ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF.
The book of Zechariah consists of four general divisions: (1) Introduction. The introduction or inau gural discourse (ch. 1:1-6).
(2) A Series of Nine Visions, extending on wards to ch. vii, communicated to the prophet in the third month after his installation. These vis ions were: I. A rider on a roan horse among the myrtle trees, with his equestrian attendants, who report to him the peace of the world, symbolizing the fitness of the time for the fulfillment of the prom ises of God, his people's protector.
2. Four horns, symbols of the oppressive ene mies by which Judah had been on all sides sur rounded, and four carpenters, by whom these horns are broken, emblems of the destruction of these anti-theocratic powers.
3. A man with a measuring line describing a wider circumference for the site of Jerusalem, as its population was to receive a vast increase, fore showing that many more Jews would return from Babylon and join their countrymen, and indicat ing the conversion of heathen nations under the Messiah, when out of Zion should go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4. The high-priest Joshua before the angel of the Lord, with Satan at his right hand to oppose him. The sacerdotal representative of the peo ple, clad in the filthy garments in which he had returned from captivity, seems to be a type of the guilt and degradation of his country; while for giveness and restoration are the blessings which the pontiff symbolically receives from Jehovah, when he is reclad in holy apparel and crowned with a spotless turban, the vision at the same time stretching into far futurity, and including the advent of Jehovah's servant the Branch.
5. A golden lamp-stand fed from two olive trees, one growing on each side, an image of the value and divine glory of the theocracy as IIJW teen in the restored Jewish church, supported. lot, 'by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of Jehovah,' and of the spiritual development of the old theocracy in the Christian church, which en lightens the world through the continuous influ ence of the Holy Ghost. (Dr. Stouard, in his Commentary on Zechariah, without foundation supposes that this candlelabrum had twice seven lamps, seven on each side, emblematizing the church of God in both dispensations, Jewish and Christian.)
6. A flying roll, the breadth of the temple porch, containing on its one side curses against the ungodly, and on its other anathemas against the immoral, denoting that the head of the theoc racy, the Lord of the Temple, would from his place punish those who violated either the first or the second table of his law (Hengstenberg's Christal. ii, 45)• 7. A woman in an ephah (at length pressed down into it by a sheet of lead laid over its mouth), borne along in the air by two female fig ures with storks' wings, representing the sin and punishment of the nation. The fury, whose name is [Vic/redness, is repressed, and transported to the land of Shinar; i. e. idolatry, in the persons of the captive Jews, was for ever removed at that period from the Holy Land, and, as it were, taken to Babylon, the home of image-worship (for another meaning, see Jahn's Introduction, Turner's translation, p. 428).
8. Four chariots issuing from two copper moun tains and drawn respectively by red, black, white, and spotted horses, the vehicles of the four winds of heaven, a hieroglyph of the swiftness and ex tent of divine judgments against the former op pressors of the covenant people. Judgments seem issuing from God's holy habitation in the midst of the 'mountains which are round about Jerusalem,' or from between those two hills, the ravine divid ing which forms the valley of Jehoshaphat, di rectly under the temple mountain, where dwelt the head of the theocracy.
9. The last scene is not properly a vision, but an oracle in connection with the preceding visions, and in reference to a future symbolical act to be performed by the prophet. In presence of a de portation of Jews from Babylon, the prophet was charged to place a crown on the head of Joshua the high-priest, a symbol which, whatever was its immediate signification, was designed to prefigure the royal and sacerdotal dignity of the man whose name is Branch, who should sit as 'a priest upon his throne.' The meaning of all the preceding varied images and scenes is explained to the prophet by an at tendant angelus interpres, angel interpreter.