Lange S Commentary on the Holy Scriptures - Zechariah (Johann P. Lange)
《Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures - Zechariah》(Johann P. Lange)
Commentator
Johann Peter Lange (April 10, 1802, Sonneborn (now a part of Wuppertal) - July 9, 1884, age 82), was a German Calvinist theologian of peasant origin.
He was born at Sonneborn near Elberfeld, and studied theology at Bonn (from 1822) under K. I. Nitzsch and G. C. F. Lüheld several pastorates, and eventually (1854) settled at Bonn as professor of theology in succession to Isaac August Dorner, becoming also in 1860 counsellor to the consistory.
Lange has been called the poetical theologian par excellence: "It has been said of him that his thoughts succeed each other in such rapid and agitated waves that all calm reflection and all rational distinction become, in a manner, drowned" (F. Lichtenberger).
As a dogmatic writer he belonged to the school of Schleiermacher. His Christliche Dogmatik (5 vols, 1849-1852; new edition, 1870) "contains many fruitful and suggestive thoughts, which, however, are hidden under such a mass of bold figures and strange fancies and suffer so much from want of clearness of presentation, that they did not produce any lasting effect" (Otto Pfleiderer).
Introduction
THE
BOOK OF ZECHARIAH
EXPOUNDED
by
TALBOT W. CHAMBERS, D. D.
One Of The Pastors Of The Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church, New York.
PREFACE
______
The general form of this commentary has been determined by that of the work of which it forms a part. While conforming to this rule, the author has endeavored to consider fairly every difficult question, to furnish a tolerable conspectus of the different views upon it, and wherever possible to state his own with the reasons upon which it rests. Reference has been had to the wants of ministers and students, and it is hoped that they will be able to find in these pages at least a convenient summary of the present state of critical and exegetical opinion upon this most important of the post-exile prophets. The author has done the best that he could in the limited time allowed him, but feels painfully that he has fallen far short of his own ideal. The work, such as it Isaiah, he humbly commends to the favor of Him without whose blessing nothing is either good or useful. A respectable scholar of the early part of the last century concludes the preface to his annotations upon Zechariah with words which the present writer cheerfully adopts for himself. “Quantum ad nos, rimati sumus hanc prophetiam, verum pro modulo nostro. Omnino enim hic usu nobis venit, quod Paulus 1 Corinthians 13:6 inculcat: Εκ μέρονς γινώσκομεν, καί ἐκ μέρονς προφητενομεν.… Interea, si quid lucis ex opella nostra lector acceperit, Deo acceptum id referat! sin aberasse ac nœvos admisisse nos animadverterit, infirmitati nostrœ condonet! Ingenue namque agnoscimus in exponendo tam sublimi valicinio egisse nos non quantum debuimus, sed quantum potuimus” (J. H. Michaelis, 1720.)
THE PROPHET ZECHARIAH.
