Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/63

 view on the ground that the power which overthrew the Israel of the northern kingdom was Assyria, and that other powers besides, such as Egypt, etc., have had their share in breaking up the two Israelitish states, and have argued from the use of the perfect, or preterite zeru (" have scattered "), that the dispersion was presented to the prophet as an already accomplished fact by powers which had already then been in existence; but to this objection it is sufficient to answer that, though it is true that other powers beside had had a share in afflicting and scattering Israel, and that the northern kingdom had been overthrown by Assyria, the prophetic Scriptures, and especially the prophecies of Daniel, upon which this vision of Zechariah is based, deal with a definite and particular period as pre eminently the one during which Israel is " scattered " and Jerusalem " trodden down," and that these " times of the Gentiles " begin, not with Shalmaneser, nor with Senna cherib, but with Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, " the head of gold " of the great image which he himself beheld in a dream (Dan. ii. i).

It is true that Israel, as far as the northern kingdom of the ten tribes is concerned, had been overthrown and a considerable number transported into Assyria; but it was not till a hundred and thirty years later, when the sceptre was finally plucked out of the hands of the last king of the House of David who reigned in Jerusalem, by Nebuchad nezzar, that the united dispersion of Judah and Israel commenced, and the special period of their national woes and humiliations which were to extend during the whole course of these four great Gentile world-empires, was inaugurated.

As for the use of the perfect or preterite, and the fact that the prophet sees the four horns together, we have to remember that it is the tense of prophetic vision to which everything appears present. In the same way the prophets, for instance, described the sufferings and death of Messiah the perfect Servant of Jehovah who was to appear centuries after their day as already past, and speak of the