330 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
blood the prophet describes the victorious Jews as being filled, like the sacrificial bowls in which the priests were wont to catch the blood of the victims which were slain ; and they would be sprinkled with it like the corners of the altar, which expression includes the horns of the altar, which were wont to be sprinkled with the sacrificial blood." x
The climax is reached in the last two verses. The final overthrow and subjugation of world-power is followed by the exaltation and the glorification of the people of God. " And Jehovah their God shall save them in that day as the flock of His people : for they shall be as the stones of a crown lifted on high"
The picture in the i6th verse changes from war and bloodshed to that of the Shepherd and His flock, which plays so prominent a part in the last chapters of this pro phetic book.
Jehovah in that day shall "save them" This does not mean here merely that He will help and deliver them. This, as another writer points out, would affirm much too little after what has gone before. " When Israel has trodden down his foes, he no longer needs deliverance." The mean ing is rather that God will in that day endow them with salvation, not only in the negative sense of deliverance, but in the positive sense ; and, if we want to know what is implied in it, we have it in the figure of the next clause. He will do for them and be to them all that a shepherd does and is to his flock, which implies that He will not only seek, and deliver, and gather them, but He Him self, in the person of the Messiah, as all the prophets bear witness, will tend, and feed, and lead, and rule over them all which is implied in the Hebrew word " Shepherd." That most beautiful " nightingale song," Ps. xxiii., which is so precious to us now, will then express the experience of saved Israel. "Jehovah is my Shepherd, I shall not want" because in His Shepherd-care the fullest provision is made for every need, both spiritual and temporal, for His own flock.
1 C. H. H. Wright.
