Bible Commentaries

2. REPENTANCE AND CONVERSION.

s Zechariah 12:10 to Zechariah 13:1.

A. A plentiful Effusion of the Spirit causes Men to look upon the Jehovah they have pierced, and Mourn bitterly ( Zechariah 12:10). B. Greatness of the Mourning ( Zechariah 12:11). C. Each Family mourns separately ( Zechariah 12:12-14). D. A Provision far the Penitents ( Zechariah 13:1).

10 And I will pour out upon the house of David,

And upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,

The Spirit¹⁵ of grace and supplication,¹⁶

And they shall look upon me¹⁷ whom they pierced,

And they shall mourn for him¹⁸ as the mourning over an only one,

And be in bitterness¹⁹ for him as one is in bitterness for the first-born.

11In that day the mourning shall be great in Jerusalem,

Like the mourning of Hadadrimmon²⁰ in the valley of Megiddo.

12And the land shall mourn, family by family apart,

The family of the house of David apart and their wives apart,

The family of the house of Nathan apart and their wives apart.

13The family of the house of Levi apart and their wives apart,

The family of the Shimeite²¹ apart and their wives apart.

14All the remaining families,

Family by family apart and their wives apart.

Zechariah 13:1 In that day there shall be a fountain opened

To the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,

For sin and for uncleanness.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

This passage presents a complete contrast to the one immediately preceding. The change is every way startling. There is not a word of war, or conflict, or victory, no reeling-cup for the nations, no torch among sheaves, no march of a hero at the head of conquering hosts. On the contrary, all is subjective, subdued, spiritual. It is a picture of penitence as vivid and accurate as any found any where in the Scriptures. The people are seen standing alone in their relation to Him whom they have rejected, and meditating upon the character of their great crime. One thought occupies all minds, one feeling pervades all hearts. The experience of their great ancestor recorded in the 51 Psalm renewed on a broad scale, and a great sorrow spreads over the community, the intensity of which is likened on one hand to that occasioned by the sorest domestic affliction, and on the other to that of a great public calamity felt to be at once universal and irreparable. Each tribe and family goes apart to weep in silence and solitude over the grievous infliction. What now is the nexus between this passage and that which precedes? It seems to be this. As the former portion of the chapter set forth the outward protection of Providence shown toward the New Testament Israel, by means to which it emerged victor from all trials and conflicts, and saw its enemies utterly discomfitted, this portion turns to the other side of Israel’s experience and deals with its inward character, showing how the covenant people become such, how the Church in its new form commences the Christian life, and obtains a title to the divine protection. It is by the bitter herbs of repentance, leading to pardon and renovation through a believing sight of the pierced Saviour,—the whole preceded and induced by a copious shower of spiritual influences of the same kind as those predicted by Joel ( Joel 2:28), Isaiah ( Isaiah 44:3; Isaiah 32:15). In this view the two parts of the chapter correspond to each other and make one complete whole. The result of the failure of the shepherd in Zechariah 11. is shown to be not final and absolute, but a link in the chain of events which works out the fulfillment of the old covenant promises, and the ingathering of all the Israel of God.

A vast spiritual blessing is promised. It begins in the outpouring of a gracious Spirit, which produces an intense and wide-spread penitential sorrow, and this again is followed by purification and forgiveness.

