The Annotated Bible*
[*Minor Prophets only]
The Holy
Scriptures Analysed and Annotated
By
A. C. GAEBELEIN, D.D.
Editor
of “OUR HOPE”
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1
The
Prophet Hosea
INTRODUCTION
The Minor Prophets begin with the Book of Hosea. There are twelve of these books which are
called by the name “minor prophets” not because
their contents are of less authority than the preceding prophetic books, but on
account of their size. The Jews
considered them one book and the Talmud says of them, “our
fathers made them one book, that they might not perish on account of their
littleness.” The term “minor prophets” was used by the church in early
days. Augustinus states: “The prophet Isaiah is
not in the books of the twelve prophets who are therefore called minor, because
their discourses are brief in comparison with those who are called ‘greater’ because they
composed considerable volumes.”
Jewish tradition claims that the present arrangement was made by the
great synagogue formed by Ezra. This arrangement is not chronological. Joel precedes Hosea, while Hosea, Amos and
Jonah were nearly contemporary; Obadiah is difficult to place. The introduction to the book enters into the
question of date. Micah, the Morasthite,
ministered between the years 757 and 699 B. C.
Nahum, the complement and counterpart of the book of Jonah, also
prophesied during the period of Isaiah.
Habakkuk is later than the preceding prophets. He speaks of the invasion of the land by the
Chaldeans as imminent; his prophetic office was probably exercised during the
second half of Manasseh’s reign.
Zephaniah prophesied under the reign of Josiah, between 642 and 611 B.
C. Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi are
post-exilic.
HOSEA
AND HIS TIMES
The first verse of
the book determines the period of Hosea.
He prophesied while Uzziah was reigning in Judah and Jeroboam II in
The religious conditions
were still worse. Nearly all these usurpers had made alliances with foreign powers which resulted in the introduction of the immoral, corrupt Phoenician
and Syrian idolatry. The first
Jeroboam had set up a rival worship so that the people would not go to
THE
MESSAGE OF HOSEA
Like the message of other prophets Hosea’s message is one of
judgment and future mercy. He announced
the coming judgment as certain and irreversible. They were to be led away into captivity. His sons and daughters born to him by Gomer,
the daughter of Diblaim, expressed this coming judgment in their names which
were given to them by divine direction. “Lo-Ruhamah” - I will have no mercy; and “Lo-Ammi” - not my people. Then he announced in the name of the Lord, “I will cause
the kingdom of the house of
But there is also the message of mercy, which is found in the
very beginning of the book. Here are a
few of these comforting words, which still
await their fulfilment in the day when they shall “seek the Lord their God, and David their King ([and] the Messiah); and shall fear the
Lord and His goodness in the latter days” (3:
5):- “I will betroth her to me forever;”
- “They shall fear the Lord and His goodness;” –
“He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight;”
– “Till He come and rain righteousness upon you;”
– “I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I
will redeem them from death;” – “I will heal
their back-sliding;” - “I will be as the dew
unto Israel, He shall grow as the lily, and cast forth its roots as Lebanon.”
“It belongs to the mournful solemnity of Hosea’s prophecy that
he scarcely speaks to the people in his own person. The ten chapters, which form the centre of
the prophecy, are almost wholly one long dirge of woe, in which the prophet
rehearses the guilt and the punishment of his people. If the people are addressed, it is, with very
few exceptions, God Himself, not the Prophet, Who speaks to them; and God
speaks to them as their judge. Once only
does the prophet use the form so common in other prophets “saith the
Lord.” As in the three first chapters, the prophet,
in relation to his wife, represented the relation of God to His people, so, in
these ten chapters, after the first words of the fourth and fifth chapters;- “Hear the word of the Lord, for the Lord has a controversy
with the inhabitants of the land;” - “Hear ye
this, 0 priests;” - whenever the prophet uses the first person, he uses
it not of himself, but of God. “I,” –
“My,” - are not Hosea, and the things of Hosea, but God and what
belongs to God. God addresses the
prophet in the second person. In four
verses only of these chapters does the prophet himself apparently address His
own people
* Dr.
Pusey on Hosea.
We learn then from the message of this book, what is so
largely written in all the prophets, that their
is a glorious future in store for all
The conditions in
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The
Division of Hosea
Hosea (meaning Salvation) in his style is abrupt and
sententious. As already stated in the
introduction he is the prophet of the ten tribes, though
The main portion of the book begins with the fourth
chapter. This part begins with “Hear the Word of the Lord.” In this section their religious and moral
degradation through the priests and their coming ruin is announced. Then follows a description of the judgment
which was to come upon Ephraim (the house of
1. THE REJECTION OF
2. THE MESSAGES OF EXPOSTULATION,
JUDGMENT AND MERCY. Chapters 4- 14.
There are different subdivisions which will be pointed out and
followed in the analysis and annotations.
The Book of Hosea is quoted a number of times in the New
Testament. See Matt.
2: 15, 9: 13, 12: 7; Rom. 9: 25, 26; 1 Cor. 15: 55; 1 Peter 2: 5, 10.
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Analysis
and Annotations
1. THE REJECTION OF
Chapters 1 - 3.
CHAPTER 1
1. The Introduction. 1.
2. The Prophet's Marriage and Birth of
Jemeel. 2-5.
3. The Birth of Lo-Ruhamah. 6-7.
4. The Birth of Lo-Ammi. 8-9.
5. The Future Restoration. 10-11.
1. The Introduction: Verse 1.
This superscription gives the period of Hosea’s ministry. First stands the statement that the word of
the Lord came to him. Hosea means
salvation; his father’s name, Beeri, means “my well.” Both are typical names. Critics have pointed out that Hosea was
undoubtedly a resident of the northern kingdom of
2. The Prophet’s Marriage and Birth of
Jezreel: Verses 2-5.
In the beginning of his ministry, when Hosea was a young man,
the Lord commanded him to take unto him a wife of whoredoms and children of
whoredoms, and that for the reason, because the land hath committed great
whoredoms, departing from the Lord. This
command was at once executed by the prophet; he took to wife Gomer, the
daughter of Diblaim.
We, are confronted with an interesting question. What is the nature of these
transactions? Were they real events,
that Hosea literally took this woman and had children by her, or were they
nothing but pictorial, visionary illustrations of the spiritual adultery and
unfaithfulness of
“We must not imagine things to be
unworthy of God, because they do not commend themselves to us. God does not
dispense with the moral law, because the moral law has its source in the mind
of God Himself. To dispense with it
would mean to contradict Himself. But
God, who is absolute Lord of all things which He made, may, at His sovereign
will, dispose of the lives or things which He created. Thus, as sovereign Judge, He commanded the
lives of the Canaanites to be taken by Israel, as, in His ordinary providence, He has ordained that the magistrate
should not bear the sword in vain, but has made him His minister, a revenger to
execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
So, again, He, whose are all things, willed to repay to the Israelites
their hard and unjust servitude by commanding them to spoil the Egyptians. He, who created marriage, commanded to Hosea
whom he should marry. The prophet was
not defiled by taking as his lawful wife, at God’s bidding, one defiled,
however hard a thing this was.”*
* Pusey on Hosea.
This is the strongest defence of the literal interpretation of
this incident. But there is another
interpretation possible, which we believe is the correct one. As the context shows the symbolical meaning
of Hosea’s marriage is to illustrate
Gomer was called “a wife of whoredoms” by the omniscient Lord, in anticipation of her future conduct. She fell and became immoral after her union with Hosea, and not before. In this way she became a symbol of
Then she bore him a son.
Expositors have stated, “The children were not
the prophet’s own but born of adultery and presented to him as his.” But that can not be the meaning in view of
the plain statement “she conceived and hare him a son.”
The Lord commands him to call this son “Jezreel.”
Jezreel has likewise a symbolical meaning. It means “God shall
scatter” (Jer. 31: 10); but it also
means “God shall sow” (Zech.
10: 9). Thus
3. The Birth of Lo-ruhamah: Verses 6-7.
Next a daughter is born.
Here “bare him” as found in verse 3 is
omitted. The prophet receives a name for
her – Lo-ruhamah, which means “not having obtained
mercy.” Interesting are the two
renderings of the Holy Spirit of this passage in the New Testament. In Romans 9: 25
it is rendered “not beloved” and in 1 Peter 2: 10, “hath not
obtained mercy.” Love and mercy were now to he withdrawn from
Then the house of
4. The Birth of Lo-Ammi: Verses 8-9.
Another son is born and “God said,
Call his name Lo-Ammi, for ye are not my people and I am not your God.”
Lo-Ammi means “not my people.” Lo-Ruhamah and Lo-Ammi are symbolical of
5. The Future Restoration: Verses 10-11.
Abruptly we are transported from the
present into the distant future, and a prophetic utterance of great depth
follows. The tenth
verse is quoted by the Holy Spirit in Romans
9 and gives full light on the meaning of the passage here. God’s
sovereignty is the theme of the ninth chapter of Romans: “And that He
might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He has
afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom He hath called, not of the Jews only,
but also of the Gentiles. As He saith
also in Osee (Greek
form of Hosea), I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved,
which was not beloved. And it shall come
to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people,
there shall they be called the children of the living God” (Rom. 9: 23-26). Here is the commentary to Hosea 1:10.
It means first that
The eleventh verse is a great prophecy and remains still unfulfilled.
Some expositors claim that it was fulfilled in the return of the remnant
of Jews under Zerubbabel. But the Babylonian captivity is not in view
here at all. The great day of Jezreel
will come, when King Messiah, our Lord returns. Then shall
CHAPTER 2
APPEAL
AND PUNISHMENT FOR UNFAITHFULNESS
THE RESUMED RELATIONSHIP
1. The Appeal and Complaint. 1-5.
2. The Punishment for
Unfaithfulness. 6-13.
3. The Resumed Relationship and its Great
Blessing. 14-23.
1. The Appeal and the Complaint: Verses 1-5.
Who is addressed in the first verse of this chapter? Some think the children of the prophet are
meant. The godly in
2. The Punishment for Unfaithfulness: Verses 6-13.
Her way is to be hedged up with thorns; a wall of separation
is to be raised and to keep her from her lovers. And if she follow after them and make a
sinful alliance with them (symbolical of the idol worship of heathens which
3. The Resumed Relationship and its
Great Blessing: Verses 14-23.
Immediately after the announcement of her punishment follows
the assurance of future mercy.
But greater blessing will be connected with that coming day of
blessing, when
In that day all the
great covenant blessings will return to
redeemed
CHAPTER 3
1. The Past. 1-3.
2.
The Present. 4.
3.
The Future. 5.
1. The Past: Verses
1-3.
The command here is not that the Prophet should enter into
relation with another woman, but it concerns the same Gomer, the unfaithful
wife. It seems she left the Prophet and
lived in adultery with another man. “And Jehovah
said unto me, Go again, love a wife, who is beloved of her friend and who is an
adulteress; just as Jehovah loves the children of Israel, who have turned
towards other gods, and love raisin cakes”* (correct translation). She is not called “thy wife,” simply “a wife”; yet the Prophet is told to love the
adulterous wife. This woman, whom the
Lord commands Hosea to love, he had loved before her fall; he was now to love
her after her fall, and while in that condition, in order to save her from
abiding in it. It was for her sake that
she might be won back to him. Such is
the love of Jehovah for
* Used in the idolatrous worship.
He bought the adulteress for half of the price of a common
slave (see Exod. 21: 32); it denotes her
worthlessness. The measure of barley
mentioned reminds of the offering of one accused of adultery, and, being the
food of animals, shows her degradation likewise. He thus was to buy her back, not to live with
him as his wife, but that she might sit as a widow, not running after others,
but wait for him during an undefined, but long season, until he would come and
take her to himself. While she was not
to belong to another man, he, her legitimate husband, would be her guardian.
2. The Present: Verse 4.
Here we have direct prophecy, a very
remarkable one, as to
3.
The Future: Verse 5.
Afterward - in the latter
days. These two statements open and
end the prophecy concerning their future. The “afterward” is not yet; the latter days are still
to come. Their future is returning and
seeking the Lord, their God and David their king. This is [David
the 2nd king of
[* See Jer.
30: 9: “they will serve the Lord their God and
David their king;” it is not “the Lord their God”
who
is “David their king”! ‘David their king,’
after
his
resurrection (Acts 2: 34), will rule
with Jesus his ‘Lord’ during the
millennium. Rev.
20: 6; Luke 13: 28; 22: 28, 29.]
** The Targum of Jonathan says on Hosea 3: 5: “This is the King Messiah; whether he
be from among the living or from the dead.
His name is Messiah. The same
explanation is given by the mystical books Zohar, Midrash Shemuel and Tanchuma. The greatest authorities among the Jews are
one in declaring that “the last days” mean the
days of the Messiah; we have reference to Kimchi, Abarbanel, Moses Ben Nacham
and many others.
2. THE MESSAGE OF EXPOSTULATION
JUDGMENT
AND MERCY
Chapters 4- 14
CHAPTER 4
THE
LORD’S CONTROVERSY WITH HIS PEOPLE
1. The Condition of the People. 1-5.
2. The Loss of Their Priestly
Relation. 6-11.
3.
1. The Condition of the People: Verses 1‑5.
This chapter begins with a terse description of the condition
of the professing people of God. First,
we have the negative side - no truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God. And there was no truth, because they had
rejected the Word of the Lord, hence the result no mercy and no knowledge of
God. It is so still whenever and
wherever the Word of God is set aside.
Then follows the positive evil which was so prominent in their
midst: Swearing, lying, killing,
stealing, committing adultery, and abundant shedding of blood. Such was the continued moral condition of the
house of
2. The Loss of Their Priestly
Relation: Verses 6-11.
The people were
destroyed for lack of knowledge, the knowledge of God and His truth.
They had lost their place of nearness to the Lord, their priestly character
into which the Lord had called the nation (Exod. 19). Therefore they would be rejected to be no
longer in priestly relationship to Jehovah.
And the priestly class was as corrupt as the people – “like people
like priests.” They were to be punished for their ways and
their doings.
3.
Having left Jehovah they had turned to idols, asked counsel of
a piece of wood and practised divination.
This abominable idol worship was practised upon the tops of
mountains. There, under trees, they gave
themselves over to the vile rites of Baal-peor and Ashtaroth, both men and
women abandoned themselves to the grossest sins of the flesh. And the Lord threatens that He would leave
them alone in their vileness and not correct them, that they might be brought
back. The first chapter of Romans is
illustrated by verse 14; they glorified not
God, became idolaters and then God gave them up to their vile affections.
Then there is a warning to the house of
“Ephraim (the ten tribes) is joined to
idols; let him alone.” Ephraim was too far gone; further
remonstrance’s would not help, and so the evil is permitted to go unchecked, to
run its full course.
CHAPTER 5 - 6: 3
THE
MESSAGE TO THE PRIESTS, THE PEOPLE AND THE ROYAL HOUSE. JUDGMENT, AFFLICTION AND THE FUTURE RETURN
1. The Message of Rebuke. 1-7.
2. The Judgment Announced. 8-15.
3 The Future Return and the Messing. 6: 1-3.
1. The Message of Rebuke: Verses 1‑7.
The first verse shows who is
addressed: the Priests, the house of
* We give the passage we quote in a better and more literal
rendering. The authorized version is
frequently incorrect.
2. The Judgment Announced: Verses 8‑15.
Then follows a vision of judgment. The judgment is seen as having already fallen
upon the guilty nation. The horn
(Shophar) is blown in Gibeah and the trumpet in Ramah; the alarm is
sounded. Gibeah and Ramah were situated
on the northern boundary of Benjamin.
The enemy was behind Benjamin pursuing.
There will be no remedy and no escape (verse
9). “The princes
of
The last verse of this chapter has a wider meaning than the past
judgment which came upon the house of
3.
The Future Return and the Blessing: Chapter
6: 1-3.
The division of the chapter at this point is unfortunate. The three verses of chapter
6 must not be detached from the previous chapter. Here we have the future repentance of the
remnant of
[* See, - 1 Thess. 4: 16; Luke 14:
14; 20: 35; Psa. 31: 17. cf. Acts
2: 35; Matt. 16: 18. cf. John
3: 13; 14: 3; 2 Tim. 3: 18, etc.]
CHAPTER 6: 4-11
DIVINE
MOURNING OVER EPHRAIM AND JUDAH
1.
What Shall I do to Thee? 4-6.
2.
Their Transgression. 7-11.
1. What Shall I do to Thee? Verses 4‑6.
The Lord grieves and mourns over the condition of the people
whom He loves. After the brief glimpse
given of their great future of glory we are brought back into the days of
Moses. The Lord grieves and mourns over
His people whom He loves, who today are still beloved for the Father’s sake (Rom. 9).
But while He loved them, their love was like the morning cloud, like the dew, vanishing soon away. The
morning cloud looks beautiful, gilded by the rays of the rising sun, but it
quickly disappears through the heat of the sun; the dew glitters in the early
morning, but soon it is gone. Thus was
their love, fluctuating and changing.
How often is the love of His heavenly people like the morning cloud and
the dew! Thank God that His love never
changes! The Prophets He had sent to
them came, therefore, with words of condemnation, instead of words of comfort
and cheer. They came to hew, as stone or
wood is hewn, and the message of judgment they proclaimed condemned them; this
is the meaning of the sentence, “I have slain them by the words of my
mouth.”
2. Their Transgression: Verses 7-11.
“Yet they like Adam have transgressed
the covenant; they have dealt treacherously against Me.”
As God had made known His covenant to Adam, given him a commandment, so
He had made a covenant with them and made known unto them His will. Like Adam they had transgressed the
covenant. Adam had been called into
relationship with His Creator and a place of blessing and favour in
* Attention
has been called to an important distinction.
Man is called a sinner. The
Gentiles as such are never called transgressors. We read in the New Testament of sinners of
the Gentiles’ but never “transgressors” of the
Gentiles. Adam was under a law, which he
broke and by it he became a transgressor.
** Note correct translation: “Upon the
way they murder (those who go) to Shechem”
(verse 9).
The horrible thing was that
CHAPTER 7
THE
MORAL DEPRAVITY OF
1. Their Moral Depravity. 1-7.
2. Mingling With Heathen Nations. 8-16.
1. Their Moral Depravity: Verses 1‑7.
All the gracious efforts of the Lord to heal
Such was the moral depravity of a people with whom the Lord
had entered into covenant, the favoured nation.
The source of it was unbelief and the rejection of His Word. The
sad history of
1.
Mingling with Heathen Nations: Verses 8-16.
The Lord called
CHAPTER 8 - 9: 9.
THE
APOSTASY IS FOLLOWED BY JUDGMENT
1. The Judgment Announced. 1-7.
2. The Apostasy Which Resulted in
Judgment. 8-14.
3. Warning Against Self-Security. Chapter 9: 1-9.
1. The Judgment Announced: Verses 1-7.
The Prophet is commanded to sound the alarm of the impending
judgment. The message is that the enemy
will come swift as an eagle upon house of the Lord, which here does not mean
the temple (which was in connection with
2. The Apostasy which Resulted in
Judgment: Verses 8-14.
3. Warning Against Self-Security: Chapter 9: 1-9.
Under the reign of Jeroboam II Israel enjoyed great
prosperity. It seems they had a
bountiful harvest, corn and wine was in abundance. They gave themselves over to feasting and
rejoicing. It was at such an occasion
when the Lord sent this warning against their own security. Their captivity is announced where they would
eat things unclean and feast days will no longer be possible. Then the Prophet beholds them as already in
the Assyrian captivity. They went away and
turned towards the South to escape the sure destruction. But “
CHAPTER 9: 10 - 11:11
RETROSPECT.
