people, and their leaders, for " from this day will I bless you," saith Jehovah (Hag. ii. 19).
Then there follows a contrast between the time before they obeyed the voice of Jehovah their God and took up the work of building the Temple, and the condition of things since they hearkened to the voice of the Word of God through Haggai and Zechariah. Before, when they cared only for their own affairs, nothing prospered with them, and there was nothing but disaster and disappoint ment: " For before those days there was no hire (or wages ) for man, nor any hire for beast" so little was the produce that it did not pay the labour of man and beast; which answers to the description of those same days by Haggai:
"Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put into a bag with holes" (Hag. i. 6). And not only so, but (to return to our passage in Zechariah) "for him that went out and for him that came in (literally) there was no peace, because of the. adversary" which is most probably a true and graphic description of the conditions which then prevailed; for, to quote words from another writer, " in such an empire as the Persian there was large scope for actual hostility among the petty nations subject to it; so that they did not threaten revolt against itself, or interfere with the payment of tribute, as in the Turkish Empire now."[1]
On the rebuilding of the walls (a little later) we actually read that " the adversaries " z>., the Samaritans, Arabians, Ammonites, and Ashdodites conspired to fight against Jerusalem, and to slay the Jews, but were frustrated because the Lord's protection was now over the little remnant of the people.
And not only was there no peace " in those days " to him that went out and to him that came in, because of the
- ↑ According to Hitzig the expedition of Cambyses to Egypt occurred at this time; and though it was not referred to in the Book of Ezra, the march of the Persian army through the land southward must have caused no little affliction to the colonists under their then distressing circumstances.
