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502 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH

" We can in part conceive the feelings with which the spared remnant of Israel will behold the light of that evening the evening which is to introduce the new order of God. They have been described in the I 2th chapter as subdued, contrite, and mourning. And no marvel : carried as they will have been by a power that they knew not, through such a day of terror, strengthened for the Lord in it, and left at last in a scene of tranquil blessing received from the hands of One whom they had despised, but to whom they have now learned to say My Lord, and my God ; it would be strange indeed if they should not, number ing such mercies, be bowed in contrition of spirit. And when they shall at last be comforted, and the Spirit be poured out upon them from on high, when the knowledge of their own past history and of the Church s history will all be opened to them in the light of God, then, like so many Pauls, monuments of Sovereign grace, they shall go forth to the dark places of the earth, rich in experience and in the knowledge of God, and from them shall flow rivers of living waters." l

The blessed issues of the great and solemn events of " that day," as set forth in the first seven verses, are described in the verses that follow :

I. By means of the great earthquake spoken of in vers. 4 and 5, and other convulsions of nature which are immediately to precede and to accompany the visible appearing of the Messiah, when His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives great physical changes will take place in Palestine and the whole land, but particularly the position of Jerusalem will be greatly altered and trans formed. 2 " And it shall come to pass in that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea, and half of them toward the western sea ; in summer and in winter shall it be."

The " eastern " (haqqadmoni, which has sometimes also the meaning of " ancient ") is the Dead Sea, which shall then be healed by the streams of fresh, or " living," 1 B. W. Newton. 2 Isa. xxx. 25, 26.