422
proximate future, and the events which were to precede and accompany the First Advent, merge into the great and solemn events of the Second Advent, and the time of the end.
The second or last section, on the other hand (chaps, xii. xiv.), seems to me to carry our thoughts altogether to the more distant future, and is eschatological and apocalyptic in its character, for it is impossible to apply the solemn predictions in these chapters to events at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, which is the favourite theory of those who assign a pre- exilic origin for the second half of Zechariah, and who degrade this great prophecy to the level of a mere " political divination of the affairs of the kingdom of Judah in which ardent hopes were expressed by the unknown prophet hopes destined, however, to be sadly disappointed respecting the final result of the struggle of the Jewish kingdom with the Babylonian power." l
Neither can we, without doing great violence to the prophecy, interpret it of the taking of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes, as some do, nor to the destruction of the city and Temple by the Romans ; for (to quote from words of my own) in none of those calamitous events in the past history of Israel did God in the person of the Messiah visibly appear on the Mount of Olives with His angelic hosts as the Deliverer of His people and the destroyer of many nations which were gathered against them ; nor was the spirit of grace and supplication ever yet poured out upon the Jewish nation, so that they might look upon and recognise " Him whom they have pierced " ; nor has the Lord, from any of those past events onward, be come " King over the whole earth " (chap. xiv. 9) ; not to mention many other great and solemn events which are predicted in these chapters which cannot be allegorised or explained away. We must reject, therefore, the view of some of the " orthodox " commentators that this last section traverses the ground already trodden in the previous
1 Thus, for instance, Ewald in Die Propheten des alten Bundes.
