Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/23

 “ Lo-Ammi " - " not My people," and how Israel shall joyously respond, " Jehovah, my God "; how Israel's Messiah shall speak peace to the nations, and Israel himself enter at last on his priestly mission to the peoples for which he was originally destined, and Jerusalem become the centre of God's fear and worship for the whole earth all these and other solemn events of the time of the end are spoken of in this book with a clearness and distinctness as if they were occurrences of history instead of prophecies of the future.

A very few words will suffice on the personality of the prophet.

Zechariah (Zekharyah, " he whom Jehovah remembers ") is the central figure in the group of the three post-exilic prophets, and his voice was the last but one of that unique and wonderful succession of men who were, indeed, the oracles of God, and through whom " in divers portions and in different ways " He Himself " spake unto the fathers," revealing His eternal counsels to men.

Like Jeremiah and Ezekiel among the " former prophets," Zechariah was of honourable priestly descent; his grandfather, Iddo, being head of one of the twelve priestly families, or courses, who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel, and with the high priest Joshua; and at a later period, when Jehoiakim, the son of Joshua, was high priest, Zechariah himself succeeded his grandfather Iddo as head of his priestly course (Neh. xii. 416), from which it is to be inferred that the prophet's own father, Berechiah, died young, and before he was able to succeed his father Iddo in the priesthood. The above facts lead us to infer that when called to the prophetic office Zechariah was still very young. That he was scarcely a full-grown man may be inferred from the fact that in chap. ii. 4 he is addressed as "V?_, naar translated in the Authorised Version " young man." Now naar means " boy," " lad," or " youth." It is, for instance, the word used