448 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
so does the sudden transition in the same verse from the first person to the third, and the words, " they shall mourn for Him" teach us that, as to His person, He is yet distinct from God. The same mystery and apparent paradox meet us in many other Old Testament scriptures which speak of the Messiah as " Jehovah " the " mighty God," and yet as one sent by, and coming in the name of God, and is a mystery which (as already stated above) is solved to all whose eyes have been opened to the Biblical doctrine of the Tri-unity of the blessed Godhead, and to the twofold nature of the promised Redeemer, who is perfect God and perfect Man the Son of David and the Son of the Highest.
(c) " Whom they have pierced."
The verb ip^, daqar, means " to pierce," or " thrust through with a spear or lance," 1 and points to " the climax of our Saviour s mortal sufferings " when, as the Gospel narrative bears witness, " one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and straightway there came out blood and water." ^
It was a Roman soldier who did the actual deed ; Roman soldiers also were they who pierced His blessed brow with the crown of thorns, and His hands and feet with those cruel nails ; but the guilt and responsibility for
1 See Num. xxv. 7, 8, where the same verb is used in connection with ncn, "spear" or lance ; the same verb is used also in Zech. xiii. 3.
2 It has been urged that stress must not be laid on the literal fulfilment of this item in the prophecy as recorded in the Gospel narrative, since the prophet uses language in chap. xiii. 7 "which if its literal signification be insisted on, would imply death by the sword " ; but this is a misapprehension, a^n, "sword," is used frequently, in a general way, as the instrument of death by violence, without in many cases defining that it would be brought about by being literally slain with the sword. In Ps. xxii. 20, e.g., we read : "Deliver my soul from the sword (i.e., from death), my darling (my only one) from the power of the dog" ; yet in the immediate connection we read : "They pierced My hands and My feet." We take it then that in chap. xiii. 9 we have a prophecy of Messiah s sufferings unto death in a general way, by the use of a
-nire well understood as having this signification, but that chap. xii. 10 refers lighter?,, definite act in process of the infliction of the sufferings unto death on our "Look ^P l ^ e li tera l fulfilment of which the Apostle John lays such emphasis "look," not ">4-37)-
