Studies in Zechariah

1. I was but a little displeased. Jehovah is speaking concerning His inheritance that He was, on account of their apostasy and idolatry, but a little displeased. This was primarily true of the Babylonian captivity. It was but for a moment God was angry. It is so now, though the children of Israel have been in dispersion for well-nigh twenty centuries, but still it is true even now. For a small moment have I forgotten thee. In overflowing wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord, thy Redeemer. His displeasure with His people is never final, it is only temporary. This is clearly seen in the entire Word of God. If it were final, if God would be displeased forever with Israel, we might just as well close the Bible, join the higher critics and end in unbelief, apostasy and perdition. I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, but I will not make a full end of thee; but I will correct thee with judgment and will in no wise leave thee unpunished. (Jeremiah xxx: 11.)

2. They have helped forward their affliction. The Lord is now speaking of the nations who are at ease. He holds them responsible for a greater affliction than He really had designed to come upon His people. By their attitude towards chastised Israel they have made their affliction much worse than God meant it to be. Of course, it was true during the seventy years God’s people spent in Babylon, but how much more true is it in the dispersion which has been their lot for so many sad centuries.

Where shall we begin in treating the awful truth which is put here in such simple language? Where shall we find words earnest enough to picture the terrible facts in connection with it and sound a warning for our times? Some time ago a person said, “The Jews are to-day more stiff-necked and blinder than ever before.” Who has made them thus? Surely judicial blindness and hardness of heart; ears which do not hear are given by God, but, alas, the nations, or so-called Christendom, have helped forward their affliction; they have made matters worse a thousand times, and Satan, who hates Israel, has been the author of all things calculated to increase the affliction of poor down trodden Israel. Surely the increased stiff-neckedness and the increased blindness is one which is traceable to the nations. Every reader knows something of the history of the Jews, what it has been since they left the home land – a long, long tale of suffering, tears and blood. Most unjust outrages have been committed against them; torture upon torture; the stake and worse than that; and all in the name of Jesus. It is a shameful history. Many a time Jews, after hearing the Word preached, have stood up and opened in answer this awful book of history with its blood-stained pages, asking the question, “Can He be our Redeemer, whose followers have treated us thus in His name?” And not a few can tell us of their own sufferings in being banished from foreign lands. Hardly a month passes without some new outrage upon the generally harmless and innocent people in Eastern Europe. Cruelty, injustice, wickedness and crime are practiced against them, and thus their affliction has been increased.

The same is true of the counterfeits of the Christian religion. Is it a wonder that the Jew turns away in disgust from religions which demand worship of pictures, statues, holy places, etc.? Satan has used it all to keep Israel from a true knowledge of Him, who is the King of Israel. And in Protestant lands the Jew does so rarely see that pure and true love of Him who came to fulfil the law and in whom God as love has been manifested. Instead of treating the Jew as a brother, beloved for the Father’s sake – nay, for Jesus’ sake, who was a Jew according to the flesh – he has been despised, ridiculed, ostracized and treated as inferior to Gentiles. Still there are worse days coming yet. The nations of Christendom in the past have helped forward their affliction, but Satan, through these very nations, will once more afflict Israel – once more stretch out his hand to touch the nation of destiny. As never before in the history of the world, God’s own chosen people – the Jews – make themselves felt, and correspondingly as never before the Gentile nations are getting ready to rise up against the Jew to down him if it were possible. The enemy, thus prophecy tells us, will try to exterminate the wonderful nation through nations who are doomed to destruction. This is still future. However, these coming events are rapidly approaching. Anti-Semitism is increasing all over the world, and only God’s Spirit and the prayer of the Church keeps back the outbreak which will mark the beginning of Jacob’s trouble. (Jeremiah xxx: 7.)

3. —I am very sore displeased. This is God’s anger with the nations who have sinned against His people. The crowning sin of the nations is Anti-Semitism, which means anti-Bible, anti-Christ and anti-God. If Christendom would believe the Word of God it could never be the enemy of Israel. Our age will end in the judgment of nations, and that judgment will be on account of the sins committed against His people. For behold in those days and in that time when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and will bring them down into the valley of Jehosophat, and I will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage, Israel, when they have scattered among the nations and parted my land. (Joel iii: 1-3.) Haste ye and come all ye nations round about and gather yourselves together thither; cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord; let the nations bestir themselves and come up to the valley of Jehosophat; for there will I sit to judge all nations round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; come, get ye down, for the wine-press is full, the vats overflow, for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon are darkened, the stars withdraw their shining, and the Lord shall roar from Zion and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake; but the Lord will be a refuge unto His people and a stronghold to the children of Israel. (Joel iii: 17, etc.) For behold the Lord will come with fire, and His chariots shall be like the whirlwind, to render His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the Lord plead and by His sword with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many. (Isaiah lxvi: 15.) This judgment of nations is likewise referred to in Matthew xxv. by the lips of our Lord. Generally the last part of that chapter is taken to mean the universal judgment, the great white throne. This is an error. The Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the angels with Him. Thus the passage reads: Then shall He sit on the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and He shall separate them one from another as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats. The judgment takes place and nations are punished and rewarded according to their treatment of the brethren of the Son of Man, the King of Glory.