1.
2. Their Guilt and Punishment. Chapter 10: 1-11.
3. Exhortation and Rebuke. 12-15.
4. The Mercy of a Merciful God. Chapter 11: 1-11.
1.
Like a wayfaring man who finds grapes
and figs in the desert and delights in them, so the Lord found
2. Their Guilt and Punishment: Chapter 10: 1-11.
Here is another retrospect,
Gibeah is mentioned (verse 9). The corruption of Gibeah is also noted in chapter 9: 9.
The horrible abomination of Gibeah is recorded in Judges 19 in consequence of which the tribe of
Benjamin was almost wiped out. And the
people had become as wicked and guilty as Benjamin at Gibeah. The nations are now to be used to punish
3. Exhortation and Rebuke: Verses 12-15.
Here is a break in the judgment message. If they would return to the Lord and would
sow righteousness, they would reap mercy.
But such sowing is impossible unless the fallow ground is broken up,
that is, true repentance and a heart return unto the Lord. “For it is time to seek the Lord,
until He come and rain righteousness upon you.”
In what infinite patience He waited for the repentance of His
people! But while He would save them,
they would not! Still God’s gifts and
calling are without repentance and the day will come when a remnant of
How different was their condition! The Lord rebukes them, for they had ploughed
wickedness, and reaped iniquity. The
noise of war is now heard; Shalman (a contracted form of Skalmanezer, the King
of Assyria) is advancing and shall destroy all their fortresses as he destroyed
Beth-arbel. (There is no further record
of Beth-arbel and its destruction.) And
who was responsible for all this havoc and the impending calamity? “Thus has
4.
The Mercy of a Merciful God: Chapter 11:
1-11.
This chapter starts with a beautiful allusion to
But while the Son of God, the true
“How should I give you up, Ephraim?
How
shall I surrender thee,
How
should I make thee Like Admah?
Or
set thee like Zeboim?
My
heart is turned within me;
My
repentings are kindled together.”
It is the same Lord who speaks here, who centuries later stood
before the city and broke out in loud weeping when He beheld the city: “If thou hadst
known, even thou, at least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy
peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes” (Luke 19:
42). “0 Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto
thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold your house is left unto you
desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall
not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name
of the Lord” (Matt. 23: 37).
How He loves His people! And
though He has punished them, He does not forsake them; He will not be angry
forever; He is a covenant keeping God, “For I am God and not man” (verse 9). “For I am the Lord, I change not;
therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal. 3:
6). And so here, this chapter of
Jehovah’s mercy ends with the assurance of their future restoration and
blessing. “They will follow the
Lord.” That will be “when like a lion He roars.”
That is the day when He appears again as “The lion of the tribe of
CHAPTER 11: 12 - 12
THE
INDICTMENT
1. Ephraim’s Indictment. Chapter 11:12 –
12: 2.
2. Remembrance of the Past. 3-6.
3. What
1. Ephraim’s Indictment: Chapter 11: 12 – 12: 2.
Lying and deceit
had been Ephraim’s course towards Jehovah; instead of trusting Him and
following Him faithfully they had attached themselves to idols, while
2. Remembrance of the Past: Verses 3-6.
Jacob’s sons are now reminded of Jacob’s experience. Though he was so weak and sinful yet the Lord
in marvellous grace met him. The
experience at Peniel is recalled. “Yea, he had power
over the angel, and prevailed; he wept and made supplication unto Him.”
There he learned the sufficiency of grace and his strength was made
perfect in weakness. The angel who
appeared unto him that night was none other than the Son of God. What a reminder it was to them. “He found him (Jacob) in
3. What
The Lord calls apostate
Some day it will be different through the grace and mercy of
the never-changing Lord. He is the
Jehovah who delivered them out of
CHAPTER 13
EPHRAIM’S
RUIN AND JUDGMENT
1. Ruin and Judgment. 1-8.
2. It is Thy Destruction, 0
3. Mercy to Follow Wrath. 19-14.
4. The Desolation of the Nearing
Judgment. 15-16.
1.
Ruin and Judgment: Verses 1-8.
In the beginning Ephraim was humble, and knowing his
dependence, he spoke with trembling.
Then he became puffed up, exalted himself in
Then they went from sinning to sinning, from bad to worse, just as in our own days, the apostates in
Christendom go from bad to worse in fulfilment of 2
Timothy 3: 13. “But evil men and seducers shall
wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” Idolatry flourished on all sides. They added idol images in Gilgal and
Then the Lord reminds them of their former relationship and
that He is the true God, “and there is no Saviour beside Me.” In the land of the wilderness He knew them and
there He cared for them and provided all their needs. But instead of acknowledging Him, they became
full; self-exaltation followed, and then they forgot Him. Throughout
the Word of God self-exaltation, pride is always given as the starting
point of departure from God and the consequent ruin.
Verses 7-8 are interesting. They
are to be rent by wild beasts, which, symbolically, represent the
Gentiles. The ten tribes were carried
away by the Assyrian, while later, when Judah met its judgment, the whole land
was devastated by the lion-empire (Babylonia); by the bear (Medo-Persia); by
the leopard (the Graeco-Macedonia; and finally by the dreadful beast, “the beast of
the field shall tear them,” the Roman power.
2. It is Thy Destruction, 0
“It is thy destruction, 0
3. Mercy to Follow Wrath: Verses 12-14.
Ephraim deliberately held on to his sin. Their iniquity was bound up; it was laid by
in store. The reference is to the
Oriental custom of tying up money and other valuables into a bundle and hiding
it somewhere. It was done for
security. So the Lord would see to it
that their sins and iniquity would not be forgotten; all their sins were
preserved for punishment (see Deut. 32: 34).
Sorrow and great trouble should come upon them. It has been thus in the past, it will be so
in the future, in the time of “Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:
4). When that time conies, when
all their hope and strength is gone (Deut. 32:
36-43) then He will deliver. Then
all the enemies will be put down.
Redemption from death and the plagues will come; they will be ransomed from the power of Sheol (not
hell).
[* NOTE. The passage above most certainly ‘has nothing to do with the wicked dead’; but
has everything to do with the righteous and holy dead at the Second
Advent of Christ / Messiah: and also points to the time of their Resurrection ‘out from the dead’. Phil. 3: 11; Luke
14: 14; 20: 35; Heb. 11: 35, etc.]
3. The Desolation of the Nearing
Judgment: Verses 15-16.
These verses describe the horrors of the coming judgment by
the Assyrians (see 2 Kings 8: 12, 15: 16,
and Amos 1: 13).
CHAPTER 14
THE
RETURN AND THE GLORIOUS REDEMPTION
1. The Exhortation to Return. 1-3.
2. The Glorious Redemption. 4-9.
1. The Exhortation to Return: Verses 1-3.
This chapter is a wonderful finale to the messages of
Hosea. What tender entreaties! What gracious assurance! What glorious promises of a future
redemption! It is Jehovah beseeching His
people, those who had forsaken Him, outraged His character of holiness and who
had despised Him. First is the call to
return. God’s hands are tied [relative to
blessing and protecting them from the enemy] as
long as His people stay away from Him and do not return to Him in true
repentance. No true [future] salvation
and deliverance for His people is possible without
a true heart return unto Him. It is this for which He looks and waits.
Then the Lord Himself puts His word and a prayer into their
mouth. He loves to provide all. “Take with you words and turn to
Jehovah and say unto Him, Forgive all iniquity, and receive us graciously, so
will we render the calves of our lips.” Could their
poor, darkened and mistrusting hearts ever even have imagined to ask thus of
Him? Their consciences were defiled; the
burden of guilt was upon them. But
Jehovah does not mention their sins and their guilt, but tells them just to
pray for forgiveness and for a gracious reception. And He
who tells His wayward people to pray, to turn to Him, to pray for forgiveness,
He who assures them that He hears, assures them of a gracious receiving, will
never fail. How full of comfort
these few sentences are to all His people at all times! We can imagine that in Hosea’s day there were
individual Israelites who took these words to heart. After them generations of Jews read them and
turned individually to the Lord, found forgiveness and became the objects of
His grace. And we too, as His [redeemed] people,
when we have gone back in our spiritual life, can find our comfort here, and
appropriate all this in faith as we act
upon His Word. In the future the
remnant of
“So will we render the calves of our
lips.” Literally rendered it is “we will pay
as young oxen our lips,” i.e., present the prayers of our lips as a thank-offering; we will be
worshippers. Such is the result of a
real return unto the Lord with sins forgiven and restored to His
fellowship. The days of singing are
coming for
2. The Glorious Redemption: Verses 5-9.
His gracious answer to such repentance follows. Three times Jehovah speaks “I will.”
This is the word of Sovereign grace (see Annotations on Ezekiel, page
315). The three “I wills” are: (1) I will heal their backslidings; (2) I will love
them freely; (3) I will be a dew unto
Beautiful is verse
8. “Ephraim (shall say), What have I to do any more
with idols? I hear and I look upon Him;
I am like a green fir tree. From Me is
thy fruit found.” Ephraim, the cake half turned, Ephraim, of
whom it was said, he is joined to idols, leave him alone, now repudiates the
idols. And why? I hear and I look upon Him! The vision of the Lord turned the stubborn
heart. It is so still; the great power
is to hear Him, to look upon Him. In that day
* * *
2
The
Prophet Joel
INTRODUCTION
Joel means “Jehovah is God.” This name occurs frequently in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 8: 2; 1 Chronicles 4: 35, 5: 4, 8: 12, etc.). The Prophet Joel was the son of Pethuel. Numerous guesses have been made about his
personality. A tradition states that he
was from Bethom in the tribe of Reuben.
In 1 Chronicles 24: 16 a man by name
of Pethaliah is mentioned. Some have connected him with the father of
Joel, Pethuel, claiming upon this that Joel belonged to a priestly family; but
this, as well as other claims cannot be confirmed. Jewish expositors make the statement that
Pethuel was Samuel, because Samuel had a son by name of Joel; but, inasmuch as
the sons of Samuel were evildoers this is incorrect. The book itself does not
give even a single hint as to his personal history.
WHEN
AND WHERE JOEL LIVED
As to the time and place, when and where he exercised his
prophetic office, we are not left in doubt.
He prophesied not like Hosea among the ten tribes, but he was a prophet of
The best Jewish and Christian scholarship has maintained a
very early date of Joel. When the editor
published his larger work on Joel, in which he puts the date between 860 and
850 B. C., Professor H. A. Sayce of
There is nothing mentioned in Joel of the Assyrian period
800-650, nor is there anything said of the Babylonian period 650-538, hence Joel must have prophesied before the
Assyrian period, that is in the ninth century B. C., or he must have lived
after the exile. The latter is excluded, therefore Joel
exercised his office as prophet in Judah during the middle of the ninth
century, as stated above, about 860-850 B. C. This
view is abundantly verified by different facts found in the book itself.
Now, the date of Amos
is generally accepted as being in the middle of the 8th century
before Christ. In the first chapter
of the Book of Amos there is an undoubted quotation from the Book of Joel. (See
Joel 3: 16 and Amos
1: 2). Dr. Pusey makes the following argument out of this fact:
“Amos quoting Joel attests two
things. (1) That Joel’s prophecy must, at
the time when Amos wrote, have become a part of Holy Scriptures, and its
authority must have been acknowledged; (2) That its authority must have been
acknowledged by, and it must have been in circulation among, those to whom Amos
prophesied; otherwise he would not have prefixed to his book those words of
Joel. For the whole force of the words,
as employed by Amos, depends on being recognized by his bearers, as a renewal
of the prophecy of Joel. Certainly bad
men jeered at Amos, as though this threatening would not be fulfilled.”
The seven strongest reasons for the early date of Joel are the
following:
1. Joel charges the Philistines with having invaded
2. The Phoenicians, i.e., those of
3. The Edomites (3: 19),
are ranked among the enemies of
4. The fact that no
mention is made of the invasion by the Syrians of Damascus proves that Joel was
one of the early prophets. This occurred
in the latter part of the reign of Josiah, B. C. 850-840.
5. The high antiquity of JoeI is proved by
the fact that he makes no reference to the Assyrian invasion of the two Jewish
kingdoms in B. C. 790. On the other
hand, Amos clearly alludes to it (6:14).
6. Another proof is
derived from the relation between Joel and Amos. The latter was certainly well acquainted with
the writings of the former.
7. The mention of the
On these grounds we
conclude that in fixing the time of this prophet, we cannot take for our terminus a quo an earlier date than B.
C. 890, nor for our terminus ad quem a later one than 840. It
most probably falls between B. C. 800-850. Joel therefore is probably the oldest of
the Minor Prophets.
THE
PROPHECY OF JOEL
The prophecy of Joel is one which extends from his own time to
the time of
He may well be called “The Prophet of
the Lord’s Day.” Five times he
mentions this day. Chapters 1: 15, 2:1-12, 10-11, 30-31, and 3: 15-16. The
great theme then is “The Day of
the Lord,” that coming day, when the Lord is
manifested, when the enemies of
The occasion of the book and prophecy of Joel was a dreadful
scourge which swept over the
But few Christians have ever given much heed to this prophetic
book. There are many important truths in
this book. A great deal of confusion might have been avoided if more attention had
been given to the setting in which the prediction of the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit upon all flesh is found. The
Pentecostal delusion is built up mostly upon the wrong interpretations of this
prophecy.
THE
DIVISIONS OF JOEL
The divisions of the prophecy of Joel, as found in our English
version, cannot be improved upon. We
follow it in our analysis and annotations.
-------
The
Book of Joel
A
METRIC VERSION
CHAPTER 1
1.
The Word of Jehovah which came to Joel, the Son
of Pethuel.
2.
Hear this, ye aged men
And open the ear ye
inhabitants of the land!
Hath this happened in your
days,
Or even in the days of your
fathers?
3.
Relate it to your children
And your children to their
children,
And their children to
another generation.
4.
What the Gazam* left, the Arbeh hath devoured
And what the Arbeh left, the Jelek hath devoured
And what the Jelek left, the Chasel hath devoured.
* We left these four words un-translated for reasons which will be given in
the exposition.
5.
Awake, ye drunkards and weep!
And howl all ye drinkers of
wine
Because of the sweet wine,
For it is taken away from
your mouth.
6.
For a nation has come up upon my land
Mighty and without number –
His teeth – lion’s teeth -
The jaw teeth, that of a
lioness.
7.
He hath made my vine for a desolation
And my fig tree broken off;
Peeled off completely and
cast it away;
Its branches are made white.
8.
Lament like a virgin!
Girded with sackcloth for
the husband of her youth.
9.
Cut off is the meat and drink offering from the
house of Jehovah.
The priests mourn, the
servants of Jehovah.
10. “Wasted is
the field
Mourning is the land -
For wasted is the corn
The new wine is dried up
The oil faileth.”
11.
Be ashamed, husbandmen!
Howl - vine dressers!
For the wheat and the
barley.
Because the harvest of the
field is lost.
12.
The vine is dried up
And the fig tree faileth
The pomegranate, also the
palm and the apple tree.
All the trees of the field
are withered.
Gone is joy from the
children of men.
13.
Gird yourselves and lament, 0 ye priests,
Howl, ministers of the
altar;
Come lie down in sackcloth
all night
Ye ministers of my God.
For withholden from the
house of your God
Are the meat offering and
the drink offering.
14.
Sanctify a fast.
Call a solemn gathering.
Bring together the Elders
All the inhabitants of the
land
In the house of Jehovah your
God
And cry unto Jehovah
15.
Woe! For the Day!
Because near is the day of
Jehovah
Even like destruction from
Shaddai* it comes.
* The
only time Shaddai (Almighty) is used in Joel.
In the Hebrew there is a resemblance of sound between “destruction” and “Shaddai.”
16.
Is not the food cut off before our eyes?
From the house of our God
joy and gladness.
17.
The seeds have perished under their clods.
The garners become desolate
The storehouses are broken
down
For withered is the corn.
18.
Hear the cattle groan!
The herds of cattle are
bewildered,
For there is no feeding
place for them.
For the fire has consumed the goodly places of the desert
Also the flocks of sheep are
made to suffer.*
* The Hebrew word, which we translate “made
to suffer” means in its root “to be guilty.” The form of the verb used here would best be
translated by the German “bussen.”
19.
To Thee, Jehovah, I cry,
For the fire has consumed
the goodly places of the desert
And a flame hath burned all
the trees of the field.
20.
Also the cattle of the field look up* unto Thee
For the streams of water are
dried up,
And a fire hath consumed the
goodly places of the desert.
* Another word different from the 19th verse is used,
though nearly all translators use “cry.” It is
more a groaning, desirous looking up.
CHAPTER 2
1.
Blow the trumpet in
Sound an alarm in the mount
of my holiness.
Let all the dwellers of the
land tremble,
For the day of Jehovah
cometh,
For it is near at hand.
2.
A day of darkness and gloom
A day of clouds and thick
darkness,
Like the dawn spread upon
the mountains, -
A people numerous and
strong!
Never hath there been the
like before,
Neither shall the like come
again,
In the years of many
generations.
3.
A fire devoureth before them,
And behind them a flame
burneth;
Before them the land is as
the garden of Eden,
And behind them a desolate
wilderness,
Yea, and nothing can escape
them.
4.
Their appearance is like the appearance of
horses,
And like the horsemen shall
they run.
5.
Like the noise of chariots,
On the mountain tops, they
shall leap,
Like the crackling of a
flame of fire devouring the stubble,
Like a strong people set in
battle array.
6.
Before them the peoples are in distress
All faces turn to paleness.
7.
They run like mighty men
They climb the wall like men
of war;
And they march each one in
his ways,
And they turn not aside from
their ranks.
8.
Nor doth one press upon another.
A mighty one* marches in
the high road.
They fall upon the dart, but
are not wounded.
* This is the literal meaning.
9.
They spread themselves in the city,
They run along upon the
wall,
They climb up into the
houses,
They enter in by the windows
like a thief.
10.
The earth trembleth before them,
The heavens shake,
The sun and the moon are
darkened,
And the stars withdraw their
shining.
11.
And Jehovah uttereth His voice before his army
For very great is His host,
For He that executeth His
Word is mighty;
For great is the day of
Jehovah and very terrible,
And who can stand it?
12.
Yet even now, saith Jehovah,
Return unto me with all your
heart,
With fasting and with
weeping and with mourning.
13.
And rend your heart and not your garments.
And return unto Jehovah your
God,
For He is gracious and
merciful,
Slow to anger and of great
loving kindness
And repenteth Him of the
evil.
14.
Who knoweth He may return and repent
And leave a blessing behind,
An oblation and a drink
offering
For Jehovah your God.
15.
Blow the trumpet in
Sanctify a fast.
16.
Call out a solemn assembly,
Gather the people.
Sanctify a congregation.
Assemble the old men.
Gather the children,
And those that suck the
breasts;
Let the bridegroom leave his
chamber
And the bride her closet;
17.
Let the priests, the ministers of Jebovah,
Weep between the porch and
the altar,
And let them say
“Spare Thy
people, 0 Jehovah,
And give not thine heritage
to reproach
That the nations should rule
over them*.
Wherefore should they say
among the peoples
Where is their God?”
* Or, “they that
should be a byword of the nations.”
18.
Then Jehovah will be jealous for His land,
And will have pity on His
people.
19. And Jehovah will answer and say to His
people:
Behold I am sending to you
the corn,
The new wine and the oil;
And ye shall be satisfied
therewith,
And I will no longer make
you
For a reproach among the
nations.
20.
