mission He was to accomplish. Let us examine the sentence in detail.
wx nan j$ 6 o avOpwiros Ecce Homo! " Behold the Man! " an expression which has become famous and of profound significance, since some five centuries later, in the overruling providence of God, it was used by Pilate on the day when He Who came to bring life into the world was Himself led forth to a death of shame.
Here, however, it is not to the Son of Man in His humiliation, to the " Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief," that our attention is directed by God Himself, but to the only true Man after God's own heart the Man par excellence the Ideal and Representative of the race, Who, after having for our salvation worn the crown of thorns, shall, as the reward of His sufferings, be " crowned with glory and honour," and have all things put in subjection under His feet.
" Behold the Man! " " Behold My Servant! " (Isa. xlii. I, lii. 1 3), " Behold thy King! " (Zech. ix. 9), " Behold your God! " (Isa. xl. 9): thus variously, as calling attention to the different aspects of the character of the same blessed Person, is this word " Behold " used by God Himself.
" Behold the Man! " the words are indeed addressed to Joshua, but by no possibility can they be made to apply to him as the subject, as modern Jews and some rational istic Christian interpreters seek to do.[1]
- ↑ Rashi, Aben Ezra, and Kimchi assert that " the Man, the Branch." is Zerubbabel; but, for obvious controversial reasons, they have departed from the older received interpretation, as is seen from Targum of Jonathan, where the passage (ver. 12) is paraphrased thus: "Behold the Man; Messiah is His Name. He will be revealed, and He will become great and build the Temple of God."
The Messianic interpretation is also defended with great force by Abarbanel, who thus decisively refutes the interpretation adopted by the great trio of Jewish commentators, Rashi, Aben Ezra, and Kimchi. He says, " Rashi has written that the words, Behold the Man Whose Name is the Branch, have by some been interpreted of the Messiah." He here means Jonathan, whose inter pretation he did not receive, for he adds that the building here spoken of refers altogether to the Second Temple; but I wish that I could ask them, if this pro phecy refers to the Second Temple and Zerubabbel, why it said, "The Man Whose Name is the Branch," "and He shall grow up from beneath Him."
Surely we know that every man grows up to manhood, and even to old age and