At that time, when the enemies of Israel are overcome and punished for their wickedness, Israel, once more miraculously saved, will break forth in praise of the Lord and sing the glorious psalms of victory which to-day are still prophetic. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive when their wrath was kindled against us; then the waters would have overwhelmed us, a stream would have gone over our soul; then the proud waters would have gone over our soul. Praise to Jehovah! who has not given us as prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler! The snare is broken and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of Jehovah, who has made heaven and earth. (Psalm cxxiv.)

The words which follow, and which are really the good and comfortable words, contain the divine programme of the restoration of His people Israel. What is mentioned here in a few sentences is given in detail in the fourth and fifth night vision as well as in the closing chapters of the prophet. I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies. This does not mean a spiritual return or a return of God’s mercies to Jerusalem only, but it means likewise His literal return when He appears the second time; and connected with this second appearing of the great Jehovah in Jesus Christ will be seen the Shekinah cloud as Israel had it in the wilderness and the first temple. This is seen in the second chapter. The Lord had withdrawn from His people. I will go away and return to my place. (Hosea v: 15.) For behold your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. (Matthew xxiii: 38, 39.) The Lord being absent in His person from His people, Israel is forsaken, the land desolate. There can be no true restoration of Israel till He has come whose right it is.

So many good people think that the present Zionistic movement of the Jews is that promised salvation for the scattered nation. This is not so. It is an attempted restoration. Here in the good and comfortable words Zechariah hears, the return of the Lord stands first. Then His house is to be built. While it meant in the prophet’s time the building of the second temple, it means in connection with the coming restoration the building of that great millennial temple which Ezekiel saw in visions and describes in detail – the temple which will be indeed a house of prayer to all nations, and the glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former. The rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem is next in order. A line is to be stretched forth upon Jerusalem. The city is enlarged, for from henceforth Jerusalem is to be the centre of the earth. (Ezekiel xxxviii: 12.) My cities in prosperity shall overflow. The blessing will not be confined to the Temple and to Jerusalem, but there will be an overflow, and all the cities in the land will flow over with prosperity. For the Lord shall comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places, and He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. (Isaiah li: 3.)

Oh, happy time! when wilt thou come? Even so come, Lord Jesus, our Lord and Israel’s King! Other visions will show us that Jerusalem will then indeed be a praise in the earth, for many nations will then be joined to the Lord, and the streams of living waters will overflow and bring joy, salvation and healing to the nations around who join in the Hallelujah chorus of Jeshurun.

CHAPTER II

The second night vision. The four horns and the four smiths. The third vision. The man measuring Jerusalem. Restoration and glory of Jerusalem foretold.

The second night vision of Zechariah is closely connected with the first. In the first vision the time is given when the Lord will turn in mercy to Jerusalem – the time when the nations are at ease, and, having helped forward the affliction of His people, are ripe for judgment. The scenes have passed away, and now the prophet lifts his eyes again and he sees four horns. The question he asks of the angel is answered by him, that these are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem. Then four smiths appear, and the angel informs the prophet that these are come to fray them (the four horns), to cast down the horns of the nations which lifted up their horn against the land of Judah to scatter it (chapter i: 18-21.) The four horns are the powerful and proud enemies of the people of God. Why four horns? Some have said because the enemies of Israel have come against the land and Jerusalem from all four cardinal points of the compass, and have scattered the people east and west, north and south. Others mention different nations who were at Zechariah’s time in existence and instrumental in scattering Israel. The horn is a symbol of power and pride, and in prophecy stands for a kingdom and for political world power. The ten horns which Daniel saw on the terrible fourth beast rising from the sea denote ten kingdoms, and in Revelation xvii: 12 we read, “The ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings.” The four horns in this second vision must be therefore kingdoms – world powers. The number four, as it is well known to every student of the prophetic Word, is found twice in the book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar’s great image was divided into four parts, each standing for a world power, namely: the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Graeco-Macedonian and the Roman power. The latter is still in existence and will be till the stone smites the image at its feet and pulverizes it. Daniel’s vision (chapter vii) brings before him four mighty beasts, the last having ten horns, just as the limbs of the image ended in feet with ten toes. With such a revelation in the book of Daniel it is very easy to understand that the four horns can mean nothing else than the same powers of Gentile rule and supremacy existing during the entire time when the kingdom has been taken from Israel. These four world powers are horns. They unite strength and pride, and are bent upon scattering Israel. They are the enemies of Israel, and therefore the enemies of God. And now the four smiths appear on the scene to fray them – to cast down the horns of the nations. Four horns are overcome and broken down completely by four smiths. It does not follow that the four smiths must be four other powers. The vision seems to teach two facts: first, the horns will be broken and cast down; and in the second place, God has for every hostile power which has sinned and sins against his people a corresponding greater power to overcome it, break it into pieces and cast it down. However, we believe the vision will have its fulfillment in the time of Jacob’s trouble. The elements of all the four world powers will then in some way be concerned in the onslaught on Jerusalem – a confederacy of nations; representatives of many nations will come up against Jerusalem, and it will be then that the four horns are broken by the four smiths and the casting down will be done.

