Bible Commentaries

Zechariah 3:1

The vision of Zechariah appears to us in its secondary and broader interpretation to be a solemn picture of what is now going on in the Church of Christ. We may trace its reality in the dispensation of the Gospel.

I. Our first illustration of the text will be taken from the manifestation of Christ to the Gentile world. The visit of the three wise men from lands beyond the limits of Israel, and the acceptance of their offerings and homage, was a type of the drawing into Christ not only of the descendants of Abraham, but of all families of the earth. But the light of heaven has not all at once made way to the depths of the human heart. In the varying fortunes of the Christian Church we recognise the glory or the reproach of Christ Jesus our Lord. As it is Christ from His throne who animates the souls and influences the hearts of His saints to do and suffer for His name's sake, so is it the apostate seraph, from his lurid abode, who stirs up adversaries on every side. It is impossible to explain the perpetual strife between truth and error without seeing in fact that which Zechariah beheld in ecstatic trance: "Jesus the High Priest, and Satan standing at His right hand."

II. In this prophetic vision Satan is depicted not as an open enemy of the High Priest, but as standing at His right hand—not, that is, occupying the position of a confessed foe, but of a false friend. And just similar has been the resistance of Satan to to the kingdom of Christ. Doubtless the devil has had recourse to open violence, as when he stirred up the Jews to the Crucifixion, or roused the fury of persecution against the saints; but this has not been the general character of his resistance. It has been secret and stealthy; it has mainly sought to undermine rather than to cast down, to weaken from within rather than assail from without. He has resisted Christianity out of Christianity. The history of the world, of the Church, of every individual soul, is but the outward result of the mystic vision of Joshua the High Priest, and Satan standing at His right hand to resist him.

Bishop Woodford, Occasional Sermons, vol. ii., p. 38.

References: Zechariah 3:1.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 332. Zechariah 3:1-5.—Ibid., Sermons, vol. xi., No. 611. Zechariah 3:1-10.—W. L. Alexander, Homiletic Magazine, vol. iii., p. 518. Zechariah 3:2.—G. T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 166. Zechariah 3:9, Zechariah 3:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi., No. 953.