And I will remove afar from you the One from the
North
And will drive him into a
dry and desolate land,
His face toward the Eastern
sea
His rear toward the Western
sea
And his stench shall arise
And his ill odour shall
ascend,
For he hath lifted himself
up to do great things.
21. Fear not, 0 Land Be
glad and rejoice,
For Jehovah doeth great things.
22. Fear not, ye beasts
of the field!
For the pastures of the desert spring forth,
The tree beareth her fruit
The fig tree and the vine give their strength.
23. Ye children of
In Jehovah your God;
For He giveth you the early
rain in righteousness,
He causeth to descend for
you the showers
The early and the latter
rain as before.
24. And the floors shall
be full of corn.
And the vats shall overflow
with new wine and oil.
25. And I will restore to
you the years,
Which the Arbeth bath eaten.
The Jekel, the Chasel and the Gazam,
My great army, which I sent
among you.
26.
Then ye shall be in abundance, and be satisfied
And praise the name of
Jehovah your God,
Who has dealt wondrously
with you,
And my people shall never be
ashamed.
27. And ye shall know
that I am in the midst of
And that I Jehovah am your God, and none else.
And my people shall never be ashamed.
28. And it shall come to
pass afterwards,
I will pour out my Spirit
upon all flesh,
And your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy;
Your old men shall dream
dreams,
Your young men shall see
visions.
29.
Yea, even upon the men servants and the maid
servants,
In those days will I pour
out my Spirit.
30.
And I will give wonders in the heaven and on
earth.
Blood, and fire and pillars
of smoke.
31. The sun shall be
turned to darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the great and
terrible day of Jehovah come.
32. And it shall come to
pass
Whosoever shall call on the
name of Jehovah shall be saved
For in
As Jehovah hath said,
Even for the remnant whom
Jehovah shall call.
CHAPTER 3
1. For behold in those days and in that time,
When I shall bring back the
captivity of
2.
I will also bring together all nations,
And will bring down
into the
And there will I
judge them on account of my people,
And my heritage
And they divided my
land.
3.
And they cast lots for my people,
They gave a boy for a
harlot,
And sold a girl for wine and
drank it.
4.
Yea also, what have ye to do with me, 0
And all the borders of
Would you requite me with
retaliation?
If your retaliate
Swiftly and speedily will I
bring your recompense
Upon your own head.
5.
Because ye have taken my silver and gold,
And have brought into your
temples my very best things
And the children of
Ye sold to the children of
the Greeks,
That ye might remove them
far from their border.
7.
Behold I will raise them up out of the place
whither ye sold them,
And I will return the
retaliation upon your own head.
8.
And I will sell your sons and your daughters
Into the hands of the sons
of
And they shall sell them to
the Sabeans to a far off nation.
For Jehovah hath spoken it.
9.
Proclaim this among the nations:
Declare a war!
Arouse the mighty ones!
Let all the men of war draw
near, let them come up!
10.
Beat your ploughshares into swords,
And your pruning hooks into
spears.
Let the weak say, I am
strong.
11.
Come together,
All ye nations round about
Gather yourselves together.
Thither cause thy mighty
ones to come down,
O,Jehovah!
12.
Let the nations arise and come up
To the
For there will I sit to
judge all the nations round about.
13. Put in the sickle
For the harvest is ripe;
Come -Tread!
For the wine-press is full,
The vats overflow;
For their wickedness is
great.
14. Multitudes,
multitudes in the valley of decision!
For the day of Jehovah is at
hand in the valley of decision.
15. The sun and the moon
are darkened
And the stars withdraw their
shining.
16. And Jehovah shall
roar from
And send forth His voice
from
And the heavens and the
earth shall shake;
But Jehovah will be a refuge
for His people
And a fortress for the sons
of
17. And ye shall know
that I, Jehovah, your God,
Dwell in
And
And strangers shall no more
pass through her.
18. And it shall come to
pass in that day
That the mountains shall
drop down new wine,
And the hills shall flow
with milk,
And all the river beds of
And a fountain shall come
forth from the house of Jehovah,
And shall water the
19.
And
For their violence against
the children of
Because they shed innocent
blood in their land.
20.
But
And
21. And I will purge them from the blood
From which I had not purged them.
And Jehovah will dwell in
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
Chapter 1
1. THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.
2. THE COMING DAY OF THE
LORD; THE RUIN,
THE REPENTANCE AND THE RESTORATION.
Chapter 2
THE EVENTS OF THE DAY OF THE
LORD;
THE KINGDOM ESTABLISHED.
Chapter 3
THE
PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS
CHAPTER 1
1. The Prophet’s Appeal. 1-4.
2. The Call to the Drunkards. 5-7.
3. The Call to the People and the
Priests. 8-14.
4. The Day of the Lord; the
5. The Prayer of the Prophet. 19-20.
1.
The Prophet’s Appeal: Verses 1-4.
The Prophet announces that it is the Word of Jehovah he
utters, which came to him. Verses 2 and 3
are an introduction to the description which follows the great calamity which
had befallen the land. It is in the form
of an appeal. What had happened to the
land is of such a fearful character that it is unprecedented. The visitation of the land by the locust
plague is to be related to future generations, because there is a great
prophetic meaning as to the future attached to the locusts, which will be pointed
out later. The fourth
verse we render in a way our own, leaving the words of the destroying
insects un-translated.
What the Gazam
left, the Arbeh hath devoured;
And what the Arbeh left, the Jelek hath devoured;
And what the Jelek left, the Chasel hath devoured.
We left the Hebrew words un-translated because they do not
express insects of different species; they are one insect, the locust, in a
fourfold stage. Gazam means “to gnaw off;” Arbeh is “to
be many”; this is the common name of the locusts on account of their
migratory habits. Jelek is “to lick off,” and Chasel means “to
devour or consume.” The locust
passes through a fourfold stage in its development to full growth. First, it is the gnawing locust, when first
hatched; then it gets its wings and flies about; after that it starts in its
destructive work by licking off whatever it finds, and, finally, it reaches its
full growth and devours everything in its path.
For a full description of the locusts, their habits, their awful work of
destruction in Oriental countries see our commentary on Joel, pages 33-39 and
in Appendix B.*
* Many foolish applications have been made of these
locusts. One of the most ridiculous is
the one made by a certain woman-healer in her book “Lost and Restored.”
The locust plague which laid
But these literal locusts, which fell literally upon the land
and destroyed in a short time all vegetation, are symbolic of other agencies
which were to be used later in
2.
The Call to the Drunkards: Verses 5-7.
The first swarm had probably appeared in the fall; only the
vineyards had not yet been harvested.
They attacked the vineyards and speedily the vines and the grapes
disappeared under the onslaught. The
drinkers of wine were therefore to suffer first. That there was much drunkenness among the
people
3.
The Call to the People and to the Priests: Verses
8-14.
On account of the great disaster the people are called to
mourn and put on sackcloth. “Lament like a
virgin, girded with sackcloth, for the husband of her youth.”
This is a significant expression.
Wasted is the field,
Mourning is the land,
For wasted is the corn,
The new vine is dried up,
The oil faileth.
This is followed by the call to lament for the husbandmen and
vinedressers. The whole harvest was
gone, and besides the failure of the vine, the fig tree the other trees are
also mentioned, yea, “all the trees of the field are withered!”
On account of the severity of this visitation joy had left the children
of men.
Then comes the definite call to the priests to lament and cry
unto Jehovah and to sanctify a fast (verses 13-14). But there is no record of a response. At the close of this chapter the Prophet
alone raises his voice to Jehovah. We
shall learn in the second chapter of the time of the national repentance of
4.
The Day of the Lord. The
For the first time we meet the day of
the Lord (Yom Jehovah), that phrase used so frequently in all the prophetic
books. The 15th
verse is an exclamation of the Prophet as before his vision that day
appears. In the midst of the weird
description of the calamity, present in Joel’s day, he beholds a greater
judgment approaching. It is the same day
he beholds which the other prophets mention; each time Joel uses this
expression it means the coming day of the Lord, still approaching. It may be noticed that the five passages in
Joel in which “the day of the Lord” is mentioned are progressive.
For a comparative study of this important phrase we quote the
leading passage of the different prophets.
Isaiah. The phrase “in that day” is found many times in his book. We mention 2:
2-5, 10-22, 26; 4; 11; 13: 6-13. The
great glory predictions of Isaiah 54, 60, 61
and 62 are all related to this day.
Jeremiah. He also speaks of that day (chapters 25: 30-33; 30: 18-24).
Ezekiel. Chapters 7 and 8. From chapters 27-
48 we have the record of great events both of judgment and blessing
which will come to pass in connection with that day. While Daniel does not use in his book the phrase “day of the Lord” nearly all his great prophecies are
connected with that day. It is the day
in which the stone smites the great image, representing the times of the
Gentiles, and demolishes it; the day on which “the Son of Man” comes in the clouds of heaven to receive the kingdom. Hosea points to that day in chapters 2
and 3, as well as in the closing
chapter. Amos witnesses
to it in chapters
1: 2; 6: 3, 9: 2, 15. Obadiah, who lived about
the same time as Joel, speaks of the day in verse
15 of his brief prophecy. Micah in his prophecy
refers to it in chapter 5: 15. In Nahum the day is described in which the Lord will deal in
judgment with the wicked world cities (see chapter
1: 1-9). The third chapter of Habakkuk reveals that
day. Zephaniah has a great deal more to say about that day than the
preceding prophetic books (see chapters 1:14-18; 2
and 3).
Haggai bears witness to
it in chapter 2: 6-7. (Compare with Heb.
12: 26-29). Zechariah uses the phrase “in that day” many times, especially in the last
three chapters. Malachi reveals the day in chapters 3: 1-3 and 4: 1-3).
We learn from all this what a prominent place the day of the
Lord occupies in the prophecies. It must
be so, for it is the day of manifestation and consummation. Joel beheld here for the first time this day.
Then follows an additional description of the great calamity
which had come upon the land in Joel’s day (verses
16-18).
5. The Prayer of the Prophet: Verses 19-20.
Joel was, like all the other prophets, a man of prayer. No other mention is made by the Prophet concerning
himself, but this brief word is sufficient to give us a glimpse of his inner
life and his trust in the Lord. He cried
to Jehovah in the great distress.
2.
THE COMING DAY OF THE LORD.
THE
REPENTANCE AND RESTORATION OF
CHAPTER 2
1. The Alarm Sounded; the Day at Hand.
1-2.
2. The Invading Army from the North. 3-11.
3. The Repentance of the People and
Cry for Help. 10-17.
4. “Then.” The Great Change. 18.
5.
Promises of Restoration. The
Early and Latter Rain. 19-27.
6. The Outpouring of the Spirit upon
all Flesh. 28-31.
7. Deliverance in
1. The Alarm Sounded; the Day at Hand:
Verses 1-2.
With this chapter we reach the heart of the prophecy of
Joel. The description of the literal
locust plague is now no longer continued.
As we have shown the literal locusts in their different stages were
symbolical of nations laying waste the land as the locusts had done. Dispensationally the first chapter stands for
the entire times of the Gentiles, which began with Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2: 36-38), and they continue till the time
comes when the God of heaven sets up a kingdom that cannot be destroyed. The
second chapter takes us at once to the end of the times of the Gentiles, when
the day of the Lord is to be enacted.
Before the Lord appears in that day, the greatest distress will be upon
the land and the people; there will be a great time of trouble such as never
was before (Matt. 24: 21). The remnant of His people will cry to the
Lord for intervention and for deliverance, and the Lord will answer their cry
and deliver them. Then their land becomes once more like the garden of Eden, there will
be a great outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh and from
This whole chapter as
well as the next one is therefore unfulfilled.
Nothing of it has been fulfilled. Before it can be fulfilled a part of
the people
The chapter begins with the sounding of the alarm for “the Day of
Jehovah cometh, for it is near at hand.” The last
prophetic week of Daniel is now in process of fulfilment and near its end (see
annotations on Dan. 9). A part of the people are back in the land,
having returned there in unbelief, just as we see it today in the Zionistic
movement. But in their midst will also
be found a God-fearing remnant.
The blowing of the trumpet shows that they have revived their
ancient custom (see Num. 10: 1, 2, 9). We also mention that trumpets are often
connected with the appearing of the Lord and the restoration of
2. The Invading Army from the North: Verses 3-11.
Many armies in past history have occupied the
* We refer the
reader to our larger works on Daniel, Joel and the Harmony of the Prophetic
Word. In the exposition of Joel a full
explanation of this invading army is given on pages 91-104.
This army of
Before them the
land is as the garden of Eden,
And behind them a
desolate wilderness,
Yea, and nothing
can escape them.
The Lord uses these destructive hosts to humble His people, to
show them that He is their help, when this great calamity is upon them. The symbolical language here is
characteristic of other prophecies.
The earth trembleth
before them;
The heavens shake,
The sun and the
moon are darkened,
And the stars
withdraw their shining
*
* * *
* * *
*
For the Day of the Lord is
great and very terrible.
Compare this with the following passages: (Isa. 13:13; Hab. 1: 6, 12; Zech. 14: 3, 4).
3. The Repentance of the People and
Cry for Help: Verses 12-17.
Here is the Lord calling to His people to return unto Him with
true repentance (compare with Hosea 5:15-6: 1). And during that great tribulation there will
be a truly penitent portion of the people who turn to Him in the manner
described in this chapter. It is this
remnant which will be saved in that day, while the impenitent part will be cut
off in judgment. Ezekiel 20: 38 and Zech. 13: 8-9
speak of this. What Moses spoke long ago
now takes place (Deut. 30: 1-4). The many prophetic prayers recorded in the
Psalms, as pointed out in the annotations of that book, will then be offered up
by this godly waiting remnant (Psa. 44: 13-14, 115:
23, 79: 9-10, etc.). This
mourning and prayer for deliverance precedes the visible manifestation of the
Lord in the day of His Coming. When at
last deliverance has come there will be another lamentation. This is found in Zech.
12: 9-14 and in Rev. 1: 7.
4.
“Then” The Great Change: Verses 18.
“Then Jehovah will be jealous for His
land and will have pity on His people.” Here is the
great change. Up to this point we have
seen nothing but calamity and judgments.
Literal locusts had devoured the land - the types of nations which would
prey upon the land. They came, and
The Lord’s personal manifestation is not mentioned here. The deliverance does not come apart from the
second Coming of our Lord. The entire
prophetic Word bears witness to this. “Then shall
the Lord go forth and fight against those nations as He fought in the day of
battle. And His feet shall stand in that
day upon the mount of Olives, which is before
5. Promises of Restoration. The Early and Latter Rain: Verses 19-27.
Here is His gracious answer.
He will bless their land and make it fruitful once more, as it used to
be, the land flowing with milk and honey.
It is foolish to spiritualize the terms corn, new wine and oil. Yet it has been done. One of the older commentators of this book
says on this verse about the corn, wine and oil, that it has been fulfilled in
the church. The corn he applies to the
body of Christ, the wine to the blood of Christ, and the oil to the
Spirit. Earthly blessings, such as
belong to His earthly people are exclusively in view. Then they shall be no longer a reproach among
the nations. Inasmuch as they are still
a reproach we know that this promise is still future in its fulfilment. The One from the North will be overthrown and
pass away forever. That all this cannot
mean the Babylonian captivity and the small remnant which returned to the land
may be learned from the statement “no longer” a reproach.
Because the Lord does all this they are commanded to rejoice,
the children of
Nowhere in the Bible is there warrant for us to believe that “the early and
latter rain” has a
spiritual significance. To say that the
early rain and the latter rain typify blessings and manifestations of the
Spirit of God, peculiar to the opening of this present age and to its close is
extremely fanciful and cannot be verified by the Scriptures. It is strange that even men who seem to
possess considerable light have endorsed this kind of exposition, which has
worked such harm among so many Christian people. There is absolutely no prediction anywhere in
the New Testament that the present age is to close with “a latter rain” experience, a time when the Holy
Spirit is poured out and that in greater measure. This age, according to divine revelation,
ends in apostasy and complete departure from God and His truth (2 Thess. 2: 3-12).
After the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, for the formation of
the church, the body of Christ, there is nowhere to be found a promise in the
church epistles that another outpouring is to take place, by which a part of
the church is to get into possession
again of the different sign gifts. The
enemy of souls has made good use of these distorted teachings to bring in his
most subtle delusions.
The rain has altogether a literal meaning. Read carefully the following passages for a confirmation:
Lev. 36: 4; Deut. 11: 14-17; 1 Kings 8: 33-35
and Jer. 3: 5.
Then all the harm done by the locusts, the army the Lord used
in judging His people, will be restored. “And My people shall never be ashamed” (verse 27). This again is sufficient proof that all this
remains unfulfilled.
6. The Outpouring of the Spirit Upon
All Flesh: Verses 28-32.
This interesting passage invites our closest attention. The almost general interpretation of this
prophecy has been that it found its fulfilment on the day of Pentecost, when
the Holy Spirit was poured forth. Most
expositors confine the fulfilment to that event while others claim that
Pentecost was only the beginning of the fulfilment and that the event which
occurred once continues to occur throughout this Christian age. We quote from one of the best
commentaries. “But
however certain it may be that the fulfilment took place at the first Christian
feast of Pentecost, we must not stop at this one Pentecostal miracle. The address of the Apostle Peter by no means
requires this limitation, but rather contains distinct indications that Peter
himself saw nothing more therein than the commencement of the fulfilment, but a
commencement indeed, which embraced the ultimate fulfilment, as the germ
enfolds the tree; for if not only the children of the apostles’ contemporaries
but also those that were afar off - i.e.,
not foreign Jews, but the far off heathen, were to participate in the gift of
the Holy Spirit, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which commenced on Pentecost
must continue as long as the Lord shall receive into His Kingdom those that are
still standing afar, i.e., until the
fulness of the Gentiles shall have entered the kingdom of God.”
There is, however, no Scriptural foundation for the statement
that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit commenced on Pentecost must continue
throughout this present age. The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost.
He was poured out once, and nowhere in the New Testament is there a
continued or repeated outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised. The difficulty with interpreting this great
prophecy of Joel of having been fulfilled on Pentecost and being fulfilled
throughout this age is that which follows in the next two verses. Wonders in heaven and on earth, fire, pillars
of smoke, a darkened sun and a blood-red moon are mentioned, and that in
connection with the day of Jehovah, which, as we have seen is the great theme
of Joel’s vision. These words have been
generally applied to the destruction of
It is strange that all these expositors use the word “fulfilment” in connection with this prophecy, saying,
that Peter said that the day of Pentecost was the fulfilment of what is written
by Joel. But the Holy Spirit did not use
the word “fulfilment” at all. He purposely avoided such a statement. In so many passages in the New Testament we
find the phrase “that it might be fulfilled,” but in making use of the prophecy in Acts, chapter 2, this phrase is not used and
instead of it we read that Peter said, “But this is that which was spoken by
the Prophet Joel”
(Acts 2: 16). There is a great difference between this word
and an out and out declaration of the fulfilment of that passage. Peter’s
words call the attention to the fact that something like that which took place
on the day of Pentecost had been predicted by Joel, but his words do not claim
that Joel’s prophecy was there and then fulfilled. Nor
does He hint at a continued fulfilment or coming fulfilment during this present
age. The chief purpose of the
quotation of that prophecy on the day of Pentecost was to point out to the
Jews, many of whom were scoffing, that the miraculous thing which had happened
so suddenly in their midst was fully confirmed by what Joel had foretold would
be the effect of the outpouring of the Spirit.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit had taken place, but not in the full sense as given in the Prophecy of Joel. He came for a special purpose, which was the
formation of the Church and for this purpose He is still on earth.