The third night vision is one of the most interesting and instructive. As the third one, it forms the climax of the good and comfortable words which were spoken concerning Jerusalem. The number three stands in the Word of God for resurrection, life from the dead. Thus in Hosea, concerning Israel, “After two days Thou wilt revive us, and on the third day Thou wilt raise us up” (Hosea vi: 2). In this third vision Zechariah sees the glorious restoration of Israel, which has been the burden of so many prophecies, and the glory which is connected with that restoration. In this night vision Zechariah hears of a restoration and of a glory which has never yet been fulfilled in the history of God’s people. Those teachers of the Word who see in Zechariah’s night visions nothing but fulfilled prophecy, cannot answer certain questions satisfactorily, and their only refuge must be a spiritualizing of this restoration. Another thought before we take up this third vision. The vision of restoration comes after the enemies of Israel have been cast down. That prophecy might be fulfilled; prophecy about a believing, suffering Jewish remnant; prophecy concerning Jacob’s trouble, etc., a mock restoration, generally termed a restoration in unbelief, is to take place. There can be no doubt whatever that we are privileged to see the beginning of this restoration of part of the Jewish nation to the land of the fathers in unbelief: It is one of the signs of the nearness of that event for which the Church hopes, prays and waits – “our gathering together unto Him.” The world and the lukewarm Christian does not see it, but he who loves the Word and lives in the Word, has eyes to see and a hearing ear and knows what is soon coming. The true restoration, however, will only come as it is seen so clearly in these night visions after the enemies have been overcome, the horns cast down, the image smashed – in other words, after the Lord has come.

We may divide the third night vision into two parts. In the first part a man is seen with a measuring line measuring Jerusalem, and the restoration of the city and its enlargement is promised; and in the other part promises of blessings are given as well as glimpses of the glory which will attend the restoration.

Zechariah sees a man with a measuring line in his hand. The prophet asks him, Whither goest thou? And he answers, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof and what is the length thereof. There is nothing here which indicates that the man who starts out to measure the city is identical with the man on the red horse of the first vision. This man here seems to be only a person appearing to impress the coming enlargement of Jerusalem upon the prophet’s mind. Similar visions where measuring takes place are found in Ezekiel xli, where the temple of the Millennium is measured, and in Revelation xi, where a reed is given to John to measure the temple of God, which is the temple standing in Jerusalem during the time of Jacob’s trouble. Here in Zechariah’s vision it is the measuring of Jerusalem. What Jerusalem is it? Of course, the Jerusalem in Palestine, which will, in its restoration, become the centre of the earth. In the new earth, after the thousand years, there will be another Jerusalem in the earth, the new Jerusalem come down out of heaven from God (Rev. xxi: 2). Of this new Jerusalem we read, “And the city lieth four square, and the length thereof is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with a reed twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal” (Rev. xxi: 16). Here is the measurement of the new Jerusalem: As long as it is broad and extending upward into the air. What a wonderful city that will be, the glorious centre of a new heaven and a new earth, our home for all eternity! The man in Zechariah’s third vision measures only the length and the breadth of the city because in the coming restoration of Jerusalem there is no height to be measured.