______
INTRODUCTION
1. The Name and Personal Relations of Zechariah
2. The Historical Background of his Prophecy.
3. The Style and Form of the Book.
4. The Messianic Predictions.
5. The Contents of the Book.
6. The Genuineness of the Second Part.
7. The alleged Influence of the Persian Theology.
8. Literature.
§ 1. The Name and Personal Relations of Zechariah
The name Zechariah is given to more than twenty different persons in the Old Testament (see the enumeration in Smith’s Bible Dictionary, p3610), but of these by far the most distinguished is the eleventh in order of the twelve minor prophets. The word זכריה is usually regarded as a compound of the abridged divine name יַהּ and the radicals זכר, but opinions vary as to the proper voweling of the latter word. Some regard it as a masculine noun=man of Jehovah; others as a feminine segholate=memory of Jehovah; but more commonly it is taken as a verb=Jehovah remembers. This corresponds to the usual method in which יָהּֽ is compounded with other words in order to form a proper name. Some of the older expositors (Jerome, Abarbanel), and a few of the moderns (Neumann, Schlier), endeavor to trace a connection between the Prophet’s name and the contents of his utterances, but such a notion is forbidden by the frequency of its occurrence elsewhere, and by the fact that there is no prophet to whose words such a name would not equally apply. He describes himself as “the son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo,” which phrases cannot be taken appositionally (LXX, Jerome, Cyril), but according to all genealogical usage denote that our Prophet was the son of the former and grandson of the latter. It is no objection to this view that in Ezra 5:1; Ezra 6:14, he is called the son of Iddo, because in Scripture it is by no means unprecedented to give the name son to a grandson, or even a more remote descendant. Thus in the ninth chapter of 2 Kings, Jehu is styled in the fourteenth verse, “the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi,” but in the twentieth verse, simply, “the son of Nimshi.” Moreover, it is perfectly natural that the Prophet, when formally stating his own descent in the title of his prophecy, should recite the names of his father and grandfather, while the omission of the former in an historical narrative such as Ezra’s, may be easily accounted for, either on the view that Berekiah had died young, or that Iddo was the more distinguished person and perhaps generally recognized as the head of the family, which appears to be a fair inference from Nehemiah 12:1; Nehemiah 12:4-8. In this passage he is stated to have been one of “the heads of the priests and of their brethren,” who came up from Babylon with Zerubbabel, and he is said ( Nehemiah 12:16) to have had a son named Zechariah, in the time of Joiakim, the successor of Joshua in the office of high priest. Hence we may conclude that Zechariah—owing possibly to the death of his father—became the immediate representative of the family after Iddo. He was, therefore, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, a Priest as well as a Prophet. As his grandfather was still in active service in the time of Joshua, Zechariah must have been quite young at that time, a fact which is indicated also by the address made to him in one of the visions ( Zechariah 2:4), “Run, speak to that young man.” He was therefore born in Babylon, and came up with the first company of exiles who returned to Palestine. This fact of itself disposes of the fables of Epiphanius and others that he was a man of advanced age at the time of the return, and had distinguished himself by various wonders and prophecies in Babylon (see the citations in Köhler, Einl.). Similar patristic traditions as to his death and his burial by the side of Haggai, near Jerusalem, have no historical value. The later Jewish accounts that he was a member of the Great Synagogue and took an active part in providing for the liturgical service of the Second Temple, are probable enough in themselves, but cannot be certainly authenticated. The LXX. ascribe to him the composition of Psalm 137, 138, and to him and Haggai, that of Psalm 145-148, in some of which ascriptions the Peshito and the Vulgate agree. There seems to be no means at the present day of determining how far any of these are to be credited. “The triumphant Hallelujuh with which many of these Psalm open, was supposed to be characteristic of those which were first chanted in the Second Temple, and came with an emphasis of meaning from the lips of those who had been restored to their native land. The allusions, moreover, with which these Psalm abound, as well as their place in the Psalter, leave us in no doubt as to the time when they were composed, and lend confirmation to the tradition respecting their authorship” (Smith’s Dict. of Bible, p3599).
§ 2. The Historical Background of his Prophecy
This is plainly determined by the book itself. Zechariah’s first address, one which is on its face introductory, is dated in the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, which is two months after the first prophecy of Haggai ( Zechariah 1:1). The two prophets, therefore, were for a time contemporary, and acted in concert in the commencement of their labors so far as concerned their first object, namely, the rebuilding of the Temple. In this Haggai led the way, and then left the work to the younger Prayer of Manasseh, who, however, by no means confined his prophetic activity to this narrow scope.
The restoration of the Temple had been a matter of great and pressing interest to the company of50,000 who came up from Babylon under the summons of Cyrus in the year536 b. c, and reoccupied the land of their fathers. They at once began to collect materials and workmen, and in the second month of the following year laid the foundation of the house with mingled joy and grief ( Ezra 3:11-13). But they were not suffered to proceed in quiet. Their neighbors, the descendants of the people whom Esar-haddon had settled in Samaria, asked permission to join in the enterprise, but were indignantly rejected. In consequence they exerted themselves in opposition, both by throwing obstacles in the way on the spot and by hiring influential counsellors at the Persian court. They were successful even during the life of Cyrus ( Ezra 4:5), but in the reign of Gomates, the pseudo-Smerdis, obtained a decree absolutely prohibiting the further prosecution of the work. In consequence the whole enterprise lay in abeyance for a period of nearly fourteen years. But in the year521 b. c, Darius, the son of Hystaspes, ascended the throne. Immediately the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, inferring that the prohibitory decree of the preceding king ceased at his death, incited their countrymen to resume the work. They did so under the lead of Zerubbabel and Joshua, but were again interrupted, not however by their malignant neighbors, but by Tatnai, the Persian governor west of the Euphrates, who simply as a matter of administration inquired into the origin and object of the movement. The consequence was a written reference to the central government at Babylon. A search in the records at Ecbatana brought to light the original decree of Cyrus ordering the restoration of the Jews and their worship. This, Darius cordially renewed and confirmed in the second year of his reign, so that thenceforth there was no longer any outward difficulty in the way.
