Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/163

 signifying the swiftness with which the judgments of God shall finally overtake the wicked.

The special dimensions of the roll, which the prophet so carefully notes, are also not without significance. It was twenty cubits long and ten cubits broad, which corresponds both with the porch of Solomon's Temple (i Kings vi. 3) and with the Holy Place of the Tabernacle. This is certainly not accidental. Hengstenberg, who, together with Kimchi and other Jewish commentators, considers the reference to be to the Temple, says: " The porch, the uttermost portion of the actual Temple, was the spot from which God was supposed to hold intercourse with His people " (i Kings vii. 7). Hence the altar of burnt-offering stood before the porch in the forecourt of the priests, and when any great calamity fell upon the land the priests approached still nearer to the porch to offer their prayers, that they might, as it were, embrace the feet of their angry Father (Joel ii. 1 7).

By giving to the flying roll (the symbol of the Divine judgments upon the covenant nation) the same dimensions as those of the porch, the prophet appears to intimate that these judgments were a direct result of the theocracy, and originate in the very fact of Israel's relationship to God, in accordance with His Word through the prophet Amos:

"You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I visit on you all your iniquities " (iii. 2), for which reason also judgment begins first at the house of God. But there is a greater probability in the suggestion of Keil, Kliefoth, and others, that the dimensions are taken, not from the porch of the Temple, but from the Holy Place of the Tabernacle, just as the symbolic candlestick in the preceding vision is also the Mosaic candlestick of the Tabernacle, and not of the Temple. And the true reason why the dimensions of the roll containing God's curse against the breakers of His law are taken from the