Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/80

 have been fully accomplished if the people had kept the covenant committed to them, and they were accomplished in a great measure, notwithstanding their many sins."

A good deal is made of a letter of Aristeas, an Egyptian Jew, to Philocrates, which is referred to by Josephus in the I2th book of his Jewish Antiquities, in which a description of Jerusalem after the restoration is given; also of a fragment of Hecataeus, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and who describes the Jews at the time as possessing " many fortresses and towns, moreover one fortified city, by name Jerusalem, fifty stadia in circumference and inhabited by 120,000 men"; and of Josephus statement (sec his Jewish Wars, v. 4. 2) that at the time of Herod Agrippa, " as the city grew more populous it gradually crept beyond its old limits, and those parts of it that stood northwards of the temple and joined that hill to the city made it considerably larger, and occasioned that hill, which is in number the fourth, and is called Bezetha, to be inhabited also." All of which, according to these interpreters, show that the glorious prophecy in Zech. ii. has been fulfilled, and has no more reference to a future period.

But first, in reference to those who explain away the application to the literal Jerusalem altogether, we would say that this method of interpretation does not " spiritualise " but pJiantomise Scripture, for it does not really bring out the meaning and true application of the Spirit, which alone makes the Word of God " spiritual " and profitable to the reader, but substitutes an unnatural and shadowy meaning for what is plain and obvious, and thereby throws a vague ness and uncertainty over all the prophetic oracles. Surely the fact that the Jerusalem whose greatly extended future site is here measured is to overflow not only with men, but with " cattle," who are to dwell therein, ought to be sufficient proof that it is an earthly and not a heavenly city that is spoken about. Was the " Jerusalem," against which Jehovah had indignation " these threescore years and ten " of the captivity, for which the Angel of Jehovah