But it is very evident from the language of Haggai that a great change had occurred in the views and feelings of the people. Their former zeal for divine worship had almost disappeared. They became engrossed in the work of repairing their private fortunes and securing the comforts of life. They accepted the hindrances in the way of work upon the Temple as providential indications that they were not to resume it, and very energetic appeals and remonstrances were required to rouse them from their apathy, and engage them with becoming diligence and constancy in the enterprise. These efforts of the two prophets were successful, and the building was finished in the sixth year of Darius (b. c515), twenty-one years after its commencement. All the notes of time given in Zechariah ( Zechariah 1:1-7; Zechariah 7:1) fall within the period occupied in labor upon the Temple, but it does not seem to follow as a necessary consequence that all his earlier prophecies are to be understood as mainly intended to secure this consummation. The Temple was to the Jews both an indispensable means of worship and the one great symbol of their faith; and indifference to its existence or progress was a sure token of spiritual declension. The Prophet therefore has a constant reference, direct or indirect, to this work, but he by no means confines himself to it. His utterances take in the whole character and condition of the covenant people, their present dangers and discouragements, their tendencies to formalism and self-deception, their relations to the surrounding heathen and their influence upon the future prospects of the world. His historical position in the second–fourth years of Darius merely furnishes the background for the delineations he presents of the present and coming fortunes of the kingdom of God. To insist, as some recent writers do, upon limiting the scope of the night visions to the Prophet’s own age, greatly embarrasses the interpretation, and at the same time disregards what is one of the characteristic features of all Scripture prophecy, namely, that it constantly brings together the near and the remote, deals in generic statements, and prefers a logical to a chronological connection. The sacred writers of course met the wants of their contemporaries; but the Spirit that was in them gave their words a force and bearing which passed far beyond the immediate present.
§ 3. The Style and Form of the Book
From the earliest period complaint has been made of the obscurity of the Prophet. Hengstenberg quotes from Abarbanel, “The prophecies of Zechariah are so obscure that no expositors however skilled have found their hands ( Psalm 76:5) in the explanation,” and from Jarchi, “the prophecy is very abstruse, for it contains visions resembling dreams which want interpreting; and we shall never be able to discover the true interpretation until the teacher of righteousness (cf. Joel 2:23 marg.) arrives.” The same thing had been said long before these Jewish expositors by Jerome, who after pronouncing the first part very obscure, begins his comment on the second with these words, “Ab obscuris ad obscuriora transimus, et cum Moyse ingredimur in nubem et caliginem. Abyssus abyssum invocat in voce cataractarum Dei, et gyrans gyrando vadit spiritus et in circulos suos revertitur: Labyrinthios patimur errores el Christi cœca regimus filo vestigia.” So Lowth speaks of him as the Prophet “who of all is perhaps the most obscure.” To the same effect speak many of the rationalistic expositors. And although some of these complaints may be traced to subjective causes as, e. g., the extreme difficulty a Jew would find in understanding any writing which apparently describes a suffering Messiah, or the unwillingness of one who denies the possibility of prophecy in the strict sense of the word, to see or admit what manifestly is a prediction of a remotely future event; yet it, is undeniable that there are passages which in themselves are hard to be understood. This is owing mainly to the predominance of symbolical and figurative language, and occasionally to the brevity and conciseness of the statements. Yet, as Vitringa observes, this fact ought not to frighten any one who is eager for the truth, since there is a sense, even if hidden, which relates to the most important things; and this should only stimulate one’s endeavors. Moreover, as Hengstenberg suggests, there are two considerations which greatly aid the interpreter of Zechariah. One is that he leans so much upon his predecessors prior to the Captivity, and hence much light is gained from parallel passages. The other lies in his being a Prophet of the restoration. Of course one element of uncertainty which is found in the earlier Prophets here ceases. A good deal of what was future to them is to Zechariah either past or present, and it is not possible to explain any of his glowing delineations of a future state of deliverance and enlargement as fulfilled in the return from Babylon. The contraction of the possible field of vision lessens the liability to err.