Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/315



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 299

also of cattle-drivers and tax-gatherers. Once only, and in this very prophecy (chap. x. 4), it is used in a good sense, as describing one who has absolute rule ; but here it stands for the foreign tyrants, the heads of the great Gentile kingdoms who oppressed Israel.

In the last sentence in the 8th verse, " For now have I seen with Mine eyes," we have an echo and reminiscence of Ex. iii. 7 : " / Jtave surely seen (or seeing I have seen ) the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters ; for I know their sorrows " ; where also the word " for I have seen " stands in connection with Israel s affliction at the hands of their " taskmasters," which is the same word in plural form as rendered " oppressor" in Zech. ix. 8. Yes, the God who delivered Israel from under the oppression of Egypt, and with Whom only to " see " the afflictions of His people is to be moved with compassion for their sorrows, will yet again look " with His own eyes," and interpose, and deliver them from the power of their oppressors ; which promise, whatever the more immediate reference, will not be exhaustively fulfilled until the final national deliverance of Israel, of which the deliverance from Egypt is regarded in the prophetic Scriptures as a type, and until the final over throw of the enemies of God and of His people, of which the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea was a foreshadowing.

With regard to the special fulfilment of the prediction in the 8th verse in the more immediate future from the prophet s point of view, let me remind my readers of the account given by Josephus of the remarkable episode in Alexander s march through Palestine, which agrees also with traditions preserved in the Talmud and Midrashic litera ture. At the commencement of his campaign against Phoenicia, Alexander the Great sent messengers to the Jewish high priest in Jerusalem demanding aid from the Jews and the payment of the tribute which they used to pay to the King of Persia. The high priest, how ever, refused to break the oath of fidelity which he had