Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/387



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the blessings of Messiah s gospel among the nations by whom they shall be known as the " priests of Jehovah," and be welcomed as " the ministers of our God," 1 njpp DXJ, neum Yehovah " the saying, or utterance, of Jehovah."

These are the last words of the chapter, and form, so to say, the signature which stands pledged to the fulfilment of the contents of the prophecy.

And yet even evangelical writers and commentators deny that there ever will be a literal fulfilment of these plain and solemn predictions, and see in them at the most only forecasts of the gradual spread of Christianity and of the absorption of a certain number of Jews into the Church. Thus, one German scholar, after summarising the contents of the whole prophecy from chap. ix. 1 1 to the end of chap, x., says : " The principle of fulfilment is of a spiritual kind, and was effected through the gathering oi the Jews into the Kingdom of Christ, which commenced in the times of the Apostles, and will continue till the remnant of Israel is converted to Christ its Saviour." 2

And another, to whose elaborate and, in some respects, useful work reference has often been made in these " notes," says : " In the remarkable position occupied by Israel in the early Christian Church for our Lord and His apostles were Jews, and the majority of the early evangelists were men of this nation in the wonderful fact that the Jews, though politically crushed beneath the Gentile yoke, con quered the nations of the earth by means of that religion which sprang from their midst in such facts this prophecy, and other similar prophecies, found a most glorious and real fulfilment. The nations have been enlightened by the Jews, and books written by Jewish pens have become the laws and oracles of the world." 3

But, as I have had occasion to remark more than once, such method of interpretation turns the great prophetic utterances in the Bible into mere hyperbole, and substitutes an unnatural and shadowy meaning for what is plain and obvious, thereby throwing a vagueness and uncertainty over 1 Isa. Ivi. 6. - Keil. J Wright.