Without following the events on Pentecost and their meaning it
is evident from the entire prophecy, which precedes this prediction of the
outpouring of the Spirit, that these words have never been fulfilled. We might
briefly ask, What is necessary according to the contents of this second chapter
in Joel, before this prophecy can be accomplished? We just mention what we have already learned
before in our exposition. The people
Israel must be partly restored to their land, that great invasion from the
North, bringing such trouble to the land must have taken place, then there must
also have come the intervention of the Lord and He must be jealous for His land
and pity His people, then at that time
this great outpouring of the Spirit of God will take place. It stands in the closest connection with the
restoration of
The word “afterwards” with which this prophecy is introduced refers to the
same period of time as the phrase “in the latter days,” that is, the days when the Lord will
redeem His earthly people and be merciful to His land.
Therefore when the Holy
Spirit came on the day of Pentecost it was not in fulfilment of Joel’s
prophecy. This prophecy has never
been fulfilled nor will it be fulfilled during this present age, in which the
Church is being formed, which is the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. After this is accomplished the Lord will
begin His relationship with His earthly people, when He appears in His day then
they will experience the fulfilment of this great prediction.
There are numerous passages in the Old Testament which shed
interesting light upon this future outpouring of the Spirit (see Isa. 32: 15, 44: 3-4, 59: 19-21; Ezek. 36: 27-28, 37: 14,
39: 29).
7. Deliverance in
The great coming outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh will
result in salvation. It is blessedly
true now that “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” but it will be also true in that
day. The word our Lord spoke, “Salvation is of the Jews” will find its
largest fulfilment. The nations will
then he joined to the Lord in the
kingdom (Zech. 2: 11).
3.
THE EVENTS OF THE DAY OF THE LORD;
CHAPTER 3
1. The Judgment of the Nations. 1-8.
2. The Preceding Warfare of the
Nations and How it Ends. 9-16.
3. Jehovah in the Midst of His People.
17-21.
1. The Judgment of the Nations: Verses 1-8.
The first verse specifies the time when Jehovah will do what
He announces in the two verses which follow.
It will be in those days, in that time, when the captivity of
It is Jehovah Himself who speaks, what He is going to do in
that day, when He arises and has mercy on
In 2 Chronicles 20 we read
the account of King Jehoshaphat’s victory over hostile nations. But the place where this took place is not
the
The
In the
The great sin of the nations, the Gentile world-powers, is the
sin against
In Joel’s day such wickedness as described here of casting
lots for His people and selling boys and girls was partially known. The Philistines had done this, as well as
2. The Preceding Warfare of the
Nations and How it Ends: Verses 9-16.
This is a prophecy showing what precedes the judgment of these
nations. The judgment hosts of the Lord,
the angels, are seen coming down, then He appears in all His majesty, while sun
and moon are darkened. It is a great
dramatic scene which the Spirit of God unfolds.
We arrange it, adding the different speakers, to bring out its full
value:
The Lord speaking:
Proclaim this among the
nations:
Declare a war,
Arouse the mighty ones,
Let all the men of war draw
near, let them come up!
Beat your
ploughshares into swords,
And your pruning
hooks into spears.
Let the weak say, I
am strong.
Come together All
ye nations round about
Gather yourselves
together.
The Prayer of the Prophet:
Thither cause thy
mighty ones to come down,
0 Jehovah!
The Lord speaking:
Let the nations
arise and come up
To the
For there will I
sit to judge all the nations round about.
The Lord to His Judgment hosts:
Put in the sickle,
For the harvest is
ripe;
Come -Tread!
For the wine-press
is full,
The vats overflow;
For their
wickedness is great.
The Prophet beholding the gathering:
Multitudes,
multitudes in the valley of decision!
For the day of
Jehovah is at hand in the valley of decision.
The sun and the
moon are darkened
And the stars
withdraw their shining.
And Jehovah shall roar from
And send forth His voice
from
And the heavens and the
earth shall shake;
But Jehovah will be a refuge
for His people
And a fortress for the sons
of
Throughout the prophetic Word we read that great nations
confederated will oppose God and His purposes when this age closes. There will be a great Western confederacy,
the restored
3. Jehovah in the midst of His People:
Verses 17-21.
Like nearly all the
other prophetic books Joel ends with the vision of the kingdom and the Lord
dwelling in the midst of His people. He will appear in all
His Glory. Jehovah will be a refuge for
His people. Then they will come to that
knowledge which they so long refused, that the delivering Jehovah is their
God. But the Jehovah who appears there is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ,
the one who was in their midst and who was delivered by the people to be
crucified. What a day it will be
when “They will look upon Him whom they have pierced and mourn for
Him” (Zech. 12: 10).
He will dwell in Zion, the
mountain of Glory. The Glory from above will find a resting
place on that holy hill. There He will
be enthroned as King (Psa. 2: 6). From
there the glory will be spread over all (Isa. 4:
5-6; Psa. 68: 16). “For the Lord
hath chosen
Joel speaks also of the judgment which will fall upon
* *
*
POGROMS
By
ESSIE BERNSTEIN
Have you ever seen the care lines on a
Jewish woman’s face,
Finely marked there by a subtle,
unseen hand?
Have you ever read the story of her
persecuted race?
Then you will not wonder as you
understand.
And you probably will gather from the
furrows on her brow,
(Age-long tyrannies have concentrated
there),
She has come through heinous pogroms,
and her bitter tears still flow,
O’er the ghastly crimes her dearest
would not spare.
You will learn that through the
centuries the insults hurled at them,
Were inflicted in the name of Christ, our Lord.
Do you wonder that they hate Him and His followers condemn,
Why the Gospel seems a gross, colossal fraud?
Oh, they cannot know He loves them till
they see His love in you,
Neither understand how tenderly He
longs
Just to take from them their sorrows,
all their problems, old and new,
And to give instead glad, everlasting
songs.
They have brought to men the Saviour,
the rejected Nazarene,
Does not all that makes life noble
spring from Him!
They gave prophets and apostles, who
have written all they’ve seen
In the Scriptures, where His light
grows never dim.
If you really would repay them for the
gifts they brought to you,
Show the kindness of the Saviour to
their race.
Send to them the blest Evangel with a love that’s ringing true,
And endeavour past injustice to efface.
-------
PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF
AND FOR THE SALVATION OF THE JEWS.
Dr. H. A. Ironside sums up
[* That is, at the end of this evil age.]
* *
*
3
The
Prophet Amos
INTRODUCTION
A few years before
the Prophet Hosea, began to witness
against the apostasy of the house of
THE
TIME OF HIS PROPHECY
There is no difficulty connected with the age in which he
prophesied. This is stated in the
opening verse of the book. “In the days
of Uzziah, King of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, King
of Israel, two years before the earthquake.”
Jeroboam II became king in
the fifteenth year of the reign of Amaziah,
King of Judah. Jeroboam reigned forty-one years.
As Amaziah reigned over
THE
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS TIMES
Under the reign of Jeroboam
II the northern kingdom of
THE
STYLE OF AMOS
Attention has been called to the fact that the prophet’s style
and composition shows the former herdsman in the use of certain words and in many
figures and similes drawn from nature and rural life. But he also shows a very close acquaintance
with the Mosiac law and the history of the people to whom he belonged. The style also shows great rhetorical power,
great depths of thought, and truly poetic expressions.
“Amos expressed his thoughts in words
taken from the great picture book of nature, which, being also written by the
hand of God, so wonderfully expresses the things of God. Scarcely any prophet is more glowing in style,
or combines more wonderfully the natural and the moral world, the Omnipotence
and Omniscience of God” (Dr.
Pusey). Augustinus selected Amos as an illustration of unadorned
eloquence. And another learned scholar
speaks of him thus, “Let any fair judge read his
writings, thinking not who wrote them, but what he wrote, and he will come to
the conclusion that this herdsman is in no wise behind the very chiefest
prophets; in the loftiness of his thoughts and the magnificence of his spirit,
nearly equal to the highest; and in the splendour of his diction and the
elegance of the composition scarcely inferior to any” (Bishop Lowth, “De Poesi Sacra”).
He gives us a splendid example of inspiration. The Lord called him, gave him the message,
filled the simple herdsman with the wisdom from above so that he burst out in
these eloquent utterances. At the same
time the Lord in using him as His mouthpiece did not set aside his personality,
he uses his shepherd idiom, and the Truth of God is expressed through him in
the terms of nature, with which he, as a child of nature, was so familiar.
THE
MESSAGE OF AMOS
The message concerns chiefly Israel, the ten tribe kingdom,
their spiritual and moral condition, yet Judah is also noticed by him, as well as
the different nations, surrounding Israel, their Gentile enemies. The book consists of the prophecies he
uttered in
-------
The
Division of the Book of Amos
The Book of Amos consists of three parts. The first part comprises the two opening chapters which form the
introduction to the book. In them we
find the judgments announced in store for the nations surrounding
From the third chapter
to the end of the sixth is the
second part. Here are recorded four
prophecies given by the Lord through Amos.
Three of them begin with “Hear this Word” and the last in chapter six begins
with “Woe.” The third part, chapters seven to nine, give the five
visions which Amos had. The first
two judgment visions were not carried out on account of the intercession of the
prophet. The third vision is that of
the plumb-line; the fourth, the vision of the basket with ripe fruit. In the last vision he beheld the Lord
standing alongside of the altar, ready to smite. The
conclusion of the ninth chapter is a prophecy concerning the restoration of
JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS,
2. THE PROPHETIC MESSAGES
UNCOVERING THE CONDITION OF THE
PEOPLE. Chapters 3- 6.
3. THE FIVE VISIONS OF THE PROPHET. Chapters 7 - 9.
Analysis
and Annotations
1. JUDGMENT ANNOUNCED AGAINST THE
NATIONS,
JUDAH AND
CHAPTER 1
1. The Introduction. 1-2.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. Ammon. 13-15.
1. The Introduction.
It has been pointed out that Amos does not say like so many of
the other prophets, “the Word of the Lord which came unto me,” but he begins his prophecy with the
statement “the words of Amos.” The fact of divine
inspiration, however, is expressed in the next words, “which he saw.”
His messages, like the messages of all the prophets, were given to him
in vision. As stated in the general
introduction to this book, this first verse determines the exact time when the
herdsman of Tekoa appeared with his message.
The earthquake mentioned must have been a disastrous one, for there was
a great flight of people (see Zech. 14: 5).
Then follows his first utterance which Joel recorded in his
prophecy, “the Lord roars out of
2.
Six nations are mentioned against
which judgment is announced, five in this chapter and
3.
Philistia is represented by
4.
Tyrus, the capital of
5.
6. Ammon: Verses
13-15.
Wicked Ammon had tried to exterminate the people for selfish
reasons “to enlarge their border.”
What horrible deeds to rip open women with child! Nor is
this confined to the barbarous warfare of 3,000 years ago; the same was done in
other wars down to our own days.
Judgment would overtake them also.
In meditating on these terse judgment messages we must
remember while these nations of the past have ceased existing as nations, and
the predicted judgment came long ago, that these
nations are typical of the other nations, who also sin against Israel and whose
judgment will come “in that day.”
CHAPTER 2
1.
2.
3.
1.
So fierce was the hatred of
2.
While the measure was full of these nations, who had heaped
transgressions upon transgressions,
3.
Inasmuch as Amos was sent to
Then the Lord reminds them of all His mercies and loving
kindness in the past. He destroyed the
Amorite; He led them through the wilderness to possess the land. He instituted the Nazarite. In spite of all these manifold mercies they
continued in their evil ways, grinding the poor, defying God and His law and in
their moral depravity
“Behold, I
will press you down
As the full cart presses the
sheaves.
Then shall flight be lost to
the swift,
And the strong shall not
confirm his strength,
And the hero shall not save
his life.”
2. THE PROPHETIC MESSAGES UNCOVERING
THE
CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE
Chapters 3 - 6
CHAPTER 3
The
First Discourse
1. There is Cause for Judgment. 1-8.
2. The Coming Judgment
Visitation. 9-15.
1. There is Cause for Judgment: Verses 1‑8.
“Hear this word that the Lord hath
spoken against you, 0 children of Israel, against the whole family which I
brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You have I only known of all the
families of the earth, therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities.”
This is the solemn beginning of the special messages addressed to the
nation by the humble herdsman of Tekoa.
The Lord had singled them out from the other nations. He had separated them unto Himself. With His mighty power and outstretched arm He
had delivered them from the house of bondage and brought them to the land
promised unto their fathers. He had
revealed Himself and made known His will to them exclusively. He had entered with them into covenant and
called them to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exod. 19: 6).
Hence their responsibility was
very great, for the degree of relationship is always the degree of
responsibility. The divine election
of the twelve tribes does not insure against punishment, but that intimate relationship into which the
Lord had entered with Israel broken and violated by sin, demanded a
correspondingly great punishment. To whomsoever much is given of him shall
much he required. Our Lord expressed
the same truth in Matthew 11 when he
denounced the cities in which great miracles had been done and they believed
not and declared that it shall be more tolerable for
To demonstrate the rightful cause of judgment Amos speaks now
in a number of brief similes. There are
six of them in the form of questions. “Can two walk
together, except they be agreed?” Fellowship is only possible on the ground of separation; a holy God
demands a holy people. In their
state of licentious idolatry and gross injustice the Lord could not own
them. Then follow brief questions
indicating that which would happen to them.
Like a roaring lion, or a young lion, the Lord would come upon
them. They will be caught in a snare and
a trap. The blowing of the trumpet
denotes that evil was to come upon them.
“Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord has not done it?”
It is hard to believe that certain men have taken this statement and
teach on account of it that God is the author of moral evil - of sin. The context shows that this is not in view
here at all. A holy God who cannot be
tempted with evil, who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all, does
not put moral evil in the world. The
evil is of a punitive character such as invasion by hostile forces, the sword,
the famine and the pestilence.
And the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, but He revealeth His
secrets unto His servants, the prophets. These secrets are made known to us in
the prophetic Word and not, as some claim, in special visions. The [Holy] Spirit of God, the author of the Word, shows to
God’s people in His Word things to come (John 15:
15; 1 Cor. 2: 10-16). The result
of such knowledge of the secrets of the Lord concerning the future is stated in
2 Peter 3: 17, “Ye therefore,
beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led
away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness” (see also 2
Peter 3: 14).
2. The Coming Judgment Visitation: Verses 9-15.
This paragraph begins with a striking call. The speaker is the Lord and He addresses the
prophets and commands them to cry in the palaces of
CHAPTER 4
The
Second Discourse
1. Divine Threatening and Irony. 1-5.
2. Yet Have Ye
Not Returned Unto Me. 6-11.
3. Prepare to
Meet Thy God. 12-13.
1. Divine Threatening and Irony: Verses 1-5.
The prophet addresses them as “kine of Bashan, that are in
the
Then follows a statement of bitter irony. “Go to
2. Yet Have Ye
Not Returned unto Me: Verses 6‑11.
The Lord had sent different chastisements upon them at different
times. There had been famines, drought;
yea, it had rained here and there, while plots of ground received rain others
remained parched, so that they might recognize in it the hand of God. He smote them with mildew and blasting; the
locusts came and devoured vegetation; there were frightful pestilences and
other judgments, but they did not return unto Him. Five times in this paragraph we find the same
statement, “Yet have ye not returned unto Me.”
They were an impenitent nation and hardened their hearts as Pharaoh
did. They were incorrigible, though they
knew that through His mercy they were “as a firebrand plucked out of the
burning.”
In the book of Revelation we read of a similar condition in the coming days when the Lord deals with the earth
in the decreed and revealed judgments.
It is written that the inhibiters of the earth, in spite of these
judgments falling upon the earth, do not repent of their sins.
4. Prepare to
Meet Thy God: Verses 12-13.
And now they were to come face to face with Himself as the
Judge.
CHAPTER 5
The
Third Discourse
1. The Lamentation. 1-3.
2. Seek the
Lord and Ye Shall Live. 4-15.
3. The Wailing. 16-20.
4. The Captivity Announced. 21-27.
1. The Lamentation: Verses 1-3.
This chapter begins with a lamentation over the fallen
daughter of
2. Seek the Lord and Ye Shall Live: Verses 4-15.
Here the Lord entreats
Verses 10-13 give a description of the moral condition of
Still there was hope, for the Lord is merciful and slow to
anger. Judgment is His strange
work. Therefore once more we hear His
pleadings, “Seek good and not evil that ye may live, and so the Lord God
of hosts shall be with you, as ye have spoken.” “Hate evil and love
good!”
3. The Wailing: Verses 16-20.
As judgment comes there shall be wailing in the streets,
wailing with the husbandman, and there will be wailing in all vineyards as the
Lord passes through in His judgment. “For I will pass
through thee” reminds us of
And still another evil was in their midst. Some of them brazenly desired the announced “Day of the Lord,” the day of His
manifestation to come. It originated
in their false boast that they are the covenant people. They
knew from the former prophets that the day of the Lord would rid them of their
enemies, then
4. The Captivity Announced: Verse 21‑27.
The Lord despised their
outward worship; their feast days and different offerings were not well
pleasing in His sight. It was all a
hollow pretence of honouring Him, and all their songs were hateful to Him.
But this departure from Him was not a new thing in their
history. They were always a stiff-necked
people. Even in the wilderness did they
not bring Him sacrifices and offerings, but instead they bore the tabernacle of
Moloch and Chium (or the booth of your king and the pedestal of your images,
the star of your gods). Then follows the
verdict, “Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond
CHAPTER 6
The
Fourth Discourse
1. Woe to Them That Are at Ease in
2. The Punishment Announced. 7-14.
1. Woe to Them That Are at Ease in
This woe concerns the great men, the chiefs of the nation, who
were sunk into a godless self-security, and dreamt on in their darkness, while
the clouds of judgment were gathering above them. They were to go from Calneh to Hamath and
then down to
While some desired the day of the Lord others put it far off,
they refused to believe that judgment was impending. It was so in Ezekiel’s time when the people
said “The days are prolonged and every vision faileth” (Ezekiel
12: 22). So it is in
Christendom. The evil servant (Matthew 24) says “My Lord delayeth his coming,” and as a result he acts
outrageously. What were the results in
2. The Punishment announced: Verse 7-14.
They were now to go away as captives. There should be utter desolation. There would be a multitude of dead, so that
they could not follow their ancient custom in burying them; they would have to
burn them. Then the one who bums the
corpses asks the last person in the house whether there is any one still with
him, and the answer is No, but keep silence!
For the name of the Lord is not to be invoked. It means that the speaker fears that the
other one might mention the name of the Lord and in doing so bring down upon
himself an additional judgment.
Everything is to be smitten. What
they had done could no more secure blessing and salvation than horses could run
upon a rock and one plowing upon a rock with oxen. The nation which is
announced in the last verse is the Assyrian.
3. THE FIVE VISIONS OF THE PROPHET.
Chapter 7-9.
CHAPTER 7
Three
Visions and the Opposition Against Amos
1. The Vision of Locusts. 1-3.
2. The Vision Concerning the
Fire. 4-6.
3. The Vision of the Plumbline. 7-9.
4. Opposition Against Amos. 10-17.
1. The Vision of Locusts: Verse 1-3.
In the first vision Amos saw how the Lord prepared locusts
(not grasshoppers as in the A. V). They
started in with their destructive work, just as they did in the days of Joel. Then Amos interceded in behalf of the sinful
nation, “0 Lord, God, forgive, I beseech Thee, by whom shall Jacob
rise for he is small?” He confessed and pleaded
forgiveness, acknowledging their helplessness.
