first comprehensive message of consolation: " And a line shall be stretched over Jerusalem" (i. 16). [1]
Some (as Neumann, Lange, and others) identity the " other angel," in ver. 3, with the Angel of Jehovah; but in that case it is difficult to see why he should not have been called simply by the title Malakh Yehovah, if he were that Divine Being, instead of by an indefinite designation which suggests in itself the idea that he was an angel of inferior dignity. Besides, the expression, "went out," in ver. 3, which is the same as " went forth," as used of the inter preting angel, seems to me to indicate that just as the latter " went out " from the side of the prophet by whom he was standing, so this " other angel " was by the side and in attendance on the man with the measuring line, by whom he was sent to meet the interpreting angel with the message with which the latter, in his turn, was to run to the prophet.
The " young man," therefore, is neither " the man " with the measuring line, nor any other angelic being, as some have supposed; for, apart from the fact that such an interpretation confuses the whole vision, the term naar, as Pusey well observes, " Common as our English term youth/ in regard to man, is inapplicable and unapplied to angels, who have not our human variations of age, but exist as they were created."[2] The probable reason why
- ↑ The word translated a " line," in chap. i. 16, is not the same as the one rendered " a measuring line " in chap, ii., but there can be no doubt in our judg ment that the idea expressed in that part of the consoling message of the first vision is taken up in this third vision, and the fulfilment realistically set forth by the symbolical act of the actual measuring. It is, moreover, very probable that there is a reference in this second chapter of Zechariah to Ezekiel's vision in chaps, xl., xliii., where " the man whose appearance was like the "appearance of brass," who was going forth "with a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed " on the same errand, namely, to measure the site of the Jerusalem that is to be restored, is also the Angel of Jehovah. In Rev. xxi. 15-27 the same symbolism is used in reference to the Jerusalem which is above the city which hath foundations, "whose builder and maker," in a very special sense, is God in Christ.
- ↑ The term in Hebrew denotes a male from infancy, as Moses was in the ark of bulrushes, to the prime of life; and is occasionally used for " minister " or " servant," without reference to age.
