326 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
enemies of God s kingdom be finally overthrown. The figures in vers. 1 3 to I 5 are very bold and graphic : " For I will bend (or stretch ) Judah for Me as a bow, and I will fill it with Ephraim ; l and I will stir up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and I will make thee as the sword of a mighty man. And Jehovah shall appear above them, and His arrow shall go forth as the lightning : and the Lord Jehovah shall blow the trumpet, and shall go forth (or march ) with whirlwinds (or in the tempests ) of the south" Judah is the drawn bow, Ephraim the arrow, and Zion the sword in the hand of Jehovah, by means of which the foe is thoroughly subjugated.
The ! ""P.2, Benei- Yavan, sons of Javan, who come within the range of the prophet s vision in this passage, are " the Greeks as the world-power," or the Graeco- Macedonian kingdom ; but, as we shall see, the more immediate merges here also into the more distant future. The "weak beginnings" of the fulfilment of this prophecy, to borrow an expression from Keil, is to be seen " in the wars between the Maccabees and the Seleucidae, or Greek rulers of Syria," to which also some ancient Jews applied this prophecy :
" The wars of the Jews against Greece, under the heroic leadership of the Maccabees, were occasioned by the attempt to overturn the Jewish religion and substitute in its place Grecian customs (comp. I Mace. viii. 9-18; 2 Mace. iv. 13-15). Those wars were essentially religious in their character. The Maccabean heroes went forth to the con test with the full conviction that the cause in which they were engaged was the cause of God, and that the Lord was with them in all their various difficulties and trials. In the glowing language of the prophet (ver. 14), Jehovah was seen over them, and His arrow went forth as the lightning ; yea, the Lord Jehovah blew with the trumpet, for He was the real Captain of His host, and the war waged by the Jews was in defence of His truth. The
1 on?* fix 1 ??. Von Orelli regards Ephraim as the quiver the object filled with arrows for God s u<e.
