406 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
jecture. That it is meant to express the valuelessness of a thing is pretty certain.
(2) In the command that the prophet should cast the ; ]* money to the potter, there is nothing said about his \v going to the Temple, but in the performance we read, jth " And I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them, J sn in the house of Jehovah, to the potter"
Hengstenberg understands this to mean that the money >. in was thrown there that it might be taken thence to the potter ; but I agree with another Bible student that, " as the words read they can only be understood as signifying that the potter was in the Temple when the money was thrown to him ; that he had either some work to do there, or that he had come to bring some earthenware for the Temple kitchen." * And the reason why the prophet went to the house of Jehovah was not merely to show that it was as the servant of the Lord and by His command that he was acting, but because " the Temple was the place where the people of the covenant were wont to assemble to present themselves before the Lord. In that holy place the awful repudiation on the part of the nation of Him, who was the Shepherd of Israel, was to be publicly made known. The base transaction (however done in a corner) was to be proclaimed upon the housetops. In the place where the solemn covenant between Jehovah and His people had so often been ratified by sacrifices, the fearful separation between the people of Israel and Himself was to be declared. What was done in the Temple was done in the presence of both parties to the covenant : in the presence of Jehovah, in whose honour the Temple had been erected, and in the presence of the nation, who, by its erection of that Temple, had accepted Jehovah as their Lord and God. In the presence of both parties the rejection of the Lord as the Shepherd of Israel was to be announced, and the dis solution of the covenant made by Jehovah to be publicly proclaimed by the act of His representative." 2
1 In chap. xiv. 20 there is a mention of earthenware "pots" as being used in the Temple. - Dr. C. H. H. Wright.
