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REJECTION OF THE TRUE SHEPHERD 381

vlessianic character, and (as we shall see more clearly arther on) what Jehovah is said here to perform was done n very deed by the Messiah."

(2) The second preliminary question to be settled is he time to which this prophecy, and more especially the ymbolical action described in vers. 7-14, is to be referred. Two or three Jewish commentators, who are influenced n their interpretations by their hostility to Christianity, and ome of the " modern " rationalistic Christian theologians, o whom Christ and the New Testament are non-existent, r of no account in their interpretations of the Old Testa- Clls ment, refer it to some event, or events, which they imagine occurred in the time of the First Temple before the Baby- ver Ionian Exile. 1

A full and lengthy refutation of this view is, however, supplied by another Jewish commentator, namely, Abar- banel. One argument of his is, of itself, quite sufficient.

" To what purpose," he asks, " should God show the "^ prophet past events, which he had seen with his own eyes " and with the eyes of his father; and what necessity was

c !the desolation of the first house, which had occurred but a V short time before; and (above all) to do this in parables, ? ; which are only employed in reference to the future, to ? i make events known before they happen ? But with regard
 * r there to make known to him the captivity of the tribes and

&gt;to the past, information is not conveyed in parables. It is


 * not possible to suppose that God would communicate a

plain matter of recent history in obscure symbols, and,

past, and must predict what was to happen during the time
 * therefore, the symbolical representation cannot refer to the

of the Second Temple." 2

1 I may quote as an instance, Professor Driver, who says that this scripture " is to be interpreted in all probability, not as a prediction, but as a symbolical 5 description of events which had happened recently when the prophet wrote." L a It is of interest to observe that as far as the "Jewish interpretation" is concerned, not only Abarbanel, but the Talmud (both the Jerusalem and the 1 Babylonian), Joseph Ben Gorion (Breithaupt s edition, p. 889), Aben Ezra, Abraham "the Levite," Alshech, and even R. Isaac of Troki in his polemical work against Christianity all agree with Christians in applying this prophecy to the time of the Second Temple.