Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/343



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 327

Lord is further described as going forth in the storms of the south ; because the storms from that quarter, coming from the desert, were generally the most violent (Isa. xxi. i). The language used is highly figurative, but it need not surprise us that the exploits of the Maccabees should be so described when we call to mind the vivid language in which David depicts his own deliverance in the remarkable song in the day when God delivered him from his foes. 1 Small as were the armies which Judas and his brethren commanded, those armies were the armies of Israel, and they went forth to battle in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, who was then defied by the Grecian foe, even as in former days He had been defied by the Philistine (i Sam. xvii. 45). Thus doing battle against the enemies of their God, out of weakness they were made strong, they waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens (Heb.

xi- 34)-"

But that the prophecy cannot be altogether restricted to the Maccabean struggle with the Syrian Greeks is mani fest, for the whole passage points to the complete subjuga tion of imperial world-power.

No ; Zion and Greece, as has been well observed by another writer, are in this prophecy of Zechariah opposed to one another as the city of God and the city of the world (the " civitas Dei, and the civitas mundi" as Augustine has it), and the defeat of Antiochus Epiphanes and his suc cessors at the hands of comparative handfuls of despised Jews, to which this passage may primarily refer, foreshadows the final conflict with world-power, and the judgments to be inflicted on the confederated armies who shall be gathered against Jerusalem, not only directly by the hand of God, but also by the hand of Israel, who shall then be made strong in Jehovah, so that " the feeble among them shall in that day be as David, and the house of David shall be as God, as the Angel of Jehovah before them."

1 Ps. xviii. 6-9 ; comp. also Ps. cxliv. 6, 7 ; Ps. Ixxvii. 16-19 ; and especially Hab. iii. 12-14.