Zechariah 12:10. And I pour out. … supplication. The house of David and inhabitants of Jerusalem, here and in Zechariah 13:1, stand for the whole covenant people, according to a usage by which the capital represents the nation ( Zechariah 2:2; Zechariah 8:8). The mention of the royal house indicates that all ranks from the highest to the lowest need and shall receive the promised gift. The “pouring out” rests upon the earlier passage ( Joel 2:28), and differs from it in defining more minutely the character of the effusion. It is a spirit of grace and supplication, which is abundantly bestowed. חֵן is not=prayer (Gesenius, Noyes), nor love (Ewald), but grace or favor. The Spirit of grace then is the Spirit which brings grace (cf. Hebrews 10:29). It. produces in the mind of man the experience of the grace of God, and this experience rousing the sense of sin and guilt, naturally leads to “supplication;” and this in turn suggests the looking spoken of. הִבִּיט is applied both to bodily and mental vision, and not unfrequently with the idea of confidence in the object beheld ( Numbers 21:9; Isaiah 23:11; Isaiah 51:1). The phrase, upon me, must refer to Jehovah, for according to ver 1 He is the speaker throughout. The אֵת before אַשֶׁר, as usual defines more clearly the accusative, and thus renders impossible the rendering of Kimchi, because. Ewald and Bunsen prefer the reading of a number of MSS, upon him instead of upon me; but the authority for the received text is overwhelming, and on ever critical ground it is to be adopted (see Text, and Gram.). The other reading seems to have arisen from an attempt to correct the Hebrew on the ground that it was impossible that God could actually be pierced,—an objection which of course falls away at once when the doctrine of the Incarnation is received. Whom they pierced. דָקָרוּ was rendered by the LXX. κατωρχήσαντο reviled, or insulted, probably because they thought the literal meaning of the word unsuitable, since they similarly avoided it in rendering Zechariah 13:3, where the E. V. has, “His father and his mother shall thrust him through.” Several Christian critics have adopted this as the figurative meaning of the verb, and translated or expounded accordingly (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Calvin, Grotius, Rosenmüller, Gesenius, Maurer); but entirely without reason, for in every other case the word is confessedly used in its literal sense ( Judges 9:45; 1 Samuel 31:4; Zechariah 13:3); and the prodigious mourning subsequently mentioned, with the comparisons by which it is set forth, the loss of an only son or a first-born, and the wail over the good king Josiah, presupposes the occurrence of a literal death. But the point is put beyond question by the Apostle John, who after recounting the act of the soldier who pierced the Saviour’s side, adds ( John 19:37), “Another Scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they pierced; “of course not meaning that this one act of the soldier exhausted the meaning of the prophecy, but that it was a fulfillment of it. The change of person in the quotation—him whom Hot me whom,—is due simply to the fact that in the Prophet it is Messiah Himself who is speaking, while in the Gospel John speaks of Him. Matthew makes a similar change of person in his quotation ( Matthew 27:9). The remainder of the verse describes the result which is to follow from this looking to the pierced One. And they shall mourn. The object of this verb is put not in the first person, as we should expect, but in the third, for him; but such an enallage of person is not uncommon in Hebrew. See any of the grammars for examples. That the pronoun is to be in the masculine and not in the neuter (Gousset, Schultens, etc.), see in Text, and Gramm. Mourning over art only son, is of course a sign of the deepest sorrow (cf. Amos 8:10). Similar is the death-wail over a first-born, of which the great instance is found in the last of Egypt’s ten plagues ( Exodus 11:6). There was an incipient fulfillment of this prophecy in the fact mentioned by Luke ( Luke 23:48), that at Christ’s crucifixion, “all the people. … smote their breasts.” (The primary meaning of סָפַד is to strike, especially on the breast). But the true fulfillment began when the multitudes at Pentecost were pricked to the heart ( Acts 2:37).

Ver11 The mourning shall be great, ff. The Prophet furnishes an historical illustration of the greatness of the mourning. The reference is generally supposed to be to the lamentation over Josiah, who was mortally wounded “in the valley of Megiddo” ( 2 Chronicles 35:22). Hadadrimmon appears to have been a city in this valley, and Jerome speaks of such a city as still existing in his day, although he says that its name had been altered to Maximinopolis. Josiah was a king of Judah, a pious king, and one whose death was lamented in an extraordinary manner ( 2 Chronicles 35:25). There is no need to seek for other applications of the text, such as the absurd reference of the Targum to the death of Ahab, who could not have been mourned at all, much less, generally or bitterly; or the impious suggestion of the heathen weeping for Thammnz or Adonis (Movers, Hitzig); or the frivolous notion of Pressel, that the allusion is to Sisera’s mother ( Judges 5:28), as mentioned in the Song of Deborah! Equally frivolous are Pressel’s objections to the common view, namely, (1) That Josiah did not die in Megiddo but on the way to Jerusalem, where he was buried and lamented; (2) that Hebrews, being now a man of nearly forty years of age, could not properly be spoken of as a first-born or only son! Hengstenberg. on the contrary, states well the reasons why just he should be introduced here as a type of the Messiah. “He was slain on account of the sins of the people; his reign was the closing manifestation of mercy on the part of the Lord; unspeakable misery followed immediately afterwards; the lamentation for his death rested upon the mingled feelings of love, and of sorrow for their own sins as the cause of his death.”

