Zechariah: Visions and Prophecies by David Baron Page 7
Chapter 15: What Israel’s Shepherd-King Will Be and Do for His Scattered People (Zech. 10)——————————————————————————————–––––––––––––––––
Chapter 15: What Israel’s Shepherd-King Will Be and Do for His Scattered People (Zech. 10)
“Ask ye of Jehovah rain in the time of the latter rain, even of Jehovah that maketh lightnings; and He will give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field. For the teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; and they have told false dreams, they comfort in vain: therefore they go their way like sheep, they are afflicted, because there is no shepherd. Mine anger is kindled against the shepherds, and I will punish the he-goats: for Jehovah of hosts hath visited His flock, the house of Judah, and will make them as His goodly horse in the battle. From him shall come forth the cornerstone, from him the nail, from him the battle bow, from him every ruler together. And they shall be as mighty men, treading down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle; and they shall fight, because Jehovah is with them; and the riders on horses shall be confounded. And I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph, and I will bring them back, for I have mercy upon them; and they shall be as though I had not cast them off; for I am Jehovah their God, and I will hear them. And they of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, and their heart shall rejoice as through wine; yea, their children shall see it, and rejoice; their heart shall be glad in Jehovah. And I will hiss for them, and gather them; for I have redeemed them: and they shall increase as they have increased. And I will sow them among the peoples, and they shall remember Me in far countries; and they shall live with their children; and shall return. I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of Assyria; and I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon; and place shall not be found for them. And he will pass through the sea of affliction, and will smite the waves in the sea, and all the depths of the Nile shall dry up: and the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt shall depart. And I will strengthen them in Jehovah; and they shall walk up and down in His name, saith Jehovah.”
The blessed and prosperous condition of restored and converted Israel under the care and leadership of their true Shepherd-King may be given as the summary of the chapter to which we have now come. The first verses are linked on, and are a continuation of the promises contained in the last section (vers. 7–11) of the 9th chapter.
Of the abundance of spiritual blessings and glory which shall then dwell in the land, to repeat a few sentences from my notes on chap. ix. 19—“Material prosperity and temporal abundance will, as is not the case in the present dispensation, be the outward sign and accompaniment.” “Corn,” exclaims the prophet at the conclusion of that chapter, “shall make the young men cheerful (or, literally, ‘grow’ or ‘increase’), and new wine the maids (or ‘virgins’).”
But for Palestine to become once again, yea, even more than before, a land “flowing with milk and honey,” after its many centuries of barrenness and desolation, the fertilising showers are essential; and though this is promised to them, they are yet exhorted to “ask” for it, even as in Ezek. xxxvi., where, after promising, among many other great things, that “this land which was desolate shall become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities shall become fenced and inhabited,” we read: “Thus saith the Lord God, yet for this will I be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them”[1]—for the promises of God, whether in relation to temporal or spiritual blessings, are only turned into experience by the faith and prayers of His people.
But it is perhaps necessary to repeat and emphasise that it is literal rain which is meant here, in the first instance, in which connection it is important to observe that Israel was taught to regard the giving or withholding of this great temporal blessing, upon which the prosperity of the land and the life of man and beast are dependent, as entirely in the hand of God. “Are there any among the vanities of the heathen that can cause rain?” exclaimed the prophet Jeremiah, “or can the heavens (of themselves) give showers? Art not Thou He, O Jehovah our God? therefore we will wait upon Thee: for Thou hast made all these things.”[2]
In these modern times men have grown wiser, and no longer recognise or acknowledge God in what to them is entirely due to “natural causes”; but such wisdom is based on a science only falsely so called, and is foolishness in the eyes of those who know that there is a living, personal God, the Creator and Upholder of all things, who, though He in His infinite power and wisdom appointed certain “laws” to govern His creation, is Himself all the time behind and above these laws, to guide and control; and does, either by using “natural means” which are known to us, or apart from them, interfere in the affairs of men and nations with a view to deliver, or instruct, or correct. To Israel, rain in due season, so that the land should yield her increase, was promised as the direct reward of national obedience.
“And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give the rain of your land in its season, the former rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.”[3]
And it is a notorious fact that the withholding of the showers and the scarcity of the rainfall—whatever the secondary causes by which it may be accounted for—was one of the chief factors in the predicted desolation of Palestine, during the many centuries that the people has been banished from it on account of apostasy.
But to return to our passage. It is especially “the latter rain” which in Palestine is so important as strengthening and maturing the crops, that they are here exhorted to ask of the Lord, so that He may graciously complete “what He had begun by the former rain, filling the ears before the harvest.”[4]
But though the primary reference is to literal showers, “on which the successful cultivation of the fruits of the ground depends,” I agree with the German Bible scholar who says that the exhortation to ask for rain “only serves to individualise the prayer for the bestowal of the blessings of God, in order to sustain both temporal and spiritual life.”
Indeed, there is a blending of temporal and spiritual blessings in the promise in the 9th and 10th chapters, the outward and visible being the types and symbols of the spiritual and eternal. When, on coming out of Egypt, Israel was brought into covenant relationship with God, we read, “Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain; Thou didst confirm Thine inheritance when it was weary.”[5]
And when Jehovah shall have mercy upon Zion again, and bring back His people after the long centuries of their “weary” wanderings, the light of His blessed countenance shall be as “life” to them, “and His favour as a cloud of the latter rain”[6]—yea, in response to the spirit of grace and of supplication which shall then be created in them, God says, “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams (or ‘floods’) upon the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring.”[7]
Viewed as a symbol of spiritual gifts and blessings, there is a message also for you and me in this ancient exhortation, dear reader. Indeed, I look upon this passage as one of the most beautiful scriptures in the Old Testament in reference to prayer, and God’s manner of answering.
