Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/228

 regarded as the only place where the sacrifices and services enjoined by the precepts of the Mosaic Law could be offered."

(2) Owing to the omission of the particle ns (etJi) after Bethel, which in such cases usually indicates the accusative, Ewald, Koehler, Dr. Wright, and others have taken the clause, " Sharezer Regem-melech and his men," as in apposition with Bethel, and have translated the 2nd verse thus: " And Bethel, that is Sharezer Regemmelech and his men, sent to entreat Jehovah," etc.; but we agree with Keil that there is something so harsh and inflexible in the assumption of such an apposition as this, that, in spite of the omission of the particle, it is preferable to regard the names as in the accusative, even as the Revised Version has done.

(3) As to the names of these men, it is a rather striking fact that, while those who came as a deputation from Babylon with the offering to the House of the Lord, in chap. vi. 915, bore names all expressive of some relationship to Jehovah, those who came from Bethel have foreign names which originally were associated with the false worship of their oppressors, " I -^P^ (Sharetser) was the name of one of the parricide sons of Sennacherib (Isa. xxxvii. 38), and also of one of the princes of Babylon who desolated Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple (Jer. xxxix. 313). The full Assyrian name was Nergal-Sarusur, or Nergal-Shar-Ezer, which, according to Schrader, means " May Nergal protect the king." Here Nergal, the name of the Assyrian false god, is dropped, but the prayer, originally idolatrous, is retained.

Dfn (Regent) is found as a proper name in I Chron. ii. 47. Gesenius explains Regem-melech as signifying " friend of the king." It may originally also have been an Assyrian name, though Regem has not been found in that language, but has been explained from the Arabic. But it is probable that, as in the case of Daniel, Hananiah, and Mishael, so these men also, apart from the names bestowed upon them by their Gentile conqueror, in whose