360 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
longer shall He say : " Ye are not My people, and I will not be your God." 1 No ; then He " will hear them " or, as we read more fully in the I 3th chapter, " They shall call on My name, and I will hear them ; and I will say it is My people ; and they shall say Jehovah is my God," 2 which reminds us of many similar, if more general, promises in the prophetic Scriptures, as, for instance : " Then shalt thou call, and Jehovah shall answer ; thou shalt cry, and He shall say, Here I am " ; and again : " /, Jehovah, will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them 3
And the joy and blessing and victory here promised is henceforth to be shared alike by the whole nation, which the prophet, in keeping with the peculiarity of his style, designates by the separate names, " House of Judah," and " House of Joseph," or " Ephraim," which together include the whole people which had, indeed, previous to the Exile, been for a long time divided into two frequently hostile kingdoms, but are from the time of the partial restoration from Babylon regarded as one nation, with one common hope and destiny.
" And they of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, and their hearts shall rejoice as tJirough wine ; yea, their children shall see it and rejoice ; their hearts shall rejoice (or be glad ) in the Lord" which is in effect a repetition more parti cularly in reference to " Ephraim " of what is stated in chaps, ix. 1 5 and x. 5 of Judah. And the reason why " Ephraim," or those previously belonging to the northern kingdom, are specially mentioned as included in the word of promise, is probably to be found (as suggested by Calvin and Hengstenberg) " in the circumstances of the times," or in the historic foreground of this prophecy. If the predic tions of the earlier prophets in reference to Judah were now (that is, in Zechariah s time) only beginning to be fulfilled, and therefore needed to be renewed lest the nation should think itself deceived, much more was this the case with regard to Ephraim.
The great body of the people belonging to the northern
1 IIos. i. 8. - /ech. xiii. 9. 3 Isa. xli. 17, Iviii. 9.
