whereby He shall be called, Jehovah our Righteousness" by which he proclaims Him to be Divine. Isaiah introduces Him as the Tsemach Yehovah (Branch of Jehovah}, but he also designates Him PKri Jia-arets (" Fruit of the earth"), which, as the construction demands, must be regarded as another title of the Tsemach, and which brings before us more particularly His human nature, and His relation to our earth.
He is " the Servant " in Zechariah, and is pointed to as the One who will bring in a perfect righteousness, on the ground of which Israel shall be justified and the iniquity of the land be removed " in one day "; but it is the Servant, " the Branch" and by Zechariah's time the title Tsemach had already become a proper name for the Messiah, and carries with it all that the former prophets had spoken of His divinity, as well as of His humanity.
Lastly, in Zech. vi., we are told to " behold the Man "; but this chapter proceeds to tell us that this Man shall not only rule and be Counsellor of Peace, but that He shall be a " Priest upon His throne " the true Melchizedek, the King of Peace, and King of Righteousness, Who unites in His one person different functions which were formerly vested, not only in different persons, but in different tribes.
The climax of the Messianic references in this great prophecy is reached in the Qth verse: " For behold, the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone are seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, and I will remove the iniquity of the land in one day"
Many fanciful explanations have been given of this beautiful scripture, overlooking the fact that here again (as I have so frequently pointed out to be the case in these visions of Zechariah) we have a terse summary of wellknown predictions in the former prophets, in the light of which we must interpret the passage.[1] " Behold the stone
- ↑ Baumgarten thinks the stone laid before Joshua represented the jewels belonging to the high priest's breastplate (the Urim and Thummim, which, by the way, never existed in the Second Temple), or even some single precious stone which supplied the place of the jewels that were lost.
