Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/252

 learn from the history of Israel. One is in Gen. xviii. There we read that " Sarah laughed within herself " when she heard the Angel of Jehovah give the definite promise to Abraham of the birth of Isaac, for to nature and human reasoning it was no longer possible for Sarah to bear a child. But " Jehovah said to Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? Is anything too hard (or wonderful } for Jehovah f"

Indeed, one great reason of the long delay of the fulfilment of the promise of the birth of the child, in whom the great promise of blessing for all nations was to be handed down, was because God wanted to lay a super natural basis for the history of Israel; and that both Israel and the nations of the future might learn that the things which are naturally impossible are not super naturally impossible, and that nothing which Jehovah has ever spoken is " too hard " for Him to accomplish.

The other place where the word is used is in Jer. xxxii., a prophecy which is in some respects parallel to Zech. vii. and viii. Jeremiah was shut up in the court of the prison adjoining the palace, when the word of the Lord came to him that his uncle's son, Hanameel, would come to him with the request that he should buy a piece of ground which belonged to him in Anathoth; and the prophet, in obedience to God's command, went through all the legal formalities connected with the purchase of land in Palestine. Now, from the human and natural point of view, the whole transaction seemed a mere farce and absurdity. The Chaldeans had already laid waste the whole land, and were even then besieging Jerusalem. How unlikely, so far as human probabilities went, that houses, or fields, or vine yards, would ever again be possessed by Jews in Palestine.

Jeremiah's own faith in the promises of God in refer ence to the future of the people and the land, was strongly put to the test by this symbolical transaction which he was commanded to carry through, but he stood the test; he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief. He looked away from human improbabilities and natural