A still more elaborate description of the mourning is given in the next three verses.

Vers12–14. And the land shall mourn, ff. Not only the capital, but the whole land shall mourn, and this not only in gross but in detail, every family and every subdivision of a family apart. The mention of the wives apart is not to be explained from the habit of the women in all lands “to go into mourning” (Pressel), but simply as a further specification of the intensity and universality of the mourning. The mention of David and Levi is easily understood, as these were heads respectively of the royal and priestly lines. The other two names are not so clear. The old Jewish view supposed Nathan to refer to the prophetic order, and Shimeite to the teachers, who were said to have sprung from the tribe of Simeon; but Shimeite is not the patronymic of Simeon, but Shimeonite; nor is there any evidence that that tribe furnished teachers for the nation, and Nathan the prophet was not the head of any order. It is better to adopt the view (Hengstenberg, Henderson, Keil, Köhler) first stated by Luther: “Four families are enumerated, two from the royal line under the names of David and Nathan (son of David), and two from the priestly line, Levi and his grandson Shimei; after which he embraces all together.” Thus he mentions one leading family and one subordinate branch, to show that the grief pervades all, from the highest to the lowest. All the remaining families. Not those that are left after the judgment (Neumann), nor the less renowned (Köhler), nor as implying that some families shall have become extinct (Henderson); but simply the remainder after those which have just been specified by way of example. This penitential grief will not be in vain.

Zechariah 13:1. There shall be a fountain opened, ff. This verse resumes and completes the process begun in Zechariah 12:10 of the preceding chapter. It treats of the same parties, —the house of David and the inhabitant of Jerusalem, standing here as there for the whole nation. He who poured out the spirit of supplication will also provide the means of purification from sin. A fountain is shut up as long as it remains under ground, or is sealed from access ( Song of Solomon 4:12); it is opened when it breaks forth and flows freely. The reference appears to be to a twofold usage in the Mosaic ritual; one, the sprinkling of the Levites at their consecration with “water of purifying,” lit., sin-water, i. e., for purification from sin ( Numbers 8:7), and the other the sprinkling of persons contaminated by contact with death, with the water prepared from the ashes of the red heifer, called the water of uncleanness, i. e., which removed uncleanness. In both these cases the impurity denoted the defilement of sin, and the outward purification was a symbol of the inward. So the water which flows from the fountain in the text, is a water of sprinkling by which sin and uncleanness are removed. It does not need to be renewed from time to time, as was the case with the Levitical waters, but issues from a living well-spring. The meaning cannot be a new water supply for the metropolis (Pressel), nor even grace in general (Köhler), nor the grace of baptism, as the older critics said; but is the blood which cleanseth from all sin ( 1 John 1:7), the blood of that sacrifice which was typified in the sin-offering of the red heifer, the blood which removes alike the guilt and he dominion of sin.

Excursus on Zechariah 12:10. The history of the interpretation is interesting.

I. Among the Jews the early opinion was in favor of the Messianic interpretation. Thus in the Gemara of Jerusalem, it is said, “there are two different opinions as to the meaning of this passage. Some refer it to the lamentation for the Messiah; others to the mourning for sin.” Both concurred in thinking of a dying Messiah, but one thought directly of Him and his suffering, the other of the sin which caused his death, directly or indirectly. The former took עָלָיו as a masculine suffix, the latter as neuter. In contrast to this the Gemara of Babylon maintains the personal application of the passage, but says that it refers to Messiah ben Joseph who is to suffer and die, while Messiah ben Judah is always to live. And this convenient fiction of two Messiahs was “subsequently adopted by Aben Ezra and Abarbanel, the latter of whom confessed that his chief object was to remove the stumbling-block interposed by Christians when they interpreted the prophecy, as relating to the crucified One. Kimchi and Jarchi denied any Messianic reference. They said that there was a change of subject, and either adopted the false reading upon him instead of upon me, or translated the following word because instead of whom, so that they interpreted, “the pierced One”=every one who had been slain in the war with Gog and Magog, and said, “they will all lament for the death of one as if the whole army had been slain.” But this view is its own refutation. The translators of the LXX. had the same text as we have, but gave the sense vex instead of pierce, because they could not see the relevancy of the literal meaning. Some consideration of the same kind operated upon the Chaldee paraphase, which renders “they shall pray before me because they have been carried away (or have wandered about). ‘ The modern Jews, however, generally adhere to the literal sense of the verb דיר, and explain it in the method proposed by Kimchi, rejecting either expressly or tacitly the notion of a double Messiah.