With such a spirit the Lord is well pleased and the praying prophet
received the answer from the Lord, “It shall not be.”
2. The Vision Concerning the Fire: Verse 4-6.
He beheld a furious fire sweeping everything before itself so
that it even devoured the great deep, the floods of water. This represents a more severe judgment than
the previous one. This judgment also was
kept back by the intercession of the prophet.
But when the time came for judgment by the Assyrian, symbolized by the
locusts and the fire, no intercession could change it. Tiglath-Pileser and Shalamaneser finally made
an end of the sinful ten tribe kingdom.
3. The Vision of the Plumb line: Verse 7-9.
He saw the Lord standing upon a wall with the plumb line to
see if the wall was straight. The test
by God’s Word and God’s holy law shows that all is crooked and must be
condemned. Therefore, the announcement, “I shall pass
by it no more. And the high places of
Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of
4.
Opposition Against Amos: Verse 10-17.
This is an interesting and instructive occurrence. Amaziah, the apostate priest at
The insinuation was that Amos prophesied for the sake of a
living. Amos refutes the false charge
and then announced the doom of the false priest and the doom of his family.
CHAPTER 8
The
Fourth Vision; The Basket With Summer Fruit
1. The Vision. 1-3.
2.
3. The Coming Days of
Famine. 11-14.
1. The Vision: Verse 1-3.
In his fourth vision the prophet beholds a basket of summer
fruit. The Hebrew shows that it was a
basket filled with ripe fruit. The ripe
fruit is a symbol that
2.
Once more the wealthy and prosperous portion of the nation is
addressed, their sinful practices are exposed and it is shown that they were
ripe for judgment. The rich oppressed
the poor; they took away from the poor what belonged rightfully to them. They cheated by making the measure small and
increased the price. They were the
profiteers of that time. They also used
false balances. Then they sold the
refuse of the wheat. All may be compared with James 5: 1-6 where the same conditions are
pictured, prevailing in Christendom, before the Lord comes. For all this they did the land would have to
tremble and every one mourn.
“And it shall come to pass in that
day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I
will darken the earth in the clear day.” Much nonsense
has been written on this verse especially from the side of the Adventists, as
if there has been at a certain time “a dark day” in fulfilment of this prophecy. Some expositors have made of it a mere
eclipse of the sun. The verse, while it has a certain application to that generation, whose
glory should end like the sun going down at noon, has its final meaning in the
coming day of the Lord, which all the prophets announced. It is the same our Lord predicts in Matthew 24: 29-30. For
3. The Coming Days of Famine: Verse 11-14.
A great famine is announced.
It is not to be a famine for bread, or thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. His word and the light of His revelation is
to be completely withdrawn from them.
The Word of the Lord which they despised they would then desire to seek
in vain. They will wander hither and
thither from sea to sea, from the north to the east; they shall run to and fro
to seek the Word of the Lord and shall not find it. Such was the case with them when the cruel
Assyrian power took hold on them and carried them away. Such a
judgment too is fast approaching for Christendom which in its apostasy rejects
the Word of the Lord, turns to fables, till the day comes when the Spirit will
leave and as a result there will be a famine of the Word, no comfort and no
help for those who are ripe for judgment.
CHAPTER 9
The
Passing of a Kingdom and the Coming of the Kingdom
1. The Fifth Vision. The Passing of a
Kingdom. 1-10.
2. The Coming of the Kingdom. 11-15.
1. The Fifth Vision. The Passing of a Kingdom: Verses 1-10.
In his fifth vision the prophet saw the Lord standing by the
altar. He utters His word. The description of what is to take place is
very vivid. He stands by the altar and
the people are assembled before Him. He
smites the lintel of the door, so that everything trembles and the building
falls upon them, cutting all of them in the head and none can escape. Even if they break into sheol (not hell, but the [under]world of
spirits [and of disembodied souls] in the unknown regions [in
‘the heart of the earth,’ Matt. 12: 40. cf. Gen.
37: 35; Ps. 16: 10. = Gk.‘Hades’ Acts 2: 27;
Rev. 6: 9-11, etc. ]), from thence His
hand will take them; if they climb into heaven, He would bring them down. [Ps. 139: 8.] If they hide
themselves on the top of Carmel He would search for them and take them
out. If they conceal themselves from His
sight in the bottom of the sea, He would command the serpent to bite them. It is to be an all consuming judgment with no
possibility of escape.
Even as they went into captivity the sword of judgment would
follow them. “Thence will I
command the sword, and it shall slay them; and I will set mine eyes upon them
for evil, and not for good.” He is the Lord who has
all power to do this (verses 5-6). They had degraded themselves down to the
level of the heathen nations, hence they were unto Him like the
Ethiopians. Then He calls them “the sinful
kingdom.” This kingdom is to pass away from the face of
the earth; there is no hope for its restoration. But the Lord in mercy promises that the house
of Jacob is not utterly to be destroyed.
In His own time He will assemble the outcasts of
2. The Coming of the Kingdom: Verses 11-15.
While the sinful kingdom, the ten tribe
This is seen here in the passage before us. Verse 12
tells us that when the tabernacle of David is raised up, when “that day” has
come, His people restored and saved will possess the remnant of
*
* *
THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH
By
HYMAN
The
There
was little in the Church in its appearance, to be exact, that was terrifying or
alarming to its enemies. Yet, at its
touch crowns tumbled and thrones fell.
Senates could not arrest its progress, nor embattled hosts withstand its
assaults.
The
Apostolic Christianity soon caused a dead world to quiver and shake with the
throes of a new birth. Without money,
without learning, without political patronage, in the face of fiery
persecutions, it spread itself over the whole
-------
* “To take such promises of
reward and glory as are given to special labour and make them the portion of
all believers, however unfaithful to the Lord, is to destroy the power of the
promised recompense. God knows our need
of the hope of the reward or He
would not have said so much about it in His Word. And Satan knows its practical power when fully
realised, and has therefore struggled to blind the eyes of the children of God
to this doctrine altogether; either
mixing it up with [eternal] salvation or filling the mind with mock humility that
counts it presumption to strive for the offered crown. The fact of our
strivings being all so mixed with sin shall be lost amidst the honours that
shall grace the saints in that [millennial] day of glory.”
– The
Prophetic Digest.
*
* *
4
The
Prophet Obadiah
INTRODUCTION
Of Obadiah we know nothing but his name, which means “Servant of Jehovah.”
There are numerous men mentioned in the Old Testament by that name, but
it is impossible to identify any one of these with Obadiah, or to trace
him. “The
silence of Holy Scriptures as to the Prophet Obadiah stands in remarkable
contrast with the anxiety of men to know something of him. They hoped that Obadiah might prove to have
been the faithful protector of the prophets under Ahab; or the son of the
Shunamite, whom Elijah called to life, or the Obadiah whom Jehoshaphat sent to
teach in the cities of Judah, or the Levite who was selected, with one other,
to be the overseer set over the repair of the temple in the reign of
Josiah. Fruitless guesses at what God
has hidden! God has willed that his name
alone and this brief prophecy should be known in this world” (Dr. Pusey).
Inasmuch as nothing is known of this man of God, nor anything
stated under whose reign he uttered his prophecy, the guesses about the time he
lived are numerous and very contradictory.
The critics have assigned to Obadiah dates removed from each other by
above 600 years. We quote again from
Pusey’s commentary. “The punishment of
Obadiah does certainly not belong to the Prophets of the
captivity, nor to the post exilic Prophets.
The position given to him in the Hebrew arrangement of the prophetic
books bears witness to that. The
internal evidence shows that he is one of the earliest Prophets, if not the
earliest. If we turn to Jeremiah 49: 7-22 we find a very striking
similarity between the words of Jeremiah and the words of Obadiah concerning
Now, Obadiah in his utterance lays bare the wicked behaviour
of
Can this historically be located? There can be no question but it must have
reference to the time when the Philistines and the Arabs invaded the city in
the reign of King Jehoram. Then the
Edomites threw off the Judean supremacy (2 Kings 8:
20-22; 2 Chronicles 21: 8-10).
They also planned a great massacre of the Jews who were in the
-------
Obadiah
(In a corrected version).
1. The Vision of
Obadiah,
Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah concerning
We
have beard tidings from Jehovah,
And
an ambassador is sent among the nations.
Arise
ye! Let, us arise against her to battle!
2. Behold, I have made thee small among the nations;
Greatly art thou despised!
3. The pride of thy heart
has deceived thee,
Thou
dweller in the clefts of the rock, in lofty habitation;
Who
saith in his heart:
Who
will bring me down to the ground?
4.
Though as high like the eagle,
And though thou hast made
thy nest among the stars,
Thence will I bring thee
down,
Whispers Jehovah.
5.
If thieves came to thee.
If robbers by night -
How art thou destroyed!
Would they not steal until
they had enough?
If grape gatherers had come
unto thee,
Would they not leave some?
6.
How is
His hidden things laid bare!
7.
Even to the border
Have all the men of the
covenant sent thee;
They have deceived thee,
prevailed against thee,
Those that were at peace
with thee;
Thy bread have they placed
as a snare under thee.
There is no understanding in
him.
8.
Will not I in that day,
Whispers Jehovah,
Destroy the wise out of
And understanding out of
9.
And thy valiant ones, 0 Teman, shall be
dismayed,
When every man is cut off
from
By slaughter.
10.
For the violence of thy brother Jacob,
Shame shall cover thee,
And thou shalt be cut off
forever.
11.
In the day that thou stoodest on the other side,
In the day when strangers
took captive his army
And foreigners entered his
gates,
And o’er
Thou also wast one of them.
12. And thou shouldest
not have looked on the day of thy brother,
On the day of his calamity;
Thou shouldest not have rejoiced over the sons of
In the day of their destruction;
Nor spoken proudly in the day of distress.
13. Thou shouldest not
have entered into the gate of my People
In the day of their ruin.
Thou shouldest not have looked on his misfortune
In the day of his calamity.
And stretched not out thy hand for his possession
In the day of his destruction.
14. And thou shouldest
not have stood at the cross-roads
To cut off his fugitives;
Neither shouldest thou have delivered up his remnant
In the day of Distress.
15.
For near is the Day of Jehovah upon all nations.
As thou hast done will they
do to thee;
Thy reward will be upon thy
head.
16. For as ye have
drunken on the mountain of my holiness,
All the nations shall drink continually,
And drink and swallow down,
And be as though they had never been.
17. But upon mount
And the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.
18.
And the house of Jacob shall be afire,
And the house of Joseph a
flame,
And the house of Esau for
stubble;
And they will kindle upon
them and devour them,
And there shall be none
remaining of the house of Esau;
For Jehovah has spoken it.
19. And the South country
shall possess the
And the plain the Philistines;
And they shall possess the fields of Ephraim,
And the field of
And Benjamin shall possess
20. And the captives of
this army of the children of
Will possess of the Canaanites as far as Zarepath,
And the captives of
Shall possess the cities of the South.
21.
And Saviours shall go up on
To judge the
And the Kingdom shall be
Jehovah’s.
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
The brief prophecy of Obadiah is composed of two parts. Verses 1-16
concern
1.
2.
3. The Kingdom and the Restoration of
Israel (verses 17-21).
1.
In order to understand Obadiah’s prophecy,
When
But this does not end the story of
We read of this future judgment upon the country of
“And all the host of heaven shall he
dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all their
hosts shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig
tree. For my sword shall be bathed in
heaven; behold it shall come down upon
Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.”
It is unfulfilled to the present time, but it will be fulfilled when “the Lord hath
a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great
slaughter in the
The Prophecy begins with the announcement that tidings had
come from the Lord which was heard by the Prophet and by the people; an
ambassador is sent forth among the nations to summon them to go up in battle
against
2.
Her sin of violence against her brother
Jacob comes now in special remembrance.
On account of it shame would cover them and they would be cut off
forever. When
All this will be repeated once more, when another great
prophecy will be fulfilled and
Then, to show the link of connection between the future and
the past, the Prophet announces the Day of the Lord. “For near is the day of Jehovah upon all
nations.” This day has not yet been. There have been judgments upon nations like
3. The Kingdom and the Restoration of
The final section of Obadiah’s brief prophecy concerns the [millennial] kingdom,
the victory over the enemies and the restoration of His people.
The Saviours mentioned in the last verse of this prophecy (or
deliverers) must mean the chosen instruments which go forth to teach all
nations and make known the glory of the
King in their midst. For “the Kingdom shall be the Lord’s.”
* * *
5
The
Prophet Jonah
INTRODUCTION
The question as to the reality of the person of Jonah is answered by 2 Kings 14: 25.
In this passage, we find him mentioned as the Prophet who prophesied
during the reign of Jeroboam II. His
name means “dove,” and his father’s name Amittai means “the
Truth of the Lord.” He was from “Gath-Hepher” - the winepress of the well is the
meaning of these two words. Thus Jonah
also belongs to the earlier Prophets and the book bearing his name, written by
himself, occupies the right place in the Old Testament. A Jewish
tradition states that Jonah was the son of the widow at Zarephath, whom
Elijah raised to life; but this is only an invention with no evidence whatever.
THE
BOOK AND EXPERIENCE OF JONAH
The Book of Jonah is of a different nature from the books of
the other Minor Prophets; it is more like the history of Elijah and Elisha,
these two great Prophets and their personal experiences and activities as
reported in the historical books. The
book of Jonah has no direct prophecies in it, yet the experience it records is a great prophecy.
We do not give the contents of the book in this introduction,
but shall follow all in the annotations.
As is well known, the miraculous history of the book of Jonah has been
widely attacked by infidelity. When the
Old Testament was translated into the Greek (the Septuagint) heathen
philosophers and other writers ridiculed it and made sport with the book. Their objections and ridicule are reproduced
in the school of the destructive criticism.
We hear that men who boast of great scholarship declare that Jonah never
lived, that the story of the book of Jonah is an imagination of some great
literary genius. Says that arch-critic, Canon F. W. Farrar, in the Expositor’s
Bible: “Of Jonah we know nothing more. For it is impossible to see in the book of
Jonah much more than a beautiful and edifying story, which may or may not rest
on some surviving legends.” But
as some one has said, it requires less faith to credit this simple excerpt from
Jonah’s history than to believe the numerous hypotheses that have been invented
to deprive it of its supernatural character.
The great majority of these hypotheses are clumsy and far-fetched, doing
violence to the language, and doing despite to the spirit of revelation. These infidel inventions are distinguished by
tedious adjustment, laborious combinations, historical conjecture and critical
jugglery.
Some critics who do not want to reject altogether the story of
Jonah, suppose that it may have had some historical basis, though in the form
we have it today is fanciful and mythical.
Another critic regards it as a dream Jonah had in the ship. Still another critic views the book as an
historical allegory, descriptive of the fate of Manasseh, and Josiah his
grandson. What wild fancy this critic
indulged in may be seen from the fact that he compared the ship to the Jewish
monarchy, while the casting away of Jonah symbolized the temporary captivity of
Manasseh!
Many critics treat it as an allegory based upon the Phoenician
myth of Hercules and the sea-monster. To
quote a few more, simply to show what foolish things the darkened mind of man,
who thinks he has attained scholarship, can invent in order to disprove the
Truth of God, we mention the theory that when Jonah was thrown into the sea he
was picked up by a ship having for a figurehead the head of a great fish. Another one says that probably Jonah took
refuge in the interior of a dead whale which was floating about near the spot
he was cast overboard.
The great majority of the critics today deny the historicity
of the book of Jonah and claim that its material has been derived from popular
legends, that it is fiction with a moral design. The moral lessons and its religious meaning
have even a wider range than these hypotheses.
The theories do not merit a special refutation.
IS IT HISTORY OF MYTH?
There is nothing in the account which would justify any critic
to charge it with being allegory. It is
cast in the form of a narrative and has all the literary characteristics of a
personal experience. The sole reason why
the critics have classed it with myths and deny its authenticity is the
miraculous element in the book. Any one
who believes in an omnipotent God, a God who does wondrous things, will have no
difficulty whatever in accepting this book as a true history. We might also add that all the earlier Jewish
sources confirm the historicity and literalness of the book of Jonah. Furthermore, the book is very simple and pure
Hebrew.
THE
HIGHEST EVIDENCE
The highest authority
that Jonah lived, and had the experience recorded in this account is the Lord
Jesus Christ. The
words which He spoke, who is the Truth, are plain and unimpeachable. There
can be no secondary meaning; “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's
belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth. The men of
Professor A. C. Zenos (in the Standard Bible Dictionary)
says: “The New Testament does not commit Jesus Christ
or its own authors to one or the other of the contending theories.” This is a poor statement. The Lord Jesus did
commit Himself fully to the historicity of Jonah. “The New Century Bible,” a destructive work, makes
the following declaration: “We are not to conclude
that the literal validity of the history of Jonah is established by this
reference” - that is, the words of our Lord in Matthew
12: 40. But the man who wrote
this overlooked the fact that the Lord
in all His allusions to the Old Testament events always speaks of them as
actual, literal events, and, therefore, establishes their literal validity. For instance, “As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness” … “As it was in the days of Noah”
... “As it was in the days of
The truth is that the Lord Jesus Christ placed such emphasis
upon the book of Jonah because it
foreshadowed His own experience as the Redeemer, and because He knew of what
apostate Christendom would do with this book and its record. There is no middle ground possible; either this
book of Jonah is true, relates the true and miraculous history of this Prophet,
or the Lord Jesus Christ is not the infallible Son of God. His Person and His Work [and His interpretations and teachings*] stand
and fall together with the authenticity of Jonah.
[* In
particular, our Lord’s teachings relative to the intermediate place and state of
the dead between the time of Death and Resurrection, (Luke 16: 19-31; Matt. 16: 18; Luke 23: 43; John 20: 17,
etc.) See Editor’s footnote.]
“Our Lord singled out this particular
miracle about Jonah, which has been thought of great difficulty, and affixes to
it His own almighty stamp of truth. Can
you not receive the words of the Lord Jesus Christ against all men that ever
were? The Lord Jesus has referred to the
fact that Jonah was swallowed by a great
fish, call it what you will - I am not going to enter into a contest with
naturalists, whether it was a Shark, or a sperm-whale or another. This is a matter of very small account. We will leave these men of science to settle
the kind (if they can); but the fact itself, the only one of importance to us
to affirm, is that it was a great fish that swallowed and afterwards yielded up
the Prophet alive. This is all one need
to affirm - the literal truth of the fact alleged. There is no need to imagine that a fish was
created for that purpose. There are many fishes quite capable of
swallowing a man whole. But the fact is
not only affirmed in the Old Testament, but reaffirmed by our Lord Himself and
applied to Himself. Any man who disputes
this must give an account before the judgment seat of Christ” (W. KelIy).
THE
TYPICAL - PROPIRETIC MEANING OF JONAH
The typical - prophetic meaning of the story of Jonah is
authorized by the words of the Son of God.
His experience typifies the
death, the burial and the resurrection of our Lord, as well as the Gospel
message which goes forth to the Gentiles.
Furthermore, Jonah’s experience is prophetic also of the entire
nation. The annotations will enter more
fully into these interesting and important foreshadowings.
THE
DIVISION OF THE BOOK
The division of the
book is very simple. We maintain the
chapter division as made in the authorized version.
Chapter 1 gives the record of Jonah’s
commission, his disobedience and the consequences.
Chapter 2 contains his prayer and his
deliverance.
Chapter 3 has the account of his obedience in
preaching to
Chapter 4 contains the account of Jonah’s
discontent and correction.
