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hope” waiting for release (Zec 9:11-12, compared with Zec 2:10-11), and the house of Joseph or Ephraim was still to be gathered and saved (Zec 10:6-10). Moreover, the severance of Judah and Ephraim, which lasted till the destruction of both kingdoms, had ceased. The eye of Jehovah is now fixed upon all the tribes of Israel (Zec 9:1); Judah and Ephraim are strengthened by God for a common victorious conflict with the sons of Javan (Zec 9:13); the Lord their God grants salvation to His people as a flock (Zec 9:16 compared with Zec 8:13); the shepherd of the Lord feeds them both as a single flock, and only abolishes the brotherhood between Judah and Israel by the breaking of his second staff (Zec 11:14). Hence the jealousy between Judah and Ephraim, the cessation of which was expected in the future by the prophets before the captivity (cf. Isa 11:13; Hos 2:2; Eze 37:15.), is extinct; and all that remains of the severance into two kingdoms is the epithet house of Judah or house of Israel, which Zechariah uses not only in ch. 9-11, but also in the appeal in Zec 8:13, which no critic has called in question. All the tribes form one nation, which dwells in the presence of the prophet in Jerusalem and Judah. Just as in the first part of our book Israel consists of Judah and Jerusalem (Zec 1:19, cf. Zec 2:12), so in the second part the burden pronounced upon Israel (Zec 12:1) falls upon Jerusalem and Judah (Zec 12:2, Zec 12:5., Zec 14:2, Zec 14:14); and just as, according to the night-visions, the imperial power has its seat in the land of the north and of the south (Zec 6:6), so in the last oracles Asshur (the north land) and Egypt (the south land) are types of the heathen world (Zec 10:10). And when at length the empire of the world which is hostile to God is more precisely defined, it is called Javan, - an epithet taken from Dan 8:21, which points as clearly as possible to the times after the captivity, inasmuch as the sons of Javan never appear as enemies of the covenant nation before the captivity, even when the Tyrians and Philistines are threatened with divine retribution for having sold to the Javanites the prisoners of Judah and Jerusalem (Joe 3:6).
On the other hand, the differences which prevail between the first two prophecies of Zechariah and the last two are not of such a character as to point to two or three different prophets. It is true that in ch. 9-14 there occur no visions, no