Now follows the appearing of another angel who meets with the one who had been speaking to Zechariah, and he brings from the throne of God a message for the prophet. He said, Run, speak to this young man saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, by reason of the multitude of men and cattle therein. The influx of men and cattle to Jerusalem will be so enormous that the city must be enlarged and it will spread out into the plain. Another prophet, the seer of Israel’s glorious future, Isaiah, has spoken likewise of this enlargement in the following beautiful words: “As for thy waste and desolate places, and thy land which has been destroyed, surely now shalt thou be too strait for the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children of thy bereavement shall yet say in thine ears, The place is too strait for me, give place to me that I may dwell” (Isaiah xlix: 19, 20). Notice the city is to be inhabited as villages. This denotes the peace which Jerusalem will then enjoy. A blessed security for the city which for so long a time was trodden down by the Gentiles. There will be no walls. No need of walls to shelter men and cattle, for the enemies of Israel have been scattered and broken down, the warfare of Jerusalem is accomplished. At the end of the Millennium, which will have been a thousand years of unbroken peace for the land which for thousands of years knew no peace, Satan, with Gog and Magog, will come against the land and its inhabitants. This last final struggle the Holy Spirit revealed through the prophet Ezekiel (chapters xxxviii and xxxix). It is interesting to notice there the condition of the land and the people as the enemy who comes up against the land finds them: Thus says the Lord God: It shall come to pass in that day, that things shall come into thy (enemy) mind, and thou shalt devise an evil device: and thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages. I will go to them that are quiet, that dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates: to take the spoil and to take the prey: to turn thine hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and against the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the centre of the earth (Ezekiel xxxviii: 10-12). What a wonderful Word our God has given us! How everything is harmony! Zechariah’s vision shows what Jerusalem will be in the beginning of the Millennium, and Ezekiel, by the Spirit of God, puts before us the same conditions at the end of the thousand years.

The reason of Jerusalem’s peace, security and prosperity will be the glory of the Lord. This glory will be in the midst of the city, and will also form a wall of fire around the city. For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about the city, and I will be the glory in the midst of her. Glory and defence are here combined. They always go together. This has been in a degree already the happy lot of Israel in the past, for He guided them with His glory. It was a cloud by day and a fire at night by which the Lord had revealed Himself to His people, and out of that glory cloud He protected them and punished their enemies. How much greater will that glory and defence be in that time of fullness when Israel is no longer a disobedient, stiff-necked people, but the holy people, the kingly nation. What a glory that will be when the King comes back with His kingly glory, attended by the many, many brethren who have suffered with Him and now share His glory! What a glory that will be when He, who is our life, will be manifested, and we with Him in His glory! It will be unspeakable glory. Cry aloud and shout thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee. And it shall come to pass, that He that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the blast of judgment and burning. And the Lord will create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night, for over all the glory shall be spread a canopy. There shall be a pavilion for a shadow in the day time from the heat, and for a refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain. (Isaiah iv.) This glory during the Millennium will no doubt not only hover over the land, but will be visible over the entire earth, and the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters the sea.

It is interesting to see how Talmudical literature falls in with these thoughts. A few quotations from these old writings of the Jews will no doubt be acceptable to the reader. Rabbi Isaac Napcha says: The Holy One said, I kindled a fire in Jerusalem (in wrath) Lament. iv: 11, and I am going to build her up again with fire, as it is said, “I will be unto her, saith the Lord, a wall of fire round about. He that kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.” The Pesikta Rabethi has this: What is this: “And for a Glory I am in the midst of her.” Is it not the case that the glory of the Holy One is none other than on high, as it is said, “His glory is above the heavens.” The glory is in order to show every creature in the universe the superior excellence of Israel, since it is on their account that the Holy One brings down the Shekinah from the highest heaven and lets it dwell in the earth.

We have now in the vision a continued description of that happy condition of Jerusalem and all that is connected with it. First, we notice the summons for the Jews who are then still in dispersion. Ho, ho, flee from the land of the North, saith the Lord, for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the Lord. Ho, Zion, escape that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon.

It is not to be expected that when the glory appears and the King of Glory comes again and His feet stand there on the Mount of Olives, that the entire Jewish nation will then live in the land. This will not be the case; only a part of the nation was restored in unbelief, and in the midst of them a believing remnant, whose faith, suffering and salvation we hope to describe later. Two-thirds of all the inhabitants of the land will be swept away in the great tribulation. After the Lord has come, the others will be restored. It is significant that the land of the North is mentioned here, Late; in the eighth chapter, we read: “I will save my people from the East country and from the West country,” but those living in the land of the North come first. Of course, Babylon was meant as far as this vision had anything to do with the restoration which had taken place in part from the Babylonian captivity. The North country, which figures in the coming restoration, is not Babylon, but another land. Russia is directly north of Palestine, and in this northern land, the territory once inhabited by Gog and Magog, about one half of the Jews now living have their homes. About six millions of Jews are living to-day in European and Asiatic Russia. Their deplorable condition in that land of the North is well known, and there, likewise, the national awakening has been the most marked and Zionism has its most ardent advocates. A large multitude is getting ready in the North country for a mighty exodus. Like their forefathers in Egypt, they will flee from the land of the North, and thus prophecy is literally to be fulfilled.