zechariah gives teaching wholly different. JEHOVAH is not to be appeased with formal fasts, however severe, since He desires righteous action and merciful conduct (vii. 3-10). JEHOVAH is righteous; He is subject to no caprice. When His own people sin, He punishes them with a punishment corresponding with their grievous fault, even with a captivity of seventy years (i. 12). When their chastisement is accomplished, He receives them again. When the Gentiles add to the prescribed punishment, the Gentiles in turn become. guilty (i. 15).

Zechariah's teaching on the FORGIVENESS OF SINS Springs directly from his teaching as to the character of JEHOVAH. JEHOVAH will forgive the sin of Judah and restore Judah to His favour on condition of repentance and amendment of life. The teaching of Zechariah is as definite on this point as that of Ps. li. JEHOVAH does not accept sacrifice as a satisfaction for sin. The Prophet describes sacrifice in terms which are startling in the mouth of a Jew. He reminds his hearers that sacrifice had a carnal side; the victim supposed to be given to God was eaten by the worshippers themselves: "When ye eat, and when ye drink, is it not ye that eat, and ye that drink?" (vii. 6). Zechariah is a true prophet in the emphasis which he lays on spiritual religion. He is interested indeed in the rebuilding of the Temple, but chiefly because it is a pledge of JEHOVAH'S 'return" to His people with mercy and favour (i. 16, 17). ·

2. ZECHARIAH'S TEACHING AS TO THE FUTURE. It is important to remember that Zechariah is the prophet of Judah's restoration. When the exiles returned from Babylon, what were their prospects-material and spiritualfor the future? The territory of Judah was cut short on every side, Jerusalem was full of ruins and deserted by its