xxxiii, 15-18), strengthened later by Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah, is taken as an assured truth of prophetic foresight, which these narrower conditions do not avail to dim or make uncertain. Exile Yielding to the Vital Issue Two years after Zechariah had brought his cheering visions to his people, a deputation from Bethel came to the Temple Fasting Cus- to lay before the priests and the prophets a toms of the question about fasting. The custom of fasting had become an established institution during the seventy years of the captivity; it and the observance of the sabbath seem to have been the only general forms of organized religious custom open to the Jews in the foreign land.1 But in the prophetic ideal fasting was subject to grave abuses; it was not according to the spirit that the prophets were minded to cultivate in Israe!. It was essentially a separative act, self-regarding (vii, 5, 6), mindful only of past afflictions and wrongs, tending to draw away a man's regards from the welfare and fellowship of his neighbor. The Second Isaiah had already corrected this tendency to exclusiveness which the fasting custom promoted, and had emphasized the same better way which Zechariah now inculcates (see Isa. lviii, 1-11). That better way was the way of tolerance, mercy, neighborliness, beneficence; and this was not consistent with the mournful and ascetic spirit connoted by fasting. To this latter spirit the people were already too prone; they had let the exile harden them not only against other nations but against their own less fortunate neighbors and sojourners (vii, 11, 12). Accordingly the prophet takes occasion of this deputation's inquiry not, indeed, to legislate either for the regulation or abolition of the custom but to inculcate such a genial spirit of tolerance, compassion, and brotherly kindness as would virtually supersede all fasting austerities, turning them into occasions of joy and cheerful feasts (vii, 8-10; viii, 18, 19). 1 See above, p. 328. If they would keep their custom, let it be a hopeful and upbuilding one. "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: 'The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love truth and peace (viii, 19). Thus, adapting itself to the day of small things," Zechariah's body of prophecy is like taking Isaiah lvi to lxvi with its cosmic and universal reference and translating it into terms suited to Jerusalem and the recovered homeland. In doing so his appeal is to the spiritual values which alone can make Judah great (cf. iv, 6); and like the earlier prophets he takes his stand uncompromisingly on that common and as it were domestic righteousness which witnesses to Jehovah's will by sincere justice to and love of neighbor as exerted to the humblest and most needy. It is his gentler way of correcting the bad tendencies against which Haggai so bluntly contended, and setting up a constructive impulse in character to match their newly awakened constructive zeal for their Temple. The ancient word of Jehovah has indeed overtaken" them. Should ye not hear the words which Jehovah cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited? . . . Thus hath Jehovah of hosts spoken, saying, 'Execute true judgment, and show kindness and compassion every man to his brother; and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the sojourner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart'" (vii, 7-10). It is the ideal that men like Ezekiel have planned and prepared for (cf. Ezek. xviii, 8; xlv, 9), the true law of the rebuilt Temple. ९९ With such a foundation laid, the rest of Zechariah's prophecy can let itself go in pure blessing and promise, a summarizing climax of heartening presage. Prefacing each A Prophetic prediction with the reiterated "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts," he leads his book up to its culmination (and perhaps that of Old Testament prophecy), in the eighth chapter, Decalogue by a progressive series of ten prophetic words, in which, as it were, he domesticates the vision of Isaiah in the home city and land. The most touching of these predictions, perhaps, is the idyllic picture he draws, in viii, 4, 5, of the Jerusalem that is some day to be. It will be remembered that when the Jews returned from exile to the toils and hardships of a repatriated homeland, only the hardy and middle-aged could stand the journey and settlement; the dearth of the very young and the very old was a saddening feature of the return. What blessing could be greater than to have these again in a restored social environment? "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, 'There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, every man with his staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.'" To such a normal social make-up the austerity of ritual fasting is incongruous and irrelevant (viii, 18, 19). Nor will such a city be any more a self-centered and exclusive place; its attractiveness for all nations, and its kindly hospitality, will realize the consummation with which long ago the dreams of Isaiah and Micah began and which the Second Isaiah wrought into the Jewish redemptive spirit (viii, 23; cf. Įsa. ii, 2-4 = Mic. iv, 1–5; lx, 14, 15). II The Subsidence of Prophecy. Comparison of Zechariah's word with that of the other literary prophets seems to reveal the fact that with him and his time the momentous prophetic movement, active and strenuous since the days of Amos and Hosea,1 is nearing its close. Its long fight with 1 Joel also, in my view; see above, pp. 143-147. the corruptions and iniquities of idolatry is over; and the impassioned warnings and promises it has infused into the people's mind remain as vital as ever, an undying element of the nation's permanent literature. Zechariah's words, saying little about either the fight or the far triumph of spiritual forces, yet eminently encouraging and constructive, are like a kind of cadence, preparing for the pause where a new strain of thought and sentiment may begin. The impulsive effort of prophecy must be succeeded by the orderly and steadying régime of law. The rebuilt Temple and the visions of an organized government are the signs. of this. So from Zechariah's time on, literary prophecy has little more to say. Two more prophetic books remain to be considered, both seeming to be anonymous, and these, while containing important and vivid oracles, yet are like a kind of subsidence, largely apocalyptic in nature, letting the prophetic attitude down to a habit of calm expectancy, while the more prosaic and matter-of-fact affairs of the repatriated nation go on their way. Zechariah It has been remarked above1 that our exposition of the Book of Zechariah included only chapters i to viii. That section of the book, as we have seen, is quite Anonymous Oracles homogeneous in theme and treatment, and is put Appended to in the prophet's name. All belongs to a definitely specified time and to clearly discernible conditions. What follows, however, — namely, chapters ix to xiv, - is of very different character. Without giving author or date, it purports in general to communicate two burdens, or oracles, "of the word of Jehovah": one (chapters ix to xi) seeming meant not only for Israel but for the world at large as thought of in Jewish terms; the other (chapters xii to xiv) dealing with certain obscure and turbulent yet eventually victorious destinies of Israel itself. No clear result, as 1 See above, p. 345. regards either style or substance, comes from attributing these chapters to the pen or the restricted time of Zechariah; nor indeed do scholars agree on any time before or after the exile that can be certainly verified from known events. They seem, indeed, like the concluding chapters of Isaiah, to belong to some era independent of historical annals. On the whole, so far as their prophetic tissue is colored by time at all, they seem to reflect an age considerably later than Zechariah, an age wherein a momentous apocalyptic solution of things is drawing high. It is thought by scholars that these chapters were a kind of prophetic waif which, when the so-called "Book of the Twelve " was made up for the Scripture canon, was appended to the last of the named prophets, the Book of Zechariah. Broken Order It must not be inferred, however, that this section of our book is of subordinate importance or merely a stray incident of prophetic utterance. Rather, its relation to the body of literary prophecy is intimate the Coming and cardinal. It strikes consistently into the large divine outlook; only, it is farther along the line, over the nearer horizon as it were, where not specific events but religious and cultural conditions fill the field of vision. Those conditions, though real and grounded, are to an extent shadowy and confused; it is as if the prophet, schooled in the concepts of his time and race, lacked terms to make his vision real and literal in terms of the later era. Hence the inevitable obscurity of his utterance. In Wordsworth's poetic phrasing he is Moving about in worlds not realized. He has the mental impression of an order strange to his habitual conceptions, like a shimmering background, on 1 In the Jewish make-up what we call the "minor prophets" (Hosea to Malachi) were grouped as a single Scripture book and designated as "the Book of the Twelve." See G. A. Smith, "The Book of the Twelve Prophets" (Expositor's Bible), Vol. I, pp. 3, 4. |