492 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
of the judgment which is first allowed of God to be inflicted on Jerusalem in the final great siege by means of the marshalled Gentile armies, whose subsequent sudden destruction these chapters prophetically set forth with all the vividness of an historic event depicted by an eye-witness.
Nor need we be surprised to find in this chapter a partial reiteration of events which had already been announced by the prophet in chaps, xii. and xiii. ; for, to quote a few sentences from a writer with whose interpreta tion of the last chapters of Zechariah I am utterly at variance, " the prophets frequently speak generally of the final results of an event, and afterwards proceed to give further details. Any attempt to regard all the statements of the prophets as necessarily succeeding one another in chronological order, would reduce many of these prophecies to a mass of confusion." This observation is true.
But it is necessary briefly to summarise the probable events which lead up to the supreme crisis into the midst of which we are introduced in this last chapter of Zechariah.
First of all we have to suppose a restoration of the Jews in a condition of unbelief not a complete restoration of the whole nation, which will not take place till after their conversion, but of a representative and influential remnant.
It seems from Scripture that in relation to Israel and the land there will be a restoration, before the Second Advent of our Lord, of very much the same state of things as existed at the time of His First Advent, when the threads of God s dealing with them nationally were finally dropped, not to be taken up again " until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled."
There was at that time a number of Jews in Palestine representative of the nation ; but compared with the number of their brethren, who were already a diaspora among the nations, they were a mere minority, and not in a politically independent condition.
So it will be again. There will be at first, as compared with the whole nation, only a representative minority in Palestine, and a Jewish state will be probably formed,
