438 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
Testament around which more controversy has raged than around " these simple, unadorned," and, to the Christian, most precious words. Jewish commentators and some rationalistic Christian writers who seem not less biased in their anti-Christological methods in interpreting the Old Testament, 1 have tried their utmost to divert this scripture from Him whose rejection and suffering unto death, and yet future recognition and penitent reception on the part of " His own " nation, it foretells.
The modern Jewish translation of the passage as given, for instance, in the " Appendix of the Revised Version," issued by the Jewish Community in England for the use of Jews, in 1896, is as follows: "And they (i.e., the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem) shall look up to Me because of Him whom they (i.e., the nations which come against Jerusalem) have pierced." This translation, first suggested by Rashi, adopted by Kimchi in his com mentary on Zechariah, was fully elaborated by Rabbi Isaak of Troki 2 in his polemical work against Christianity, Chizzuk Emunah (" Strengthening of the Faith "), who thus ex plains :
" If it should happen that any of the Israelites should be pierced, namely, in that war, even though it should be one of the most inconsiderable, they shall wonder greatly how this could happen, and will think that this is the
1 Thus, for instance, Ewald, one of the fathers of the " Higher Criticism," and who has a very large following among Christian- commentators and theological writers in this country, considers the mourning pictured by the prophet in the scripture "as a mourning over the Jews fallen in the defence of their city," as martyrs for their country and faith ; those slain in the battlefield he considers to be "those pierced by the heathen." Canon Driver, in his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, makes this passage to refer to some "deed of blood " in which the house of David, together with the people, became implicated some time before these chapters were written, which, according to him (and in opposition to Ewald and his school, who assign a pre-exilic origin to the second half of Zechariah) was some time between 518 and 300 B.C., of which deed of blood, as pointed out in my " Introduction to the second half of Zechariah," which could occasion such deep and universal mourning, history knows nothing.
2 Isaac Ben Abraham of Troki, a Karaite Rabbi born in 1533, died in 1594. His book is still the chief arsenal whence many arguments of modern Jews in their polemics against Christianity are drawn.
