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320 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH

over for a time " for a spoil," and " Israel to the robbers," which we find in Isaiah : " But this is a people robbed and spoiled ; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses : they are for a prey, and none deliver eth ; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore" x But though in " prison," and " robbed," and " spoiled," they are not given over to death, this being already hinted at in the expres sion bor ein mayim bo " the pit (or dungeon ) without water in it" which is an echo of Gen. xxxvii. 24 (where exactly the same phrase is found), with an evident allusion to the story of Joseph. It was with a view to save him from a violent death that Reuben proposed that Joseph should be thrown into the pit, which was doubtless a dis used cistern, such being on occasion also used as dungeons. But it made all the difference to Joseph that there was no water in that pit or cistern ; for had there been water in it, he would have been drowned.

So it is with Israel. They are likened to one bound and in a " pit," or " dungeon," which, alas ! has also been literally the case with multitudes of Israel s sons and daughters during the period of their " captivity " ; but God sees to it that there should be no water in the pit, and that His people, which is still bound to Him by covenant blood, should not utterly perish. And eventually, at the word of God, Israel, like Joseph, shall be freed from the pit and lifted from the position of humiliation and suffering to become a nation of princes on the earth.

And Israel s deliverance from national bondage will synchronise, and be, so to say, the outward sign of their still greater spiritual deliverance, for the words " prisoners " (asirim, literally, " bound ones ") and " pit " (bor) are used in other scriptures to describe the condition of men, who are not only in outward bodily captivity, but who are in the bondage of sin and captives to Satan.

Thus the Messiah is anointed and sent to open the prison-gates " to them that are bound " ; 2 and in the day

1 Isa. xlii. 22.

3 Asurttn, Isa. Ixi. I ; the same as "prisoners" hi Zech. ix. u.