future Temple, which Messiah, the true Prince and Priest, of whom Zerubbabel and Joshua the son of Josedech, were types, would build; which, as already said, shall be an House of Prayer for all nations, and in which those that are " far off" by which we must understand not only the Jews who were still in the far lands of their " captivity," but the Gentiles, " from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same," as the last post-exilic prophet Malachi predicts " shall come and build."
The symbolical act itself which the prophet is com manded to perform was as follows:
He was to go to the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah, " whither they (i.e., these distinguished strangers) are come from Babylon," as the original words in the 18th verse are properly rendered in the Revised Version the 1 4th verse indicating, as we shall see, that this Josiah, like a true son of Abraham, was a man " given to hospitality," and lodged these strangers in his house as an act of " kind ness." Having gone that " same day " to that hospitable house, he was to take some of the silver and gold which they had brought as an offering from those still in Babylon, and make ataroth. The word is in the plural, and is rendered in the Authorised Version and in the text of the Revised Version " crowns,"[1] some commentators sup posing that there were at least two crowns one made of silver and the other of gold: the first for the high priest, or at any rate as an emblem of the priestly dignity; and the other of royalty. But what follows does not at all agree with this supposition, for the prophet is commanded to put the ataroth upon the head of Joshua; and, as Keil and Lange well observe, " You do not put two or more crowns upon the head of one man." Ewald, Hitzig, and others, to
- ↑ In the margin of the R.V. it is rendered in the singular, "a crown."
few steps; this was encompassed by a stone wall for a partition, with an inscrip tion which forbade any foreigner to go in under pain of death."
How significant, in the light of this fact, are the words of the apostle: " But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace who hath made both (i.e., Jew and Gentile) one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition " (Eph. ii. 13, 14).
