The Prophet of Hope: Studies in Zechariah

The Prophet Zechariah was born in the latter years of the captivity in Babylon. His name means one whom Jehovah remembers. It was evidently a common name among the chosen people, as it is borne by several others in the course of Old Testament story. How good it is to be always sure that

God thinks of us — even when we forget or believe Pe tt

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not! He remaineth faithful. “I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me. How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the

sum of them! If I should count them, they are —

more in number than the sand.”

Zechariah came of a priestly family. His grandfather (Iddo) is expressly mentioned as¥accompanying Zerubbabel, the Prince of Judah, and

Joshua, the high priest, back to their desolated coun-

try (Ezra ii. 1, 2; and Neh. xii. 4). His father,

Berechiah, probably died when Zechariah was yet a ite) THE PROPHET OF HOPE.

/child, and the boy was reared by the grandfather;

‘he is therefore spoken of as the son of Iddo, and from the earliest his young mind must have been imbued with the traditions and habits of the priestly caste.

The first expedition of exiles, to which we have referred, reached Palestine about twenty years before our story opens. The immense majority of the Jews were too well circumstanced in the wealthy land of their conquerors to be in any hurry to return; and only some fifty thousand souls had risked the dangers of the desert and the privations of the new settlement — but these would comprise, without doubt, the flower of the race for piety and national pride.

The majority of the returned exiles probably betook themselves to their ancestral portions in various parts of the country, only a comparatively small number settling among the charred and blackened ruins of Jerusalem. The Book of Lamentations describes, in elegiacs broken with sobs, the condition of the city, as their forefathers had left it seventy years before; and that period of desolation and waste must have still further added to the despair of the situation.

How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!

He hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty

¢° of Israel,

And hath not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.

The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied;

He hath thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;

He hath burned up Jacob like a flaming fire;

He hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden;

He hath destroyed his Place of Assembly (Lam. ii.).

Amid these piles of blackened ruins, the handful of impoverished captives settled; and for some time after their arrival occupied themselves in rearing dwellings for themselves, and in setting up some at least of those religious observances of which for so long they had been necessarily deprived (Ezra iii. 3-6). The foundation of the new Temple was laid) shortly afterward amid shouts of joy, which were” overborne by the noise of weeping on the part of those who had seen the first house in its glory — y “the ancient men.”’ é

It was a fair dawn, but was soon overcast; for the enemies of the returned people set themselves to poison the mind of Artaxerxes (Smerdis), who, being a usurper and a magician, did not feel bound / to respect the decree of Cyrus, and ordered the, cessation of the work. And it ceased for fifteen years (Ezra iv.). At the end of that time Haggai, the prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Iddo, began to stir their fellow-countrymen to resume their neglected toils. The political horizon had undergone a great change in the interval; and there was every reason to hope that Darius, who had headed a successful conspiracy against the usurping Smerdis, and had lately ascended the Persian throne, would be favorable to the purpose of the Jewish exiles,. since he was a monotheist, and zealous for the restor- ‘ation of pure and spiritual religion. So it afterward proved (Ezra v., vi., especially 7-12).!

But the great difficulty experienced by the prophets was with the Jews themselves. “The time was not come,” they said, “the time for the Lord’s house to be built.” In the meanwhile they were living in ceiled houses, whilst God’s house lay waste.

First Haggai spoke. On the first day of the sixth month of the second year of Darius, he pointed to the disasters beneath which the country was groaning, that the dews of heaven were stayed and the earth was unproductive; that a drought lay upon the land and upon the mountains, upon the corn and wine and oil, upon men and cattle, and upon all the labor of their hands; that they sowed much and brought in little; ate and had not enough; drank and were not filled; clothed themselves but were not warm; earned wages which were dissipated as though holes were at the bottom of the bag — and urged that all these misfortunes were intended by God as a remonstrance against their laxity and an incentive to diligence. “Why?” saith the Lord of hosts. ‘Because of my house that lieth waste, while ye run, every man to his own house” (Hag. i. 1-11).

“Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the

Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the Lord. Then spake Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, in the Lord’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, said the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, Governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of Hosts, their God, in the four-andtwentieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the King” (Hag. i. 12-15).

In the following month, the seventh, a very en-~

couraging word came again through the mouth of

Haggai, predicting that the latter glory of the new —

Temple should even excel that of the former one; a glory not of gold or silver or precious stones, but the spiritual radiance and splendor of Him who was to be the Desire of all nations, and whose advent was destined to invest that building with eternal significance and interest (Hag. ii. 1-9). The month after, “the Word of the Lord came unto Zechariah.” Probably the Word of the Lord is ever circling through the world, as the waves of wireless telegraphy through the air; but there needs an anointed, prepared, and receptive heart to receive and translate the sacred impressions. In the case of the prophets, however, there would be more than this. They spoke as they were moved or borne along by the Holy Spirit. When the apostle speaks of the

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