II. Among Christians the reference to Christ was adopted without dissent by the early expositors and most of the Reformers. Strange to say, the first exception is found in Calvin, who understood the passage as referring to God, who is figuratively said to have been pierced, i. e., irritated and provoked by the Jews. Hebrews, however, held that as Christ is God, manifest in the flesh, what happened to Him was a visible symbol of the substance of the prophecy, and therefore was justly cited by John as its fulfillment. This view was warmly repudiated by Calvin’s contemporaries, and followed only by Grotius, and some Socinian writers. Later writers applied the words to some distinguished Jewish leader or martyr. Jahn suggested Judas Maccabæus, and rendered, “they will look upon Him (Jehovah) on account of Him whom they have pierced.” Baur thought it was impossible to determine which pf the leaders it was, but it was one of those who had lost their lives in the service of the true God. Bleek adopted the same view, and to get rid of the reference to Jehovah, substituted for אֱליֵ,אֵלַי the poetic form of אֶל, and rendered “they look to Him whom they pierced.” This is simply desperate, for אֱלֵי occurs only four times in the Old Testament, and these are all in the Book of Job, and immediately before a noun, and as it is here in the construct state, it cannot possibly be joined to the accusative אֵת. Besides, this view fails to account for the universal mourning or the opened fountain.—Ewald for one martyr substitutes a plurality of such as had fallen in the war with the heathen. He renders “they look to Him whom men have pierced,” thus changing the text and assuming another subject for the verb, and explains thus, “the intention is to show that no martyr falls in vain, but will one day be mourned with universal love.” But this is opposed to the religious tone of the first clause, grace and supplication, and to the fact that in both the preceding chapter and the following, only one person is spoken of as an object of persecution. Hofmann, after giving up his first view of a plural object, adopted another according to which he rendered, “My heroes look at Him whom men have pierced.” But אל never means hero (see Fürst, sub voce), and besides, הִבִּיט is usually construed with the preposition אֶל. Nor does the sense he thus obtains at all suit the connection. An altogether different view has been adopted by Vogel and Hitzig, whom Pressel for substance follows, namely, that the Prophet speaks of himself whom he identifies with Jehovah. “The murder of a Prophet is regarded as an attack upon Jehovah himself.” The statement of this view is enough to show its untenableness. For although the sender and the sent are often identified, yet no instance can be found in Scripture, among all its records of martyrdom, of a case in which the death of a prophet is represented or mourned for as if it were the death of Jehovah. Noyes, in his Translation of the Hebrew Prophets (ii387), first mentions Calvin’s explanation,²² and then adds, “Or the meaning may be that the people pierced Jehovah, when they recently put to death some one of his messengers or prophets who is not named.” But the violent death of a prophet was not such a rare thing in Jewish history; and why should it in any case lead to such a great and universal mourning as is here described? Or, if there had been some murder of a prophet so exceptional in its atrocity as to convulse the whole nation in an agony of grief, would there not be some trace of the fact in the books of Kings or Chronicles? Yet none such is found.

THEOLOGICAL AND MORAL.