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
CHAPTER 1
THE
COMMISSION OF THE PROPHET:
HIS
DISOBEDIENCE AND THE CONSEQUENCES
The Commission. 1-2.
The Disobedience. 5.
The Consequences. 4-17.
1. The Commission: Verses 1‑2.
The record begins with the same word with which all historical
books in the Bible begin, like Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, etc. The commission given to Jonah was to go to
2. The Disobedience: Verse 3.
Jonah rose up at once, but instead of going to the east
towards
[* NOTE. ‘Sheol,’
throughout the Old Testament, is always descriptive of is the place of the
souls of the dead in the underworld –
“in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12: 40).
Cf. Psa. 16: 10. = ‘GK. ‘Hades’
(Acts 2: 27, 31, R.V.): and before the time
of their Resurrection Matt. 16: 18, 19; Rev. 6:
9-11.]
If we look for a motive of this disobedient prophet we find it
given in the book itself. In chapter 4: 2 we read, “Therefore I
fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and
merciful, and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of evil.”
But why should he fear that God might be merciful to
3.
The Consequences: Verses 4-17.
No sooner had the ship set sail but a terrible tempest arose,
sent by the Lord. The danger of shipwreck
was imminent. The heathen mariners
became terrified and besides crying each one to their gods, they threw the
wares overboard to lighten the ship, so that it might weather the storm. But we do not read anything about Jonah
calling on his God. Was it an evil
conscience which led him to seek sleep in the sides of the ship? Or did he seek sleep because he was in
despair? Or was his action produced by
the calmness of faith, that he knew himself in the hands of the Lord? Perhaps his action shows more than anything
indifference and an astonishing self-security.
The shipmaster aroused him from his sleep, asking him why he
slept and demanded that he call upon his God.
The lot is cast and it fell upon Jonah.
He might have confessed before but he waited as long as he could. The questions they asked him he answers
readily. He confesses that he is a
Hebrew, that he fears the Lord, the God of heaven, the creator of sea and
land. His confession filled them with fear;
they also knew that he had been disobedient for he told them about it. It was a noble confession and shows that
though he had fled from the presence of the Lord that his heart still clung to
Him. He answered the question, what
shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? by pronouncing his own
sentence. “Take me up, and cast me forth
into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake
this great tempest is upon you.” Again we must say
these are noble words. He is ready to sacrifice himself and trusts the Lord and
His mercy. After the mariners made an
unsuccessful attempt to row the ship to land, and calling upon the Lord not to
lay upon them innocent blood, they cast Jonah into the raging sea, and the sea
became calm. As a result the heathen
sailors feared Jehovah exceedingly, offering a sacrifice unto Him and making
vows, while the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, in whose belly
Jonah remained three days and three nights.
Some have stated that the Lord created a special sea-monster for this
purpose, but the Hebrew word does not mean “create”
it means “appoint.” It certainly was not a whale, for whales
rarely ever are seen in the
[* See Footnote]
THE
TYPICAL APPLICATION
1. Jonah is a type of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
As already pointed out in the introduction the words of our
Lord sanction this application. But as
He said when He spoke of Solomon “a greater than Solomon is here,” so He also said “a greater
than Jonah is here.”
We point out a few of the applications and contrasts. Jonah was sent with a message of judgment;
the Son of God came with the message of love and salvation. “For God sent not His Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:
17).
Jonah was disobedient, acting in self-will, fleeing from the
presence of the Lord. The Son of God was
obedient; He never did His own will but the will of Him that sent Him. The words He spoke were not His own. “The word which ye hear is not mine,
but the Father’s who sent me.” He always had the Father set before
Himself and was uninterruptedly in His presence.
Jonah, indifferent and self-secure, was fast asleep in the
ship while the storm raged and the ship was in danger of going down. The Lord Jesus was asleep in the ship on
Jonah bore a faithful witness; but how much greater is His
witness. He is called “the faithful Witness” (Rev. 1).
Jonah sacrificed himself in order to save those who were about
to perish. But how much greater His
sacrifice! Jonah’s fate came upon him on
account of his sin and disobedience. The
Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer for His sins, for He had none, being the Holy,
the Sinless One. He died exclusively for
others and died for the ungodly. But did
Jonah actually die? Did death fasten
upon him? Was his body miraculously
preserved so that it did not see corruption?
Was it a literal resurrection when the fish vomited him out? Jonah did not die physically. But his experience typifies the death and the
burial of Christ, and also His physical resurrection. How
could Jonah have prayed and cried to the Lord out of the belly of the fish if
his physical life had ceased?*
It was a miracle however, that Jonah was kept alive.
[* And how could our Lord have “preached
to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet. 3:
19), after “He was put to death in the body”
(verse 18), if He did not go to where He
said we all must go immediately after death (Luke 16:
23), and there to “wait”
(Rev. 6: 11) for the time of Resurrection?]
The three days and three nights have troubled a good many
expositors. Not a few teach that in
order to bring together the three days and three nights during which our Lord
was in the grave, He must have died either on Wednesday or Thursday. The three days and three nights must be interpreted according to Hebrew
usage. In Luke 24: 21 we read that
the two who met the risen Lord said, “and beside all
this, today is the third day since these things were done.” That
was on the first day of the week.
Reckoning back, Saturday would be the second day and Friday the first
day, the day on which Christ died.
2. Jonah is a type of
the Jewish Nation. In the Jewish
synagogical ritual the Book of Jonah is read on the Day of Atonement. The writer is indebted to an old orthodox Jew
for the information why this story is read on their great day of fasting and
prayer. He said, “We are the Jonah.”
Like Jonah the nation was called to bear witness to the Gentiles. And as Jonah did not want the knowledge of
Jehovah to go to the Gentiles, so the Jews filled with national pride of being
the elect nation opposed God’s purposes.
(See Acts 13: 6-12; 44-52; 14: 19-20; 17:
5-9; 18: 12, etc.)
Disobedient as Jonah, the nation left the presence of the
Lord. Jonah engaged passage on a
merchant-ship, and the Jew became a trafficker.
Like as it was with Jonah, storm and disaster came upon the nation after
their great act of disobedience, when they rejected Christ, and opposed His
purposes. Like Jonah, in the midst of
all their troubles they did not deny, nor deny now, their nationality, their
faith in God; they also confess in some of their prayers, at least the orthodox
Jews, why it is that they are in trouble that they have sinned and turned away
from the Lord.
Jonah was cast overboard into the sea. The sea represents the nations; that is where
the Jews were cast. As a result of the
casting away of Jonah the heathen sailors turned to the Lord and sacrificed
unto Him. In Romans 11: 11 we read, “through their fall (the Jews) salvation came to the
Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy.” The belly of the
fish represents the grave of the Jews among the nations. They became nationally and spiritually
dead. But as the fish did not digest
Jonah, so the nations have not digested the Jew. They remain unassimilated, just as Balaam
predicted, “This nation shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the
nations.” The national preservation of
CHAPTER 2
JONAH’S
PRAYER AND DELIVERANCE
1. The Prayer. 1-9.
2. The Deliverance. 10.
1. The Prayer: Verses 1-9.
Some expositors have called attention to the fact that the
prayer is not one offered up for deliverance, but it is a thanksgiving for the
accomplished deliverance. But this is
answered by the opening verse of this chapter, in which we are told that he
prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly. When he found that he had escaped the death
he anticipated and that the power of God kept him alive, he realized that the
Lord his God would also deliver him; in faith he praised Jehovah for the coming
deliverance. His prayer is composed
almost entirely of sentences found
in the Psalms. We give the references.
Verse 2 reminds of Psalms 18: 6, 7
and 110: l.
The word “hell” is the Hebrew “sheol,”
the unknown region [of the dead]. See also Psalm 30: 3.
Verse 3 contains a quotation from Psalm 42: 7, “All thy waves and billows passed over
me.” In connection with verse
4 consider Psalm 31: 22. Verse 5 is
found in Psalm 18: 4, except the seaweed
which crowned his head as he went into the deep; also Psalm
69: 2. The thanksgiving in verse 6, “Yet hast Thou brought up my life from
the pit, 0 Lord, my God” is closely allied to Psalm 30: 3. The first part of verse
7 is from Psalm 142: 3 (marginal
reading) and 143: 4. The second part is found in Psalm 5: 7 and 18: 6.
The eighth verse reminds of Psalm 31: 6 and the ninth
verse is to be connected with Psalm 42: 4.
The last utterance before the Lord commanded the fish is a
triumphant shout, “Salvation is of the Lord,” a truth which many preachers in
Christendom do not know.
2. The Deliverance: Verse 10.
The God of creation manifested His power over His creation by
impelling the fish to release its prisoner. The place at which the fish vomited
out Jonah is not mentioned; it was probably not very far from the seaport Joppa
where he embarked.
THE TYPICAL APPLICATION,
1. As to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord went into the jaws of death and died the sinner’s
death, the substitute of sinners. Most
of the passages from the Psalms which Jonah embodied in his prayer are
prophetic predictions of the sufferings of Christ. He cried to God for deliverance and was
heard. (See Hebrews
5: 7.) The answer was His resurrection.
Over His blessed head passed the waves and billows of a Holy God, when
as the substitute He hung on the cross. He knew more than Jonah could ever know what
it meant, “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men
made me afraid.” The 69th Psalm
is Messianic and the words Jonah used, “I sink in deep mire where there is no
standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me,” tell us of the deep sufferings
through which He passed. While Jonah’s
head was wound about with the seaweeds of the deep, our Lord bore the crown of
thorns, the emblem of the curse, upon His blessed head.
It was on the third day that the fish vomited out Jonah. The third day is marked in the Word of God as
the day of resurrection. (See
Genesis 1: 11-13; Hosea 6: 1-3.) On the third day our Lord left the grave
behind and rose from among the dead [i.e., from ‘Hades’]. We quote a
helpful paragraph on the question of the three days and nights: “So our Lord Jesus, though by Jewish reckoning three days and
three nights in the grave, literally lay there but the whole of Saturday, the
Sabbath, with the part of Friday not yet closed, and before the dawn of
Sunday. For we must always remember in
these questions the Jews’ method of reckoning.
Part of a day regularly counted
for the twenty-four hours. The evening and the morning, or any part,
counted as a whole day. But the
Lord, as we know, was crucified in the afternoon on Friday; His body lay all
the Sabbath day in the grave; and He arose early on the Sunday morning. That space was counted three days and three
nights, according to sanctioned Biblical reckoning, which no man who bows to
Scripture would contest. This was
asserted among the Jews, who, fertile as they have been in excuses for
unbelief, have never, as far as I am aware, made difficulties on this
score. The ignorance of Gentiles has
exposed some of them when unfriendly to cavil at the phrase. The Jews found not
a few stumbling blocks, but this is not one of them; they may know little of
what is infinitely more momentous; but they know their own Bible too well to
press an objection which would tell against the Hebrew Scriptures quite as much
as the Greek.”
2. As to the Nation.
The prayer for deliverance and Jonah’s deliverance by the power of God
foreshadows the coming experience of the remnant of
CHAPTER 3
JONAH
PREACHING IN
1. The Repeated Commission and Jonah’s
Obedience. 1-4.
2. The Repentance and Salvation of
1. The Repeated Commission and Jonah’s
Obedience: Verses 1-4.
And now after Jonah’s death and life experience the Word of
the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, telling him to arise and go the
2. The Repentance and Salvation of
The people of
THE
TYPICAL APPLICATION
1.
As to the Lord Jesus.
Jonah who typifies in his experience the death, burial and
resurrection of our Lord, preached the message as one who had been in a grave
and came to life out of that grave. In
Luke 11: 29-30, 32 our Lord makes the application: “For as Jonah
was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall
also the Son of Man be to this generation ... The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall
condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and, behold, a greater
than Jonah is here.” Christ was not preached as a
Saviour to the Gentile world till He had died and risen from the dead. The Greeks who inquired after Him (John 12) received no answer. But the Lord spoke of Himself at that time as
the corn of wheat which was to die to bring forth the abundant fruit. Christ died for the sins of His people
2. As to the Nation.
The third day is the day of
And as for repenting Nineveh there came a day of joy and
gladness, as animal creation in that city ceased its lowing and groaning, so
will come the day of joy and gladness for this poor world, “in that day” when even groaning creation will be delivered of its groans and moans [Rom. 8: 19-22].
CHAPTER 4
JONAH’S DISCONTENT-AND CORRECTION
1. Jonah’s Discontent. 1-3.
2. The Correction. 4-11.
1. Jonah’s Discontent: Verses 1-3.
All that had happened displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was
very angry. Did he feel that he had lost
his prestige as a prophet, having announced the overthrow of
2. The Correction: Verses 4-11.
The Lord God who had been so merciful to
And when God asked him, “Doest thou well to be angry for the
gourd?” the poor
finite creature of the dust answered the Creator, “I do well to
he angry, even unto death.” Then comes the
lesson. Not God, Elohim, the name of Him
as Creator, speaks, but it is Jehovah, the Lord: “Thou hast had pity on the
gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came
up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that
great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot
discern between their right hand and their left; and also much cattle?”
If Jonah felt pity and was angry because of a small vine he had not
planted nor made to grow, should not God with greater right have mercy upon His
creatures, whom He created and sustained?
Jonah is silenced; he could not reply. The last word belongs to Jehovah,
who thus demonstrated that in His infinite compassion He embraces not
“Most touching and beautiful is the
last verse of the book, in which God displays the force and supreme necessity of
His love; which (although the threatenings of His justice are heard, and must
needs be heard and even executed if man continues in rebellion) abides in the
repose of that perfect goodness which nothing can alter, and which seizes the
opportunity of displaying itself, whenever man allows Him, so to speak, to
bless him - the repose of an affection that nothing can escape, that observes
everything, in order to act according to its own undisturbed nature - the repose of God Himself, essential to His perfection, on which depends all our
blessing and all our peace.”*
*Synopsis.
*
* *
*FOOTNOTE
JONAH
AND THE WHALE
By F. C. PAYNE. (‘Seal of God’, pp. 52-54.)
What a noise has been made about this story recorded in the
book of Jonah! But the strange thing is
that there is nothing incredible about it.
Our Lord Himself put His own seal to it and gave us the real
reason for the incident by showing it to be another of those wonderful types of
Christ, (in this case fore-shadowing His three days and nights in the grip of
Satan.) Matthew 12: 39-41. “An evil and adulterous generation
seeketh after a sign: and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of the
prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s
belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in
the heart of the earth. The men
of
Note also that Jonah offered his life of his own free will.
Next. Who said it was a whale?
The actual words in Jonah 1: 17
are . . “Now the LORD had
prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
That fact alone should satisfy all critics.
However the word Christ used was ‘keetos’, or ‘sea-monster’, and the translators may have been right in assuming it was a
whale, for there is nothing to prevent a
large whale from swallowing two, or even three men. The well known author Frank Bullen, F.R.G.S., who has had experience in whaling, records
whales up to seventy feet long and even larger ones have since been discovered.
On one occasion a fifteen foot shark was found in a sperm
whale, I don’t suppose Jonah was bigger than that shark. Sperm whales often vomit up the contents of
their stomachs when dying, which exactly corresponds with the account in Jonah.
There are records moreover of men having been swallowed by whales, the incident following
being one of them.
In February of 1891 whilst the whaling ship ‘The Star of the East’ was off the Falkland Islands, a
large bull cachalot, (or sperm whale), was sighted and the whale-boats were
launched. They succeeded in harpooning
the whale but in securing it one of the whale-boats was smashed and Seaman Mr. J.Bartley disappeared, before the
whale was killed.
They dismembered the cachalot the following day and Bartley was found alive in the stomach. He was a raving maniac for two weeks but
completely recovered eventually except for the bleaching of the exposed parts
of his body which had been acted upon by the whale’s gastric juices.
The authority for this account is Sir Francis Fox in the book ‘Sixty three years of engineering’,
(James Murray, London, 1924).
Later Mr. J. Bartley
himself said that after the initial confusion and the sensation of forward
movement, and the sense of great darkness he felt his hands in contact with a
slippery substance which seemed to shrink from his touch and when he realised
what had happened he was horrified. He
could breathe easily enough but the heat and darkness combined with the
realisation of his fate caused him to lose consciousness which he did not
regain until he came to in the Captain’s cabin.
We know that if a man can breathe he
can be unconscious for weeks, and as Jonah’s whale was specifically prepared
his position was probably quite comfortable compared with James Bartley’s.
A person must be very hard pressed
indeed to use this Bible record as an excuse for doubting God’s Word.
-------
*
* *
6
The
Prophet Micah
INTRODUCTION
When the Prophet Jeremiah was in danger of being put to death
for his faithful testimony, certain of the elders rose up and said, “Micah the Morashtite
prophesied in the days of Hezekiah, King of Judah; and spake to all the people
of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Zion shall he plowed like a
field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the
high places of a forest” (Jer. 26: 18). This is the testimony of the Book of Jeremiah
to Micah, who prophesied under the reign of Hezekiah, as well as Jotham and
Ahaz. The first verse of the Book of
Micah gives us this information. While
Jonah was a Galilean, Micah was a Judean.
He came from Moresheth-Gath, which distinguishes him from another
prophet of the same name, Micah the son of Imlah (see 1
Kings 22: 8; Micaiah is the same as Micah). The name Micah means “who is like the Lord?”
Prophesying mostly in
The prophetic horizon of Micah is very much restricted. The magnificent sweep of Isaiah, looking
forward to the great and glorious consummation in the Kingdom, is lacking in
Micah. The question of the exact time when
Micah uttered his prophecies, what was spoken during the reign of Jotham,
during the reign of Ahaz or Hezekiah, is unessential, and we do not follow it
in this introduction.
HIS
MESSAGE
The Book consists of three great prophetic discourses which all
begin in the same way, with the command to hear. “Hear all ye people,” chapter
1: 2, the first discourse. The
second discourse, chapter 3: 1, “Hear, I pray
you.” The third discourse, chapter
6: 1, “Hear ye now what the Lord saith.”
In the first prophetic message he predicts the destruction of
The third discourse contains a very solemn pleading with His
people. Jehovah tells them again of all His loving kindness. He tells them He has a controversy with them;
He speaks to them of His rightful demands.
It is a most eloquent outburst.
The last part contains an assurance that the Lord will surely have
compassion upon His people, while their enemies will be overthrown to lick the
dust. One of the greatest words of
praise in the Scriptures is found in the last three verses. It contains
The three prophetic discourses of Micah the Morashtite give a
progressive message. The Book begins
with the threatening judgment; it leads on towards the Messianic salvation and
glory, and finally the exhortation and reproof - to return unto Him, to repent,
and the assurance of His compassion and forgiveness.
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
THE FIRST PROPHETIC MESSAGE
Chapter 1-11
CHAPTER 1
1. The Introduction. 1.
2. Judgment Announced. 2-5.
3. The Destruction of
4. The Lamentation of the Prophet over
the Coming Judgment. 8-16.
1. The Introduction: Verse 1.
This introduction
tells us two things. In the first place,
we learn that this book contains the Word of the Lord that came to Micah, the
Morashtite; in the second place, we are told when Micah exercised his
office. As stated in the introduction,
he was contemporary with Isaiah, probably for about twenty-nine years. Criticism has attacked the authorship of this
book also. Since Criticism began, with Ewald, to question the unity of this
little book, it has raged with increasing violence, until Professor Cheyne, improving on Robertson
Smith in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, concludes: “In
no part of chapters 4-7 can we venture to detect the hand of Micah.” There is no need to answer such statements. The unity of the Book of Micah is fully
demonstrated by the message it contains.
