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274 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH

seventeen years), by allusions of Isocrates (writing a year after Plato s death), by references of the comic poet Alexis (a younger contemporary), besides the unanimous voice of later antiquity.

" But it would not at all be surprising, as Keil, Stahelin, and others have observed, to find that the style of Zechariah varies in chaps, i.-viii. from that in chaps, ix.-xiv., as the subject-matter treated of in the two portions is radically different. In the former portion the prophet had to narrate a series of visions seen by him in one night, and to record divers exhortations of a practical kind suggested by the inquiry of the deputation from Bethel ; in the second portion he speaks of the distant future. In the former he might be expected to write in simple prose ; in the latter he might at times rise to lofty heights of poetry.

" Moreover, and this must not be forgotten, it is exceedingly probable that the second portion was composed many years after the first long after the Temple had been completed and matters had assumed a kind of normal condition as regards the Jewish colony, and also at a time when the realization of the bright hope of attaining their national independence seemed to be as far off as ever. " l

" That Gentle Lover of Peace"

Principal George Adam Smith finds a great argument against Zechariah s authorship of the last six chapters in the fact that " the peace, and the love of peace, in which Zechariah wrote, has disappeared. Nearly everything in the last part breathes of war, actual or imminent. The heathen are spoken of with a ferocity which finds few parallels in the Old Testament. There is revelling in their blood, of which the student of the authentic prophecies of Zechariah will at once perceive that gentle lover of peace could not have been capable."

We confess that we fail to " perceive " the truth of this statement, or to find any " ferocity," or " a revelling in the 1 C. H. II. Wright.