1. When our Lord was about to ascend to heaven He commanded the Apostles ( Acts 1:4) not to allow themselves to be drawn or driven from Jerusalem, but to “wait for the promise of the Father.” There can scarcely be a doubt that the passage before us contains one form or instance of the promise to which the Saviour referred. The first great gift of heaven, for which men were taught to look in the latter days, was a divine person incarnate to make reconciliation for iniquity and bring in everlasting righteousness; the next one was that of another divine person whose influences should apply the redemption effected, and thus complete the work of the Father’s sovereign love. The latter—the Holy Spirit—had of course been present and active in the previous stages of the Church’s history; otherwise there could have been no Church, for the Spirit is the indispensable bond of union between God and his people. But during the old economy, owing to its very nature as an introductory, preparatory, and restricted dispensation, the gifts of the Spirit were far less rich and powerful and general and constant, than they were ultimately designed and required to be in order to effect the purposes of grace. Hence the promise of an effusion which should not be intermittent or partial, either in its nature or its subjects, but every way adequate to the necessities of the case. This promise was given by the older Prophets, Joel ( Joel 2:28-29), Isaiah ( Isaiah 59:21), Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 31:33-34), Ezekiel ( Ezekiel 36:27), and is now resumed after the exile by Zechariah, who uses the very term (שָׁפַד=pour out) employed by Joel three centuries before. (Isaiah uses a different word, יצק, but of the same signification.) The effusion is not to be fitful or scanty, but generous and abundant, a pouring rain from the skies, overcoming all obstacles, reaching all classes and effecting the most blessed and durable results. Its precise influence as conceived by Zechariah, is in the way of overcoming depraved natural characteristics by imparting grace and developing this grace in the exercise of supplication. All true and successful prayer is “in the Spirit” ( Ephesians 6:18, Judges 20). Paul had often gone through the forms of supplication in his unconverted career, but it was only when spiritually enlightened that it could be truly said of him, as it was, “Behold, he prayeth” ( Acts 9:11). In the view of a thoughtful mind, prayer itself is hardly so great a blessing as the promise of a divine Spirit to help our infirmity and make intercession within us. ( Romans 8:26.)

2. This passage is singularly happy in pointing out what all experience has shown to be the chief means of kindling evangelical repentance,—this apprehension of a crucified Saviour. Men are indeed convinced of sin in various ways. Natural conscience sometimes inflames remorse to a fearful pitch. Sudden judgments, or what are thought to be such, stimulate fear until reason is eclipsed. A. keen sense of shame proves to be a sorrow of the world which worketh death. But the true, healthy conviction of sin, the repentance which needeth not to be repented of, is born at the cross. There the sinful soul sees its sin as it sees it nowhere else in the world, sees all the vileness, malignity, and inexcusableness of its past life, and is thoroughly humbled and prostrated in contrition. It becomes conscious of its own share in the dark and bloody crime of Calvary. As one of those for whom Christ died, it had part in driving the nails and pushing the spear, and is justly liable to the aggravated doom of those who with wicked hands crucified the Lord of glory. Hence all pleas in extenuation are given up, all excuses are felt to be frivolous. Nothing is left but a fearful looking for of judgment, so far as the soul’s own merits and claims are considered. But this very conviction of total unworthiness is accompanied with a conviction of Christ’s wondrous love in bearing the cross, and an inspiration of hope in the efficacy of his atoning death. Thus the arrow that kills bears with it the balm that makes alive. The true penitent says, “I am lost, for my sins have slain my Lord; nay, I am saved, for my Lord died that those very sins should be blotted out.” So the repentance is real, deep, and hearty, but it is not sullen, angry, or despairing. It grows keener and more comprehensive by experience, but faith and hope are growing in like measure, and thus the equipoise in which the spiritual life began is maintained even to the end. Even at the height of his usefulness Paul felt that he was not worthy to be called an Apostle, and at the close of life called himself chief of sinners; yet he knew whom he had believed, and expected a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judges, would give him “in that day.”

3. There are two striking peculiarities of penitential sorrow,—its depth and its solitariness. The Prophet uses the strongest metaphors known to human experience. No pang which death can inflict is so severe as that which wrings the heart of parents following to the tomb the remains of a first-born or an only son. It seems as if all hope and joy were interred in the same grave. So again a great national calamity is intensified by the reciprocal influence upon one another of all who are affected by it. When President Lincoln was assassinated in1865, a shuddering horror seized every heart throughout the land, and multitudes who had never seen the kindly leader were as deeply moved as if the blow had fallen on their own kindred. A gloomy pall settled down over all hearts and all households. But penitential grief which is awakened by the sight of a pierced Saviour is as real and pervading as that which proceeds from any outward affliction, personal, domestic, or national, its theatre is within. There are no outward manifestations, but the feeling for that reason is the more concentrated and intense. The soul renews the experience of the royal penitent,—my sin is ever before me. But the stricken soul mourns apart. As there is a joy, so there is a sorrow, with which a stranger intermeddleth not. The relations of the soul to God are so delicate that all shrink instinctively from exposing them to the view of others. Deep grief is necessarily solitary. In its acme, neither sympathy nor fellowship is sought or allowed. Much more must this be the case when the grief is spiritual, for the hand of God which causes the pain alone can cure it, and the soul nauseates all other comforters. David Brainerd mentions that on one occasion when ho was preaching to his Indians, the power of God came down among them like a mighty rushing wind. “Their concern was so great, each for himself, that none seemed to take any notice of those about him. They were, to their own apprehension, as much retired as if they had been alone in the thickest desert. Every one was praying apart, and yet all together.” Cowper is not the only penitent who could say in truth, —

“I was a stricken deer that left the herd.”

