Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/499



THE SMITTEN SHEPHERD 483

use of the word hq shelishith (" the third part ") in the second half of the verse.

A parallel to this scripture is found in Ezek. v. 1 2, where the nation is also divided into three parts : " A third part of thee (shelishith} shall die with the pestilence, . . . and a third part shall fall by the sword, . . . and a third part 1 will scatter unto all the winds"

" The whole of the Jewish nation," observes Hengsten- berg, " is introduced here as an inheritance left by the Shepherd who has been put to death, which inheritance is divided into three parts: death claiming the privilege of the first-born, and so receiving two portions, and life one a division similar to that which David made in the case of the Moabites." * The literalness of this division must not, however, be pressed. Isaiah, for instance, 2 speaks of only a tenth part as escaping from the great purging judgment. Both expressions, as Dr. Wright properly observes, are to be regarded as emblematic for a comparatively small number, and not as describing the exact proportion of the remnant that should escape.

The emphatic word, aa (" therein "), or literally, " in it," which is twice repeated, refers to the land and not to the flock, as some interpreters explain : " In all the land . . . two-thirds in it shall be cut off, shall die" It seems to me, therefore, that, though the fulfilment may not be entirely limited to it, yet, that the reference is chiefly to the judg ments which would come on the people in the land, namely, immediately after the " smiting of the Shepherd," while they were yet recognised as a nation in Palestine, though no longer in a nationally independent condition ; and again after the restoration of a representative remnant in unbelief at the end of the long parenthetical period, when God s national dealings with them shall be resumed, and His long controversy with them as a nation on account of their great sin finally settled on the same soil where it origin ated.

And with what terrible literalness has this Divine fore-

1 2 Sam. vjii. 2. * Isa. vi. 13.