Now, there was no doubt a message in this vision and in the plain words of comfort with which it closes to the generation to which the prophet spoke, and in a very partial manner there was a fulfilment of these promises in the then immediate future. Thus God's " House," as applied to the Temple which they were then building, was completed about four years later, in the 6th year of Darius (Ezra vi. 15); and some time later Nehemiah succeeded also in rebuilding the city wall.
There is some truth also in the contention of those commentators who argue that there was a fulfilment of the good and comforting words about Jehovah's returning to Zion with mercies in the first advent of our Saviour. Thus, to quote one of them: " What is the highest good? what the sweetest of solace in life? what the subject of joys? what the oblivion of past sorrow? That which the Son of God brought upon earth when He illumined Jerusalem with the brightness of His light and heavenly discipline. For to that end was the city restored, that in it by the ordinance of Christ, for calamity, should abound bliss; for desolation, fulness; for sorrow, joy; for want, affluence of heavenly goods " all which is beautiful and true; but to deny that in its fulness it will yet find an exhaustive fulfilment in the Jewish people, which for nearly two thousand years has been in much greater bondage than they were during the seventy years in Babylon, is to misapprehend and misinterpret the scope of this as of all the other visions. No; these words which Zechariah is here commanded to " cry," or proclaim, are a summary and divine reiteration of the permanent and irrevocable " good words " of Jehovah through the former prophets in reference to Israel's future, and will assuredly be fulfilled, as already shown above, when, " after these things," our Lord Jesus shall return and will " build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen; and will build again the ruins thereof, and will set it up, that the residue of men may seek after the Lord and all the Gentiles upon whom My name is called " (Acts xv. 14-18).
