452 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
captivity and continued " to this day," when the chronicles were closed. It was worthy, therefore, to be referred to by the prophet, and to be compared with the still greater and more bitter mourning of repentant Israel in the future.
(2) In the universal, yet individual, mourning which, commencing in Jerusalem, will spread throughout the whole land, four " families " are especially singled out as being conspicuous. Of these four, two are well known, namely, " the family of the house of David " and " the family of the house of Levi." But who are meant by " the family of the house of Nathan " and " the family of Shimei " (or of " the Shimeites ") ?
It would require a treatise to analyse the various con jectures and explanations which have been advanced on this point by Jewish and Christian commentators.
Let me in the briefest possible manner give here what seems to me the most satisfactory explanation. And first, we may say with certainty that "the family of the house of Nathan " does not refer to the posterity of Nathan the prophet, as representing the prophetic order, as the Rabbis and some Christian writers have supposed, but to the family of Nathan, the son of David and brother of Solomon (2 Sam. v. 14), whose name figures also in the genealogy of our Lord in Luke iii. 31. Likewise, "the family of the Shimeite " does not refer to the tribe of Simeon, which, according to rabbinic fiction, furnished the teachers of the nation ; l for in that case, apart from other considerations, the name would be differently written in the Hebrew, 2 but refers to Shimei, the son of Gershon and grandson of Levi (Num. iii. 1 8). We have thus two families of the royal and two of the priestly line, and of these one stands for the
1 Jerome sums up the Jewish view, which he seems to have adopted, thus : "In David the regal tribe is included, i.e., Judah. In Nathan the prophetic order is described. Levi refers to the priests from whom the priesthood sprang. In Simeon the teachers of Israel are included, as companies of masters sprang from that tribe. He says nothing about the other tribes, as they had no special privilege or dignity." But, as stated above, these conjectures rest on no historic basis of fact.
2 iype>, Simonite instead of as it is in the text ypt*.
