Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/240

 First Temple and the seventy years captivity in Babylon, but has continued all through the centuries since, during which the Jewish nation continues to be " sifted," or " tossed about among all nations as corn is tossed about in a sieve " (Amos ix.) until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled, and " He that scattered Israel shall gather him and keep him as a shepherd doth his flock."

(#) In relation to the land. "And tJie land was desolate (or most probably, shall be desolate] the perfect tense standing here for the future, or prophetic perfect ) after them, so that there shall be no one passing through or returning" (meobher umishabh) an idiom expressing the fact that the land shall be destitute of a population, so that there shall be none to pass to and fro, or " up and down " in it; a prophecy also which has not only verified itself during the seventy years captivity, but in the course of the many centuries since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, during which the land has in the providence of God been practically ^without a people, while the people has been ivithout a land.

Hitherto in vers. 13 and 14 God in the first person has been the speaker, but the last sentence with which the chapter closes seems to be a reflection or ejaculation of the prophet's, in which he gives God the glory by ascribing the desolation which has come upon the land as due entirely to their sins: "And they made the pleasant land" (eretz hemdah, a beautiful and true description of the promised land which is carried over from Jer. iii. 19) " a desolation "; for, just as all nature was involved in Adam's sin, and ever since the Fall " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now " (Rom. viii.); so Palestine, which is indeed naturally " a delightsome " and fertile land, has in a special manner become involved in the sin of Israel, and lies desolate until the people's covenant relationship to