Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/301



CHAPTER XIV

THE overthrow of world-power, and the establishment of Messiah s Kingdom, may be given as the epitome of the last chapters of Zechariah, to which we have now come. The two oracles which make up the whole of the second half of the book (chaps, ix. xi. and xii. xiv.) show by their headings, as well as by their contents, and even by their formal arrangement, that they are corre sponding portions of a greater whole. Both sections treat of war between the heathen world and Israel, though in different ways.

In the first (chaps, ix. xi.), the judgment through which Gentile world-power over Israel is finally destroyed, and Israel is endowed with strength to overcome all their enemies, forms the fundamental thought and centre of gravity of the prophetic description. In the second (chaps, xii. xiv.), the judgment through which Israel itself is sifted and purged in the final great conflict with the nations, and transformed into the holy nation of Jehovah, forms the leading topic.

" The formal or structural resemblance between the two long oracles into which the last six chapters divide them selves appears also in the fact that in the centre of each the announcement suddenly takes a different tone without any external preparation (chaps, xi. I and xiii. 7), so that it appears as if it were the commencement of a new prophecy ; and it is only by a closer study that the connection of the whole is brought out and the relation between the two is clearly seen namely, that the second section contains a more minute description of the manner in which the events announced in the first section are to be realised. In the

threatening word concerning the land of Hadrach,

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