460 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
source of life and refreshment, but as the means of puri fication from sin and moral uncleanness, that the figure of the fountain is introduced.
The background of the figurative language in this prophetic scripture are the Divine appointments in the Levitical ritual. The primary allusion may be to the water used for the purification of the Levites on their con secration, which is called nstan ", mei hattath, literally, " sin water " or " water of expiation." l
It is this Levitical ordinance which was very probably also in the mind of the priestly prophet Ezekiel in his great prophecy concerning Israel s future in chap, xxxvi. : " And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean : from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you"
In our passage in Zechariah, however, the figure is a much stronger one. Instead of water being sprinkled upon the defiled, a fountain of cleansing water is opened, in which the guilty may wash and be clean. But the words le-hattath u-leniddah " for sin and for uncleanness "- seem almost an echo of Num. xix. 9, where these two words are used. The ashes of the red heifer, we read, shall be laid up in a clean place without the camp, " lemai niddah, hattath hi " literally, " for water of purification, a means of removing sin it is."
The Revised Version renders the words " a water of separation ; it is a sin offering." The fact is that hattath means " sin," and also " offering for sin," or " means of removing sin." The same is true of the word niddah, translated "uncleanness" in Zech. xiii. I, 2, and "separa tion" in the Authorised and Revised Versions in Num. xix. 9, which means primarily that kind of ceremonial uncleanness which requires " separation," z but denotes also the means of the removal of this particular uncleanness.
But, to repeat, it is not for the purification from bodily, or ceremonial uncleanness, that the fountain shall then be opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of
5 Num. viii. 7. 2 Lev. xii. 2, xv. 19-24.