I. “Ask ye of Jehovah, . . . and Jehovah shall give,” which reminds us of the word of our Lord Jesus: “Ask, and ye shall receive,” for the God of Israel is a God who does answer prayer. Sometimes the answer may be brought about by apparently natural causes, but all the same it is “Jehovah that maketh lightnings,”[8] and commandeth the clouds to discharge their fertilising showers.
II. “Ask ye of Jehovah RAIN, . . . and He shall give them showers of rain, מטר גשם, m’tar geshem”—literally, “rain of plenty, or pouring rain”; for our God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, and this both in relation to temporal and spiritual things.
III. “And He will give to every one grass in the field,” for He individualises His gifts and blessings, and not one is left out of His gracious and bountiful provision and care.
But one great condition of effectual prayer is that our hearts and expectations be set wholly upon God. “Hear, O My people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wouldest hearken unto Me; there shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god. I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.”[9]
It was Israel’s divided heart, the turning away from the true and living God to follow after the vanities of the Gentiles, which was the cause of Israel’s calamities and ruin in the past. This is what the prophet reminds them of in the 2nd verse: “For the idols (‘teraphim’) have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; they have told false dreams (or, ‘and dreams speak vanity’), they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way (or ‘wandered’) like sheep, they are oppressed (or ‘afflicted’), because there was no shepherd.”
It is the teraphim, or “speaking” oracles of the heathen, and their consulters, or diviners, that the prophet specially speaks of in this verse.
“Apart from our passage there are only seven other scriptures in the Hebrew Bible where the teraphim are introduced; but these suffice to show that they were not only idols, the use of which is classed by God with ‘witchcraft, stubbornness, and iniquity,’[10] but that they were a peculiar kind of idols, namely, those used for oracular responses. The first mention of the teraphim is in connection with Jacob’s flight from Laban, in Gen. xxx.; and in the light of the other passages there seems probability in the explanation of Aben Ezra that Rachel stole them in order that her father might not discover the direction of their flight by means of these oracles.[11]
“The second place where we find them is in that strange narrative about the Ephraimite Micah, and the Danite expedition to Laish, in Judg. xvii. and xviii., where we get a sad and characteristic glimpse of the condition of some among the tribes in those days, ‘when there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.’ This narrative supplies an illustration of the fact that not only is man incapable of himself to find God, but that, left to himself, he is incapable of retaining the knowledge of God in its original purity even when once divinely communicated; and that even the things revealed, apart from the continued teaching of God’s Spirit, are liable to become corrupted and distorted in his mind. Here we have a sad instance of a certain knowledge of Jehovah mixed up with the worship of ‘a graven image and a molten image,’ which were an abomination in His sight, and the illegitimate use of the divinely instituted ephod, which was only to be borne by the high priest, joined together with the pagan teraphim. But the point to be noted is that here also these teraphim were used for oracular consultations, for it was of them that the apostate Levite of Bethlehem asked for counsel for the idolatrous Danites.[12] In Ezek. xxi. 21 we find the exact antithesis to David’s consulting the ephod, in the pagan king of Babylon ‘consulting with images’ (literally, ‘teraphim’), in reference to his projected invasion of Palestine.[13]
“Now it is clear that in olden times, whenever by apostasy and disobedience fellowship with Jehovah was interrupted, and when in consequence there was no revelation from Him, ‘neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets,’ Israel turned to the pagan teraphim, or, like poor Saul, they ‘sought unto such as had familiar spirits and wizards that peep and mutter.’
“A parallelism, in its spiritual significance, is to be found in Christendom. What the ephod or the prophet was in olden times, Holy Scripture is now. It is even a ‘more sure word’ than voices from heaven, or answers by Urim and Thummim. The Scriptures, first spoken by holy men of God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, are now ‘the oracles of God,’ themselves speaking with voices which carry their own conviction to hearts honestly seeking for truth, and ever confirming themselves in the world’s history and in the Christian’s experience; but men in the present day, even in Christendom, stumbling at the supernatural, as if there could be a revelation of the Infinite and Everlasting One without such an element in them, turn away from these oracles often on the flimsiest grounds, and instead are giving heed on the one hand to the speculations of a ‘science falsely so called,’ and on the other hand ‘to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils,’ and are thus in a measure supplying an illustration of the solemn words of the apostle, that if men receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved, ‘God shall for this cause send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.’[14]
“For of the modern Christian teraphim it is as true as of the ancient pagan ones, that ‘they speak vanity,’ or ‘wickedness’; and as for their ‘diviners,’ or false prophets representing them, ‘they see a lie, and tell false dreams, they comfort in vain’; for it is a comfort not well founded, and will not stand the test of death, or of a judgment to come.”[15]
But to return to our passage: “Therefore”—the prophet continues, because they followed lying oracles, and they who should have strengthened them in God, and in His truth, told them their own false dreams, and comforted them with vain expectations—“they went their way (or ‘wandered’)[16] like sheep, they are afflicted (or ‘oppressed’), because there is no shepherd.”