Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/75

 while still others have confused him with the " young man " in ver. 4. Thus Dr. Wright says, rather dogmatically, " The man with the measuring line is not to be regarded as an angel; he was sent forth on no mission from above. He appears as a mere figure in the vision, and one represented as acting unwisely. He may have been, as Neumann imagines, termed this young man by the angel, in allusion to his simplicity."

But the suggestion of a " mere figure " in the vision is altogether out of keeping with the character of the whole series of these prophetic dramas in which every actor is of significance, and there is nothing whatever in the text of the vision to justify the above statement that this " man " was sent " on no mission from above," and is represented as acting " unwisely " or in " his simplicity."

In opposition to the above, it seems to me very clear that " the man " is none other than the One whom the prophet beheld in the first vision riding upon the red horse, and standing among the myrtles " in the bottom " or "by the deep" (chap. i. 8), who in the iith verse of that same chapter is identified with the MalakJi Yehovah the Angel of Jehovah who, as we have seen, is the same as " the Angel of His Face," the Divine " Messenger of the Covenant," the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity.

Nor are these the only places where the Angel of Jehovah is called " the man " in these series of visions, for in the symbolical transaction which follows the visions in chap, vi., which is an indisputably Messianic passage, we read:

"Behold the Man, whose name is the Branch, and He shall grow up out of His place, and He shall build the temple of Jehovah." Now, He who in that scripture is represented as the builder of the true Temple of Jehovah, as the ultimate fulfilment of the " comfortable words " of promise in the first vision, " My house shall be built in it," is " the man " who in this third vision is represented as the Author of that future restoration and enlargement of the city expressed in the words which immediately follow in that