ZECHARIAH 13
— 5. I think I have noticed in my interleaved Bible, I cannot but think the English translation has missed the sense. It is Christ taking His lowly place, and amongst men, as Man, man’s place, and then His rejection by the Jews, and then God’s counsel in it as to the Man, His fellow. I hardly see how kik-na-ni (has acquired me) can be ‘taught me to keep cattle.’ ‘And He said’ comes in abruptly. ‘And He said I am no Prophet; Adam possessed me,’ bought me, ‘from my youth.’ I was a servant to man from the beginning.
‘[p. 222] And he said, What are these wounds in Thy hands?’ ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’ Then the blessed counsel of God comes, in His view of Christ’s service and His place as the Shepherd of Israel — the Good Shepherd that lays down His life for the sheep. The Shepherd thus out of the way, through wickedness on the part of the people, in needed grace on God’s part, yet smiting the Shepherd for the sake of the flock, His hand falls necessarily on the faithful of the flock itself. They must feel the condition of Israel, the sin in which they are all involved, but to them, living through Him, it is passing through the fire for purifying. Isaiah 1:25, and Amos 1:8, and Psalm 81:14, show, I think, that ‘turning the hand upon’ is in judgment. The Lord Jesus does not quote this last part, because its force is for the latter days. ‘The little ones,’ if they had a common lot with Him, had hardly, in any sense, a common lot with the Jewish people after His death, but, though eventually separated, they are acted on together at the close; see verses 8 and 9.
These last two chapters are very general.
— 7. “I will turn my hand upon the little ones”; compare Isaiah 1:25 — verses 8, 9, I apprehend, explain it. He visits to purify. But “little ones” are brought low, become vile. It is the Jews looked at as having to say to God in the Land, but brought low in it. Note it is the word amithi (My neighbour) found only in Leviticus and here. In Matthew the blessed Lord treats it as God’s act “I will smite.” This seems to me His perfectness.
It has struck me that the force of this, Christ’s statement of Himself as humbled, in contrast to all the ecclesiastical and prophetic false assumption of the nation, ‘and He said’ or ‘shall say, not a Prophet am I — a man tilling the ground’ (compare Genesis 3:23) ‘am I, for man made me his property from my youth,’ i.e., Christ was subjected to the condition and necessities of man from the outset, as the Servant of their good, having come into the sorrow and toil into which man was driven (out of Paradise). Then comes His Jewish rejection — He received His wounds in the house of His friends. Then comes God’s part — it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. “Awake, O Sword,” etc. Then the consequence, to the Jewish people, of all this, till their millennial reception in verse 9. Then the final result as to all the nations as well as Jerusalem, in the next chapter.
— [p. 223] 5. As to the word hik-na-ni (caused me to acquire) it is confirmed, and its force beautifully brought out by comparing Proverbs 8:22. This is the humiliation of Christ, as connected with the Jews — that His title in His Person, and the glory of the Lord’s ways.
— 8, 9. All the resulting history of the Jews is in these two verses.
Zechariah 14 — 1. The, day of the Lord, is always, or involves, earthly judgment.
— 17, 18. “The Lord of hosts.” ‘Neither shall there be upon them ... there shall be the plague,’ etc., or, neglecting the athnakh, ‘shall there not be upon them the plague.’ — 19. After all, I see no proof that khat-tath (sin) means punishment. Proverbs 10:16 is the only passage that can be reasonably alleged, that I can find. It may perhaps, allude to it, as that which represents, and marks the sin, as ‘he shall bear his iniquity,’ the proof and force of which would be seeing him lie under the judgment it brought. This is the sense of the word (in two forms) in Lamentations 3:39 and chapter 4: 6 — bearing the sin on himself in punishment, something as the sense of sin-offering. And, I suppose, it must be so taken here, but so as to charge the measure, and the character of the sin, not merely the fact of punishment. It is governmentally putting the sin upon him, instead of taking it off; compare Lamentations 4:22.