Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/12

 fragmentary form in which they first appeared. In the pages of the little Quarterly above named, these " Notes," under the heading of " The Prophet of Hope and of Glory," extended over a period of nearly eleven years. I have now gone through them again, and made a few slight alterations and corrections, but on the whole they are pre sented in this volume exactly as they originally appeared in The Scattered Nation including the introductory re marks in the first chapter, which were written eleven years ago. This will partly account for the style. Did time and strength permit, I might have re-written parts with a view to their abbreviation, but certain circumstances made this impossible. Besides, my object was not to write a " Com mentary " in the sense in which the word is usually under stood, but to unfold and explain this great Scripture in such a manner as to make it at the same time spiritually profitable to the average intelligent Christian reader. That I am not unacquainted with the various works which already exist on Zechariah, the pages of this book will bear witness. To several scholars in particular both English and Continental -I have either in the text, or in the footnotes, again and again expressed my indebtedness. I have indeed gleaned what I considered best and helpful for the elucidation of the text from many sources and even from writers with whose general attitude to the Holy Scriptures and principles of interpretation I am altogether at variance. But almost all the existing works on this prophetic book are in one way or another defective, and some of them even misleading. The older com mentaries, though commendable for their reverent spiritual tone and practical teaching, and some of them containing also a good deal of sound philological and historical matter, are more or less vitiated by the allegorising principle of interpretation by means of which all references to a concrete