Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/111



It need scarcely be pointed out, after what has already been stated, that these words also must not be tarken as applying to Joshua as an individual, but as the high priest, the type and representative of his people. The fire out of which Joshua had been rescued as a brand was neither the evil which had come upon him through neglecting the building of the Temple (as some German expositors explain), nor the guilt of allowing his sons to marry foreign wives (which the Jewish Targum, followed by Rashi and Kimchi, oblivious of the anachronism, assert); for, as Keil well observes, in the former case the accusation would have come too late, since the building of the Temple had been resumed five months before (Hag. i. 14 com pared with Zech. i. 7); and in the latter case it would have been much too early, since these mesalliances did not take place till fifty years afterwards. No; the words are used by the Great Advocate of the whole people, against whom, as we have already seen, the adversary's accusations were really directed, and their general sense has been well given by one of the earliest Church Fathers namely, " As if He should say, Israel confessedly has sinned, and is liable to these charges; yet it has suffered no slight punishment; it has endured sufferings, and has scarce been snatched out of them, as a half-burned brand out of the fire. For not yet had it shaken off the dust of the harms from the captivity; only just now, and scarcely, had it escaped the flame of that most intolerable calamity. Cease, then, imputing sin to them on whom God has had mercy."

But though primarily the figure refers to " the fire " of the Babylonian Captivity from which the restored remnant at the time had been plucked as a " brand," the words are designed also to remind us of a deeper and more general truth in connection with Jewish history. Israel may be said to be always in the fire, yet God never permits them to be wholly consumed. Like the burning bush, the symbol of this indestructible people it may burn, and must suffer by very reason of its being in a special sense