INTRODUCTORY
PERHAPS in connection with no other scripture do the contradictions and absurdities of the allegorising commentators appear so clearly as in their interpre tations of this 1 4th chapter of Zechariah. Thus, according to Hengstenberg, Keil, and others of the older German expositors, who are followed by such English scholars as Pusey and C. H. H. Wright, to whose works I have so often referred in this exposition, " Israel," in this last section of Zechariah, " denotes the people of God in contradistinction to the peoples of the world ; the inhabitants of Jerusalem with the house of David, and Judah with its princes, as the ! i representatives of Israel, are typical epithets applied to the representatives and members of the new-covenant people, namely, the Christian Church ; and Jerusalem and Judah, as the inheritance of Israel, are types of the seats and territories of Christendom." l
And yet, when it is a question of judgment, as, for instance, the statement that " two thirds shall be cut off and die in the land," then, of course, they are agreed that those "cut off" are literal Jews, and " the land " Palestine.
Or again, when it is a prediction which has already been fulfilled, such as the piercing of the Messiah in chap. xii. 10, or the smiting of the shepherd and the scattering of the flock in chap. xiii. 7, then it is to be understood literally ; but when the prophet speaks of things of which no fulfil ment can yet be found in history, then the words, however definite and particular, must be spiritualised, and " Jeru salem " is no longer the capital of the Promised Land, but
1 Keil.
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