The immediate prompting of all who become convinced of sin is to fly to some solitary place and be alone with God, unless indeed, as in the case of Brainerd’s Indians, the absorption of mind is so complete that they are insensible to the presence of others. “The heart knoweth its own bitterness,” and a godly sorrow shuns companions until it has wrought “a repentance unto salvation not to be repented of” ( 2 Corinthians 7:10).

4. Repentance of itself, however deep and thorough, is of no avail toward justification. It does not repair the evils of wrong-doing even in common life, any more than in the sphere of religion. The spendthrift may bitterly mourn the extravagance which ate up his estate, or the debauchee the excesses which ruined his constitution, but in neither case does the penitence bring back what has been lost. It is the same with the sinner. Tears and penances are no compensation for sin. Sin is. a debt ( Matthew 6:12), and a debt is satisfied only by payment. The payment may be made by one person or by another, but it must be made, or sin remains with its legal and endless consequences. Hence the fullness of this passage of the Prophet, which to a most elaborate painting of the distress for sin caused by a believing apprehension of the cross, appends the true and only-source of relief for that distress,—the fountain set flowing on Calvary. There must be aid from without. A continuous baptism of tears is of itself impotent. Nothing avails but a provision by the Being whom sin has offended, and just this is furnished in that blood of sprinkling which was symbolized in so many ways in the Old Covenant. Apart from this, nothing is left for a conscious sinner but despair.

5. A striking expression of this is given in two passages in the New Testament, evidently founded upon the words of Zechariah. In Matthew 24:30, our Lord says, “Then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” In Revelation 1:7 the beloved disciple resumes these words with an additional particular, “Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.” All men are to see Christ, not merely in his glory but as bearing the scars by which that glory was won. Some see Him so as to be subdued into a salutary contrition; they are drawn to Him by irresistible attraction, and while they mourn over sin rejoice in the ample and gracious pardon He bestows. Others, alas, are to see Him, not voluntarily but by a necessity which they would fain escape! They see Him a lamb as it had been slain, but no more within their reach and for their advantage. He is to them a lost Saviour, one whose pierced side and mangled limbs express only the fearful wages and terrible iniquity of sin, but offer no hope of forgiveness and acceptance.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL.

Moore: All true repentance arises from a sight of a dying Saviour, one who has died for us. True repentance is only love weeping at the foot of the cross, the soul sorrowing for sins that have been so freely forgiven. True religion is a personal thing, and when it takes strong hold of the heart, will lead the soul apart to solitary wrestling with God and acts of personal humbling before Him.

Bradley: Holy mourning for sin is a bitter thing; there comes along with it many a tear and pang; but yet there is mingled with it a comfort and a blessedness which must be felt to be known. The very look which makes the heart bleed, is a look at One who can do more than heal it.…Pray for this sorrow. When would you mourn and weep for your sins, if not now? Somewhere you must weep for them; would you keep back this weeping till you come to that world where; tears are never dried up; where you must weep; if you weep at all, forever? And somewhere you must look upon this pierced Jesus 1 Will you look on Him for the first time when He opens the heavens and calls you out of your graves to his judgment-seatIt is a blessed though a mournful thing to see Him now, but it is a dreadful thing to see Him for the first time in the very moment when his work of mercy is forever ended, when fountain He has opened for sin and uncleanness is forever closed.

McCheyne: 1. The Great Spring. I will pour2. The Great Agent. The spirit of grace and supplication3.The Effect. They look; they mourn; they see the fountain opened.

Jay: There were provisions for ceremonial pollution under the Mosaic economy, the brazen sea for the priests and the ten lavers for the things offered in sacrifice. There were also fountains for bodily diseases: the pool of Siloam to which our Saviour sent the man born blind; and the pool of Bethesda, where lay a number of sufferers waiting for the troubling of the waters. Christ differed from all these, as a fountain for moral and spiritual defilement, “for sin and uncleanness.”

Footnotes