If chapters 4-7 were not written by
Micah, will the critics gives us light on who the author is?
2. Judgment Announced: Verses 2-5.
The opening message is sublime. It is an appeal to all the nations, the whole
earth and all that is in it, to listen to the witness of the Lord Jehovah
against them, the witness which comes from His holy temple. The other Micah
(Micaiah, the same as Aficah) the son of
Imlah, uttered similar words (1 Kings 23: 28).
He next describes the Lord coming out of His place, the place where He dwells
in mercy, to come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. He is coming to judge; He is coming in wrath. The nations are to hear it, that the judgment
is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of
3. The Destruction of
The sin of
4. The Lamentation of the Prophet Over
the Coming Judgment: Verses 8-16.
Here is the lamentation of Micah as directed by the Spirit of
God, not only over the fate of
Verses 10-13 correspond to Isaiah 10: 28-34;
it is a description of the advance of the Assyrian. The coming disaster is not to be published in
The inhabitant of Maroth waited anxiously for good, but evil
came from the Lord unto the gate of
Then follows a call to
In verse 14 the prophet
mentions his home town Moresheth-gath; there is to be a parting gift for she
shall go into captivity. And Achzib will
not keep the invader back; Achzib means a lie - the “Lie-town” shall he a lie to the kings of
The heir who is to possess Mareshah is the Assyrian, and “the glory of
They were now to mourn, expressed in making themselves bald (Job 1: 20; Isa. 15: 5, 22: 12; Jer. 16: 6), for
they are gone into captivity.
CHAPTER 2
1. The Guilt and Punishment
of
2. The Future
Restoration. 12-13.
1. The Guilt and Punishment of
In the first two verses the special sins of
Then comes a passionate appeal: “0, thou that
art named the house of Jacob, is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Are these His doings? Do not my words do good to him that walketh
uprightly?” He still appeals to their consciences. The Spirit of God does not change, nor was it
His doings, when the nation drifted into idolatry and judgment was impending. Still, if they but walked uprightly His words
would surely do them good. But they had
risen as an enemy against Him; and yet the Lord, in spite of all, called them “My people.”
2. The Future Restoration: Verses 12-13.
In this prophecy Christ is announced
as the Breaker, the One who goes before them, clears the way, and removes every
obstacle out of the way. In verse 10 we read, “Arise ye, and depart; for this
is not your rest.” The true rest for His people
THE
SECOND PROPHETIC MESSAGE
Chapters 3-4.
CHAPTER 3
1. Address to the Godless Princes and
Judges. 1-4.
2. Address to the False Prophets. 5-8.
3. The Verdict of Judgment. 9-12.
1. Address to the Godless Princes and
Judges: Verses 1-4.
The second prophetic message of Micah contains the great
Messianic prophecies. But first the
prophet gives a description of the degradation of the nation, the moral
corruption of the leaders and judges, as well as the false prophets. It is all summed up in one sentence, “who hate the
good, and love the evil.” The princes and judges
robbed the people, treated them like cattle (verse
3). For these unjust deeds the
Lord would not hear them when they cried in the hour of their need, and would
hide His face from them.
2. Address to the False Prophets: Verses 5-8.
The false prophets were mostly responsible for these
abominations, just as today the false in Christendom, the deniers of the faith,
destructive critics and others, are responsible for the conditions in the
professing Church. They make the people
err. While they bite with their teeth,
that is, being fed, they cried “Peace” to their
patrons; and those who did not support them, by putting food in their mouths,
they fought and denounced. There would
be night for them, with no vision; darkness would come upon them. They would be ashamed and confounded; the
covering of the lips was a sign and emblem of mourning and silence. Such will be the fate of all, false prophets
and teachers.
The eighth verse is a
magnificent outburst of God’s true prophet, Micah’s confession. As the true prophet he was full of power by
the Spirit of the Lord, and thus filled he declared unto Jacob his
transgression and to
3. The Verdict of Judgment: Verses 9-12.
What Micah had announced in the preceding verse he does
now. He tells the heads and rulers that
they build
CHAPTER 4
1. The Future of Glory. 1-5.
2. The Restoration and the Final
Victory. 6-13.
1. The Future of Glory: Verses 1-5.
The last verse predicted the long desolation and ruin of
The nation will he
judged and rebuked by Him whose glorious throne will be established in
2. The Restoration and the Final
Victory: Verses 6-13.
The re-gathering of all
All this is preceded by her sorrow and captivity. It must be noticed that verse 10 goes beyond the Babylonian captivity, for
it could not be said that the Lord redeemed in that past captivity
CHAPTER 5
1. The Siege and the Smitten
Judge. 1.
2. The Smitten Judge: Who he is. 2.
3. The Events of the Future. 3.
4. The Rejected One, The Shepherd of
5. The Remnant of Jacob and The
Kingdom. 7-15.
1. The Siege and the Smitten Judge: Verse 1.
This interesting chapter presents difficulties, but they all
vanish if we view all in the light of the future as revealed in the prophetic
Word. Here it is necessary to divide the
Word of Truth rightly, or we shall never find our way through this great
Messianic chapter. The daughter of
troops gathers herself in troops to besiege
2. The Smitten Judge, who He is: Verse 2.
This great verse is a parenthetical statement, giving a
description of the Judge of Israel. It
shows forth Him who is to be the Ruler and the Judge, the Redeemer and the
King. It is the passage which the chief
priests and the scribes quoted to wicked Herod, when he demanded to know where
Christ should be born (Matt. 2: 4-6). This great prophecy was therefore known when
our Lord was born to predict the birth of the Messiah, in fact, the Jews always
believed this. But after He was born and
lived among them and was rejected by them they attempted deliberately to
explain it away, and invented fables to accomplish this. It was Tertullian,
and other prominent teachers of the early Church, who argued with the Jews,
that if Jesus was not the promised Messiah, the prophecy given by Micah could
never be fulfilled, for none of David’s descendants was left in
But here is more than an announcement of the birthplace of
Christ. We have a wonderful description
of His Person. He is to be the Son of
David, coming out of David’s city,
destined to be the Ruler in
Here we have His Deity fully revealed as well as His humanity;
He is the God-Man. In this passage Micah’s testimony harmonizes with Isaiah’s in chapter
9: 6, 7.
3. The Events of the Future: Verse 3.
The meaning of this
verse becomes plain if we connect it with the first verse and treat the second
verse as a parenthesis. They smote the
Judge of Israel upon the cheek, they rejected the Lord of Glory, and as a
result God gave them up. “Therefore
will He give them up, until the time when she that travaileth hath brought
forth; then the remnant of His brethren shall return to the children of
4. The Rejected One, the Shepherd of
This refers to His second coming. He will stand and feed in the strength of
Jehovah, for He is the Lord; and they (saved
How beautiful is the opening sentence of the fifth verse! “This Man shall be
peace (or our peace).” Of Him Isaiah spoke, too, as “the Prince of
Peace,” and that “of the
increase of His government and peace there shall be no end.”
David in his great prophetic psalm (72: 7)
concerning these coming days speaks of “abundance of peace.”
Zechariah likewise in predicting the future says, “He shall
speak peace to the nations” (Zech. 9: 10). He made peace in the blood of His Cross and
for all who trust in Him He is peace, “for He is our Peace.”
Here it concerns the peace He has and gives to His restored
people
5. The Remnant of Jacob and the
Kingdom: Verses 7-15.
The restored and blessed remnant of Jacob will possess a
double character. They will be used in
blessing and refreshing among the nations, “as dew from the Lord, as the showers
upon the grass.” On the other hand, they will be in the midst
of many people as a lion and as a young lion, to avenge unrighteousness and
opposition. All the adversaries and
enemies of
THE THIRD PROPHETIC DISCOURSE
Chapters 6-7
CHAPTER 6
1. The Words of Jehovah to His
People. 1-5.
2.
3. The Moral Demands of Jehovah. 8.
4. The Lord Must Judge Them. 9-16.
1. The Words of Jehovah to His People:
Verses 1-5.
This chapter is cast in the form of a controversy. The utterance has been called by some the
most important in the prophetic literature.
It is hardly this, nor is, as critics claim, the eighth verse a definition of religion, “the greatest saying in the Old Testament.”
The beginning is sublime, “Hear ye now what Jehovah saith!”
The Prophet is to arise and contend before the mountains so that the
hills may hear his voice. The mountains and
the enduring foundations of the earth are to hear the controversy the Lord has
with His people and how He pleads with
Then follows the tender loving pleading of Jehovah, who still
loves His people, in spite of their wickedness, “0 my people, what have I done
to thee?” What matchless condescension! The Lord whom they had rejected, from whom
they had turned away, does not denounce them for their sins, nor does He
enumerate them, but He asks whether He had been at fault. Had He done anything amiss towards them? Had He wearied His people? He is willing that they should testify
against Him. Had He done anything that
they should get tired of Him? We may
imagine a pause here, as if He were waiting for an answer.
But there is no answer.
He continues to speak.
He had brought them out of
2.
Here the people speak, but it is significant that they do not
address the Lord, who had spoken to them by the prophet. They knew themselves guilty and
condemned. So they address the prophet
and ask what to do. “Wherewith
shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come
before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of
rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
For generations they had brought burnt offerings, thousands of rams and
rivers of oil. But it was nothing but an
outward worship; inwardly they remained the same. But they were willing to do more in this
outward service, even to the sacrifice of the firstborn. Isaiah 1: 10-18
is an interesting commentary to these questions, showing how the Lord despised
these ceremonies of a people who were evil doers and corrupters (see also Psalm 1: 7-23).
3. The Moral Demands of Jehovah: Verse 8.
The prophet gives
the answer of Jehovah. “We hath showed
thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Where has God made the demand?
In the Law. There is no more
deadly error than to hold up this verse as the essence of the Gospel and the
one true, saving religion. Yet this we
hear today on all sides. But the most
loud-mouthed advocates of this “saving religion”
practise what the Lord demands the least.
And there is a good reason for it.
4. The Lord Must Judge Them: Verses 9-16.
The Lord speaks again and puts before them once more their
moral degeneration. Wicked balances,
deceitful weights, the deeds of unrighteousness. They were destitute of mercy, for they were
full of violence, lies and deceit.
Therefore judgment must now fall upon them.
CHAPTER 7
1. The Prophet’s Complaint. 1-6.
2. Confession, Prayer and
Thanksgiving. 7-20.
1. The Prophet’s Complaint: Verses 1-6.
It is the prophet’s voice complaining over the conditions of
the people. But he is also the typical
representative of the remnant during the time of travail in
2. The Conclusion: Verses 7-20.
It is
It is a willing submission to the chastisement of the Lord
expressed in verse 9; they acknowledge
theirs sins and once more declare, “He will bring me forth to light, and
I shall behold his righteousness.”
This is followed by a prophetic declaration. The day is coming when her walls will be
built again, and in that day shall the decree be far removed. The latter statement may mean the same which
the Prophet Jeremiah reveals in chapter 31: 31
to the end of the chapter. The old
decree, or law, will end, and there will be the new covenant into which
In the meantime the land will be desolate, as it is now, the
fruit of their evil doings, till the day comes when the wilderness will be a
fruitful field (Isa. 32: 16) when the desert
shall rejoice and blossom as the rose (Isa. 35: l).
Once more the prophet’s voice is heard in supplication. The prayer in verse
14 is answered by the Lord in verses 15-17. The Lord will show again in that day the
marvellous things as He did in their past redemption out of
The three concluding verses belong to the greatest in the Old
Testament Scriptures. Here we listen to
a great praise and outburst of adoration.
“Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and
passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger forever, because
He delighted in mercy. He will turn
again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou
will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou will perform the truth to Jacob, and the
mercy to Abraham, which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.”
Such will be the future praise of the remnant of His heritage,
when the Deliverer comes to Zion and turns away ungodliness from Jacob, when
the covenant with them will be consummated and their sins will be taken away (Rom. 11: 26, 27).
Once a year orthodox Jews go to a running stream and scatter into it
bits of paper and small articles, repeating while they do it these three verses
(the so-called Tashlik ceremony). It
is but an outward act, yet testifying that there is still faith in
* * *
7
The Prophet Nahum
INTRODUCTION
Nahum’s history is unknown.
All we know of him is that he was an Elkoshite. His name means “Comforter.” Some have identified Elkosh with a village of
similar name which is in existence today, not far from the site of ancient
THE DATE OF NAHUM
The opening verse does not give a hint as to the time Nahum
lived and prophesied. Critics, on
account of some Assyrian expressions found in the book have put the date
later. From internal evidences we can
ascertain the date without difficulty.
There is an interesting link between Jonah, Micah and
Nahum. Jonah, was sent with the message
to
ASSYRIAN
HISTORY
A knowledge of Assyrian history, and its great capital
Hezekiah, the king of Judah, under whom Nahum as well as
Isaiah and Micah prophesied, had paid tribute for many years to
THE
MESSAGE OF NAHUM
His prophetic message concerns exclusively
Typically
THE
DIVISION OF NAHUM
The three chapters of which Nahum is composed give us the
correct division of his prophecy. In the
first chapter we find the purpose of God in dealing in judgment with the
oppressor of
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
THE
PURPOSE OF GOD IN DEALING
WITH
THE ASSYRIAN OPPRESSOR
CHAPTER 1
1. The Superscription. 1.
2. Jehovah’s Majesty in Judgment. 9-6.
3. His People Comforted and
Assured. 7-13.
4. The Judgment of
1. The Superscription: Verse 1.
The burden of Nineveh; if means that there is to follow a
weighty prophetic oracle concerning the great world city of Nineveh, whose
dimensions are given by Jonah, which have been confirmed by the
excavations. The next sentence gives us
the definite information that what follows in the book is the vision of Nahum
the Elkoshite.
2. Jehovah’s Majesty in Judgment: Verses 2-6.
It is a sublime description.
God is a jealous God. The
jealousy of God has for its source the love for His elect people (see Zech. 1). “For thou
shalt worship no other god; for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous
God.” He is jealous over His people lest they serve
other gods. And because He is a jealous
God, a holy, a sin-hating God, He must be an avenger of what is against His
character. He will take vengeance on His
adversaries and reserveth wrath for His enemies. Destructive criticism has invented an infidel
theory as if the God of wrath and vengeance were the product of the mind of
man, and that Jehovah is some tribal deity, corresponding to the tribal gods of
the surrounding heathen nations. Thus
criticism rejects the Jehovah of the Bible and invents its own god, rejecting
the threatenings of coming wrath and judgment as taught in the Old Testament
and in the New in connection with the Coming of the Lord, branding these
revelations the result of the false apocalyptic teachings of the Jews. God is the God of Love, as much as He is the
God of Wrath. He must be that or He
would not be the God of Light and Holiness.
He cannot afford to let evil go on forever. He is the Lord slow to anger. His patience is great, but He will not acquit
the guilty, who continue in sin and do evil.
Verses 2 and 3
describe His righteous government. Then
follows a beautiful poetic description of His majesty, a description suited to
the finite mind of man.
“In whirlwind
and storm is His way,
And clouds are the dust of
His feet.
He rebuketh the sea and
drieth it up
And empties all the rivers.
And the Flower of Lebanon
languisheth.
Mountains quake before Him
And all the hills melt away;
And the earth is consumed in
His presence,
The world and all that dwell
therein.
Before His indignation who
can stand?
And who can abide His fierce
anger?
His fury is poured out like
fire,
And the rocks are thrown
down by Him.”
What to the mind of man is more imposing than the towering storm-clouds,
and what more terrifying than the onrushing whirlwind, which lays low the
forest? Man, the creature of the dust,
steps upon the dust of the earth to which man returns in the hour of
death. But Jehovah has the clouds as the
dust of His feet. If He arises in His
righteous wrath all will he swept before Him, and the mountains, symbolical of the kingdoms of the earth, will quake
before Him, and the pride of man will be humbled in the dust (see Isa. 2).
3. His People Comforted and Assured: Verses 7-13.
While in the foregoing section He speaks of His own character
in dealing with evil, He now gives comfort and assurance to those who trust in
Him, that is, to His people. He knoweth
them, the comfort all His people have at all times, the Lord knoweth them that
are His, and as our Lord said, “I know my sheep.”
For such the Lord is good and a stronghold in the day of trouble. But
His enemies will feel His wrath. “But with an
overrunning flood He will make an utter end of the place thereof (
In the prophetic application we must look beyond the horizon
of Nahum’s time and the judgment of
On the ninth verse many
expositors have erred in their interpretation.
It is also addressed to
Then a description of the Assyrian in verse
10. They are entangled like
thorns, so that they will find no escape when the judgment overtakes them,
while they are drunk with wine in their carousings. Like the dry stubble are they to be
devoured. Rab-shakeh, as mentioned in
our introduction, is the one who came out of Assyria against
The second half of the twelfth
verse concerns His people. “Though I have
afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more.”
One can see at once that the “no more” demands a future fulfilment. For, while it is true, the Assyrian did no
longer afflict
4. The Judgment of the Assyrian and the
Result: Verses 14-15.
The fourteenth verse gives
the judgment commandment as to Assyria and
The result is stated in the last verse of this chapter. “Behold, upon the mountains the feet
of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! 0
We must not overlook the similar passage in Isaiah 52: 7.
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of
good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto
THE
OVERTHROW, PLUNDERING AND DESTRUCTION OF
CHAPTER 2
1. The Capture of
2. The Completeness of the
Judgment. 11-13.
1. The Capture of
This great prophecy was literally fulfilled some ninety years after
Nahum had spoken. When these words were
spoken
The prophet in the beginning of this chapter addresses
We have heard even reputable Bible teachers make the statement
that Nahum predicted the automobiles racing along our streets. Such fanciful, far-fetched and arbitrary
applications of the Word of God do immense harm. Nahum does not anticipate the automobile, but
gives a picture of the besiegers of
In verse 5 the Assyrian
king is seen turning to his army, as he sees the chariots dashing along the
highways and broadways which lead to the city; he counts his worthies, his
generals and captains. And the army
suddenly called, in making haste stumbled along in disorder and made haste to
reach the walls. As stated above, the sixth verse
was fulfilled when the river became a flood and undermined the foundations of
the walls, so that the besiegers could enter in. And when
The word “Huzzab” in the seventh verse has led to a great deal of
discussion. Some claim that it is the
name of the Queen of Nineveh; others that it is a symbolical name of the city;
archaeology throws no light upon its meaning.
We believe the word “Huzzab” should be
translated, “It is determined.” Then the sentence reads, “It is determined;
she is made bare and led away captive; and her maids moan like the doves,
smiting upon their breasts.”
The flight of the population of
In the next two verses the plundering of the city is
predicted. Silver and gold is taken
away. There seems to be no end of all
the glorious things which were heaped together in
2. The Completeness of the Judgment: Verses 11-13.
Is it a sarcastic question which is asked, “Where is the
den of lions?” What has become of her proud boastings of
being the Queen-City of the nations?
Then Jehovah speaks of the completeness of her judgment and
overthrow. “Behold, I am
against thee, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will burn her chariots in the
smoke, and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy
messengers shall no more he heard.”
CHAPTER 3
1. The Great Wickedness of
2. Her Fate to he Like the Fate of No‑Amon. 8-13.
3. Her Well-deserved and Complete
Judgment. 14-19.
1. The Great Wickedness of
But she received as she had sown. The next two verses give again the scenes of
carnage during her judgment hour.
“The cracking
of the whip;
And the noise of the
rattling wheels;
The prancing of the horses,
And the dashing chariots.
The horseman mounting;
And the flashing sword,
And the glittering of the
spear;
And the multitude of the
slain;
And the heaps of the
corpses.
