Bible Commentaries

Zechariah 2:1-13

I. In this vision God presented to the prophet, and through him to the nation at large, the prospect and the assurance of the restoration of Jerusalem, and the re-establishment of the Jewish state as it had been before the captivity. The city should not only be rebuilt, but greatly extended; the temple should be restored, and the worship of Jehovah resumed; His presence should be with His people, and they should enjoy His protection; and whilst they were thus blessed judgment should come upon those nations that had oppressed them, and they should have supremacy over those by whom they had been enslaved. All this was literally fulfilled. But even in these promises there seems to be a reference to things of still higher import, and of spiritual significancy. The speaker here is the Angel of Jehovah, and He, whilst He speaks of Himself as Jehovah's messenger, at the same time uses language which no mere created angel could use. In His own name He threatens to punish the nations, and that with a mere motion of His hand; and to Israel He promises for God that He would come and dwell among them as their God, and inherit Judah as His portion. Who can such a speaker be but that Being who in the fulness of time appeared in our world, uniting in His one Person the Divine nature and the human; He who came and dwelt among men, and was Emmanuel, God with us? May we not say, then, that there is here a promise of blessing to the Church through the advent of the Redeemer?

II. It is in accordance with the general strain of prophetic announcement concerning the latter dispensation, when the speaker here announces that many nations should be joined to the Lord, and become His people. The conversion of individuals might take place under the ancient dispensation; a few proselytes might from time to time join themselves to the people of God; but it was reserved for the times of the Messiah for nations as such to be converted to the Lord. Only under Him on whose shoulder the government is laid, and who shall reign from sea to sea and from the rivers to the ends of the earth, shall the forces of the Gentiles be brought into the Church, and the world be converted to God.

W. Lindsay Alexander, Zechariah's Visions and Warnings, p. 23; see also Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 222.

References: Zechariah 2:4.—J. Hiles Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 232; J. N. Norton, Every Sunday, p. 106, Zechariah 2:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 452. Zechariah 2:10.—J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 1st series, p. 12.