302 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
of their forefathers, and might pay no tribute on the seventh year." l
IsraePs Prince of Peace and His Mission in the World
From the victorious progress of the great Gentile world- conqueror, with his great army, which God uses as His rod to chastise the peoples and cities enumerated in the first verses of this chapter; and from the deliverance of the people and land of Israel by Jehovah, who would camp round about His house with an invisible host, " because of him who passeth by, and because of him that returneth " (the primary reference of which, as we have seen, was to a more immediate future) the prophet passes to the true King of Israel, whose strength rests not in chariots and horses, or in the multitude of an host ; and to the great deliverance and salvation which He shall bring, not only to Israel, but to " the nations."
And it is quite in keeping with the character of Old Testament prophecy that there is no perspective observed, nor clear indications given of the pauses and intervals between the different stages and acts by which Messiah s work would be accomplished, and His Kingdom finally established. Like the traveller who from a great distance beholds a whole mountain range as one mountain, without discerning the different peaks, with the long valleys between, so do the Old Testament seers often behold
1 Josephus Antiquities of the Jews, xi. 8. 3. " Rationalism, while it remains such," observes Pusey, "cannot admit of Daniel s prophecies which the high priest showed him, declaring that a Greek should destroy the Persian empire, which Alexander rightly interpreted of himself. But the facts remain that the conqueror, who above most gave way to his anger, bestowed privileges almost incredible on a nation, which under the Medes and Persians had been the most despised part of the enslaved (Tacitus), made them equal in privileges to his own Macedonians, who could hardly brook the absorption of the Persians, although in inferior condition, among themselves. The most despised of the enslaved became the most trusted of the trusted. They became a large portion of the second and third then known cities in the world they became Alex andrians, Antiochenes, Ephesians, without ceasing to be Jews. The law com manded faithfulness to oaths, and they who despised their religion respected its fruits."