There is no end of dead
bodies;
They stumble over their
corpses.”
And why? “Because of
the multitudes of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of
witcherafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through
her witcherafts.” She made herself attractive like a harlot
does, to ensnare and beguile weaker nations.
Like all these ancient cities she was filled with witchcrafts, that is,
sorceries. The power of darkness
manifested itself in the dominion of evil spirits, which
Then Jehovah speaks again, as the God of retribution and
judgment. These are solemn words.
“Behold! I am against
thee, saith the Lord of hosts;
And
uncover thy skirts over thy face,
And
display to the nations thy nakedness,
And
to kingdoms thy shame!
And I will cast
vileness upon thee,
And disgrace thee
And make thee a
gazing-stock.
And it shall come to pass,
That all that look upon thee
Shall flee from thee,
And say,
Who will lament over her?
Whence shall I seek
comforters for her?”
She had acted the harlot and now she receives the punishment
of a harlot, which consisted in exposing her in public. She would be a gazing-stock for nations and
kingdoms, as the righteous God stripped her of all and exposed her shame. There would he no one to lament over the vile
mistress of witchcrafts.
2. Her, Fate Like the Fate of No-Amon:
Verses 8-13.
“Art thou better than No-Amon that
dwelt by the rivers? Waters were round
about her; her bulwark was the sea and her wall was of the sea.
3. Her Well-deserved and Complete
Judgment: Verses 14-19.
Dramatically the prophet calls upon
*
* *
BAPTISM
By FRANK V. MILDRED
The ceremony of infant sprinkling is so much at variance with
the teaching of the New Testament that a committee of clergy is meeting to
consider what is called responsible baptism. A very prominent
Anglo-Catholic leader, Dr. Kenneth Kirk,
Bishop of Oxford, is so concerned about this question that he wrote as follows
in his Diocesan magazine of September, 1946:- “Is it
not possible that instead of being baptised in infancy a child might at that
stage be admitted as a catechumen, or learner; and then after a period of
instruction and when years of discretion are reached, be baptised and confirmed
and admitted to Communion? Would this in
any way help our difficulty?”
First, we must say quite bluntly that infant sprinkling is not
in the new Testament. As Dr. A. Plummer (an Anglican scholar)
writes:- “Not only is there no mention of the baptism of infants, but there is
no text from which such baptism can be securely inferred.” In like manner, we have the testimony of a
Methodist scholar, Prof. Norman Snaith,
who wrote as follows in The Methodist
Recorder of 17 June, 1948:- “Most communities,
other than the Baptists, are confused over the whole matter, and those that are
not confused are wrong. The modern
difficulties in interpretation are caused by the transference of the rite to
infancy.” Another witness is Father S. J. Hunter, a Jesuit, who
writes:- “There is no trace in Scripture of Christian
baptism being administered to any one who was not capable of asking for it.”
Secondly, we find in Church history that infant sprinkling was
a gradual change from Christian baptism. The oldest non-canonical Christian
document is The Didachee, or The Teaching, to be dated about 120 A.D., in the
first six chapters of which is an explanation of the
Thirdly, infant sprinkling is no substitute for Christian
baptism. We are saved by faith in
Christ, as our Saviour and Lord: “Ye are all sons of God by faith.” So
Dr. Sanday, an Anglican
scholar, writing on Romans 6, puts it this
way:- “It (i.e., baptism) expresses symbolically a series of acts corresponding to the
redeeming acts of Christ: Immersion =
death; Submersion = burial, the
ratification of death; Emergence = resurrection.”
“Repent and be baptised every one of
you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2: 38).
* *
*
8
The
Prophet Habakkuk
INTRODUCTION
There is a very interesting diversity among these Minor
Prophets. Hosea starts with the command of the Lord for a symbolical action
to show
Of Habakkuk the same holds good as with most of the other
Minor Prophets; we know nothing of the particulars of his life. It does not matter much. God knows these holy men, whom he called to
make known His will and the future, and He has kept the record of their lives,
as He keeps the record of all our lives.
His name means “to embrace,”
but it has the double meaning “to embrace” and
“being embraced.” He embraced his own people and embraced God
in prayer, then “being embraced” - God answered
him. Dr. Martin Luther gave a very striking definition of his name,
which cannot be improved upon. “Habakkuk signifies an embracer, or one who embraces another,
takes him into his arms. He embraces his
people, and takes them to his arms, i.e.,
he comforts them and holds them up, as one embraces a weeping child, to quiet
it with the assurance that if God wills it shall soon be better.”
It has been assumed that he probably sprang, like Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, from a priestly family, for at the end of the great ode, at the
conclusion of the book, he states – “to the chief singer on my stringed
instruments,” from
which we may gather that he was officially qualified to take part of the Temple
service. But Isaiah
28: 20 seems to contradict this.
An apocryphal book, “Bel and the Dragon,” states that Habakkuk was
miraculously transported to Daniel, who had been cast a second time to the
lions by Cyrus. This and other legends
are without any foundation at all, and need not be examined, for they are worthless.
THE
DATE OF HABAKKUK
As it is with Nahum, so it is with Habakkuk, the superscription does not fix a
definite date, but the contents of the book do not leave us in doubt about the
time when this man of God prophesied.
In the sixth verse of the
opening chapter we read, “For. lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and
hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the
dwelling places that are not theirs.” He therefore
prophesied at the time when the Chaldeans, or as they are also called the
Babylonians, were coming into power, and soon to he used against the house of
THE
MESSAGE OF HABAKKUK
The language which Habakkuk used is extremely beautiful. Professor
Delitzsch speaks of it as follows: “His language
is classical throughout, full of rare and select turns and words, which are to
some extent exclusively his own, whilst his view and mode of presentation bear
the seal of independent force and finished beauty. Notwithstanding the violent rush and lofty
soaring of the thoughts, his prophecy forms a finely organized and artistically
rounded whole. Like Isaiah, he is,
comparatively speaking, much more independent of his predecessors, both in
contents and form, than any of the other prophets.”
“Everything reflects the time when
prophecy was in its greatest glory, when the place of the sacred lyrics, in
which the religious life had expressed itself, was occupied, through a still
mightier interposition on the part of God, by prophetic poetry with its trumpet
voice.” Much in his message is in
the form of communion with the Lord. He
begins with the familiar heart-cry, “0 Lord, how long shall I cry?”
He receives an answer, which announces the coming of the Chaldeans, to
which again the prophet replies. Then he said, “I will stand upon my watch,
and will set me upon the tower, and will watch and see what He will say unto me” (chapter
2). Then he receives another
answer. The judgment of
Sublime is the great lyric ode contained in the third chapter,
which begins with a prayer (chapter 3). It is one of the greatest descriptions of the
Theophany, the Coming Of the Lord. which the [Holy] Spirit of God has given. He
comes in glory and in wrath; the wicked are overthrown, His people are
saved. It waits for its great fulfilment
when our Lord Jesus Christ shall he revealed from heaven in flaming fire with
His holy angels.
THE
DIVISION OF HABAKKUK
The division is very simple.
Chapter 1 forms the first part and
gives the coming invasion of
Inasmuch as the Authorized Version contains numerous incorrect
renderings, we give a complete text in a metric version.
-------
The Prophet Habakkuk
CHAPTER 1
1. The Burden,
which Habakkuk, the prophet, saw.
2. How long, 0
Lord, must I cry
And Thou hearest not?
I cry to Thee: Violence!
And Thou dost not help.
3. Why dost
Thou show me iniquity,
And cause me to behold
grievance?
Oppression and violence are
before me;
There is strife, and
contention ariseth.
4. Therefore
the law is slacked;
And justice doth never go
forth
For the wicked compass about
the righteous;
Therefore justice goes forth
perverted.
5. Behold ye
among the nations and regard!
And wonder marvellously;
For I work a work in your
days
Which ye will not believe,
though it were told.
6. For
behold! I raise up the Chaldeans,
That bitter and impetuous
nation,
Which march through the
breadth of the earth.
To possess dwelling-places
that are not theirs.
7. They are
terrible and dreadful,
Their judgment and dignity
proceed from themselves.
8. Swifter than
leopards are their horses,
And fiercer than the evening
wolves.
Their horsemen shall spread
themselves,
And their horsemen shall
come from afar.
They fly like an eagle
hastening to devour.
9. All of them
come for violence;
The host of their faces is
forward;
And they gather captives
like the sand.
10. Yea, he
scoffeth at kings,
And princes are a derision
unto him.
He laughs at every
stronghold
For he heapeth up earth and
taketh it.
11. Then he sweepeth by as a tempest
And shall pass over and be guilty.
He whose might is his god.
12. Art Thou not from Everlasting,
Jehovah, my God, my Holy One?
We shall not die!
Jehovah! Thou has appointed them for judgment;
And Thou, 0 Rock! Thou has
established him for chastisement.
13. Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil;
Thou canst not look upon
injustice.
Why lookest Thou upon the
treacherous?
Why art Thou silent when the
wicked destroys
The man that is more
righteous than he?
14. And Thou makest men like fishes of
the sea,
Like reptiles that have no ruler.
15. All of them he lifts up with the hook,
He catcheth them in His net
And gathers them in his drag;
Therefore he rejoices and is glad.
16. Therefore he sacrificeth to his net,
And burneth incense to his drag,
Because by them his portion is rich,
And his food plenteous.
17. Shall he, therefore, empty his net,
And spare not to slay the nations continually?
CHAPTER 2
1. I will stand upon
my watch.
And set me upon the tower,
And I will wait to see what He will say to me,
And what I shall answer as to my complaint.
2. And Jehovah answered me and said:
Write the vision and make it plain on tablets,
That he may run that reads it.
3. For the vision is yet for the appointed time,
And it hastens to the end, and shall not lie;
Though it tarry, wait for it;
Because it will surely come, it will not tarry.
4. Behold the proud:
His soul is not right within him;
But the just shall live by his faith.
5. And moreover, wine is treacherous;
A haughty man, that keepeth not at home:
Who enlargeth this desire as Sheol,
As death he is and cannot be satisfied,
And gathereth all nations to himself
And heapeth unto him all peoples.
6. Will not all
these take up a song against him?
And a taunting proverb
against him, and say:
Woe to him who increaseth
what is not his own!
How long?
And that ladeth himself with
pledges.
7. Will not thy
biters rise up suddenly,
And those awake that shall
shake thee violently?
And thou wilt become a prey
to them.
8. Because thou
hast plundered many nations,
All the remnant of the
peoples shall plunder thee;
Because of men’s blood, and
for the violence done to the land.
To the city and all that
dwell therein.
9. Woe to him
that procureth a wicked gain for his house,
To set his nest on high,
To secure himself from the
hand of disaster.
10. Thou has
devised shame for thy house,
By cutting off many peoples,
and sinning against thyself.
11. For the stone crieth out from the wall,
And the beam out of the wood-work answers
it.
12. Woe to him that buildeth a town with
blood,
And founds a city by iniquity.
13. Behold is it
not from Jehovah of hosts,
That the peoples labour for
the fire,
And the nations weary
themselves for vanity?
14. For the earth shall be filled
With
the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah,
As
the waters cover the sea.
15. Woe to him that giveth his neighbour
to drink,
Pouring out thy fury, and also making drunk.
In order to look upon their nakedness.
16. Thou are filled full with shame instead of glory,
Drink
thou also, and be like the uncircumcised:
The
cup of Jehovah’s right hand shall be turned to thee,
And
vile shame shall be upon thy glory.
17. For the violence
done to
And the destruction of wild
beasts which made them afraid,
Because of the blood of men,
and the violence done to the land,
To the city and all that
dwell therein.
18. What
profiteth a graven image, that its maker has carved?
The molten image, and the
teacher of lies,
That the maker of his image
trusts therein, to make dumb idols?
19. Woe to him that saith to the wood,
Awake;
To the dumb stone,
Arise!
Shall it teach?
Behold
it is overlaid with gold and silver;
And
there is no breath in its inside.
20. But Jehovah
is in His holy temple,
Let all the earth be silent
before Him.
CHAPTER 3
1. A prayer of
Habakkuk, the prophet, set to Shigionoth.
2. 0 Jehovah! I have heard the report of Thee. I am afraid!
0
Jehovah! revive Thy work in the midst of the years;
In
the midst of the years make it known;
In
wrath remember mercy.
3. God cometh
from Teman,
And the Holy One from Mount
Paran. - Selah.
His glory covereth the
heavens,
And the earth is full of His
glory.
4. His brightness is like the sun;
Rays
are streaming from His hand;
And
there is the hiding of His power.
5. Before Him
goeth the pestilence;
And fiery bolts follow His
feet.
6. He standeth and measureth the earth;
He
looketh and maketh nations tremble;
The
everlasting mountains are broken to pieces;
The
eternal hills sink down:
His
goings are as of old.
7. I saw the tents of Cushan in trouble;
The
tent-curtains of Midian are trembling.
8. Was it against the rivers Thou wert displeased, 0 Jehovah?
Was
Thine anger against the rivers?
Was
Thy fury against the sea?
That
Thou didst ride upon Thy horses,
In
Thy chariots of victory?
9. Thy bow is
made completely bare;
Rods (of chastisement) are sworn by Thy Word,
Thou cleavest the earth with
rivers.
10. The
mountains saw Thee, and trembled;
The flood of waters passeth
over;
The deep uttereth its voice,
And lifteth up its hands on
high.
11. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation;
At the light of Thine arrows, which flew,
At the slinging of Thy glittering spear.
12. In wrath
Thou marchest through the earth;
In fury Thou treadest down
the nations.
13. Thou goest forth for the salvation of Thy people,
For the salvation of Thine anointed;
Thou dashest in pieces the head out of the house of the wicked,
Laying bare the foundation even to the neck. - Selah.
14. Thou
piercest with his own staves the chief of his warriors,
That rush on like a
whirlwind to scatter me;
Their rejoicing is to devour
the poor secretly.
15. Thou
treadest upon the sea with Thine horses.
The swelling of mighty
waters.
16. I heard, and my bowels trembled;
My lips quivered at the sound;
Rottenness entered my bones;
And I trembled in my place,
That I might rest in the day of trouble
When he that approaches the nation presseth upon it.
17. For though the fig-tree shall not blossom,
Neither shall fruit be in the vines;
The fruit of the olive tree fails
And the fields shall yield no food;
The flock shall be cut off from the fold,
And there shall be no cattle in the stalls.
18. Yet will I
rejoice in Jehovah,
I will joy in the God of my
salvation.
19. Jehovah, the Lord, is my strength,
And makes my feet like the hinds’,
And will make me to walk upon mine high places.
(For the
Chief Musician, on my stringed instruments.)
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
THE JUDGMENT OF
THROUGH THE CHALDEANS ANNOUNCED
CHAPTER 1
1. The Prophet’s Cry to Jehovah. 1-4.
2. The Answer. 5-11.
3. The Prophet’s Plea. 12-17.
1. The Prophet’s Cry to Jehovah: Verses 1-4.
The prophet begins his message with a prayer-cry to
Jehovah. He whose name is “the embrace?” embraces the Lord and cries to Him on
account of the conditions prevailing in
Like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, Habakkuk is deeply stirred on account of the declension among the
people of God, and that led him to cry to Jehovah, to tell Him all about
it. He begins with “How long, 0
Lord.” It is the cry of the saints of God in all
generations. We, too, in the midst of the increasing apostasy,
the perilous times, cry to Him, “How long, 0 Lord.”
He had cried and there seemed to be no answer. Heaven was silent. And with him the righteous among the Jews had
cried for help and for a change of conditions, under which they were suffering
affliction. Wickedness and violence were
evident on all sides. Strife and
contention were the continued order of things.
They injured each other wherever they could. The Law of God was completely flouted; there
was no more justice, and the wicked compassed about the righteous.
2. The Answer. Verses 5-11.
Jehovah speaks and answers the complaint of His servant. He is going to raise up the Chaldeans to
chastise His wayward people. The Lord is
calling on His people, that they should see now what He was going to do.
“Behold ye among the nations, and regard, and
wonder marvellously; for I work a work in your days, which ye will not believe
though it were told you.” The meaning is that
they should look around among the nations, the faithless ones among the Jews,
and see how the storm would gather and ultimately break over the head of the
house of
In verse 6
the instrument of chastisement is announced, and afterward described. A new power would arise, the Chaldeans. They would make an invasion, and possess
dwelling places which were not theirs, that is, they would set out for a
widespread conquest and take away the dwelling place of
But as he is victorious the Chaldean becomes proud and forgets
that he was but used as an instrument in the hand of God to deal with those who
had done evil. As a result, they imputed
their power to their own god, and do not give God the honour and the
glory. His own might is his god. Then comes the day when the Lord takes the
Chaldean in hand for judgment and deals with him, as He dealt with other
nations. Nebuchadnezzar, the first great
king of
3. The Prophet’s Plea: Verses 12-17.
The prophet had listened to the terrible announcement from the
lips of Jehovah, what was to befall his nation.
How it must have shocked the man of God!
But he knows the comfort and expresses it in faith at once. “Art Thou not from everlasting, 0
Jehovah, my God, my Holy One? we shall not die!”
He knows Jehovah as the faithful God, the covenant-keeping God. Such a God will surely not permit the nation,
to whom He has pledged His Word, to be wiped out. His faith lays hold on that and he realizes
that the Lord is using this enemy for correction, to chastise His people. And furthermore in his plea he says, “Thou art of
purer eyes than to behold evil, Thou canst not look upon injustice.”
Would He, the righteous God, look on unconcerned at the wicked deeds of
the Chaldeans? Can He remain silent to
all their deeds of violence? If such is
the case, the prophet asks next, “Why lookest Thou upon the
treacherous; why art Thou silent when the wicked destroys?”
It is the voice of the godly remnant here, seen suffering with the
nation. It brings before us the same
question concerning the suffering of the righteous.
The Chaldean took men as if they were fishes; as a fisherman
puts out the net and the drag, so they catch men by the net and the drag. Gathering in the people with their wealth, he
rejoices and is glad. Then the prophet
takes up the statement given by the Lord that the Chaldean would offend, and
fall by his pride, and the worship of his false gods, He sacrifices to his net;
he burns incense; he makes the thing which prospers him his idol, his god. Is this then to go on continually? Shall he who empties his net, and throws it
out to catch more, to do this again with the nations forever?
Such was the plea of Habakkuk, after the announcement of the
coming chastisement of the Jews by the Chaldean He knows that the affliction
could not continue forever, for God is a covenant-keeping God, and of purer
eyes than to behold evil, a holy and a
righteous God.
THE
UNGODLINESS OF THE CHALDEANS AND THEIR DESTRUCTION
CHAPTER 2
1. The Waiting Prophet and the Message
He Received. 1-4.
2. The Five-fold Woe upon the
Chaldeans. 5-20.
1. The Waiting Prophet and the Message
He Received: Verses 1-4.
It seems there was no immediate answer to the plea of the
prophet. He then speaks to himself and
expresses his attitude. “I will stand
upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and I will wait to see what He will
say to me, and what I shall answer as to my complaint.”
He watches like a sentinel upon a watch-tower for the answer the Lord
will give him. It does not mean that the
prophet actually ascended a tower, but he expresses his innermost attitude by
the symbol of a watchman. He remained
silent and eagerly looked for the reply.
How long he waited is not stated. But the answer came, for the Lord never
disappoints His inquiring and waiting servants.
He is told to write the vision and make it plain upon the tablets, that
he may run that readeth it. Thus the
Lord spoke to him and gave him the vision, which he was to write in plain
characters upon tablets. The effect
should be not that he that runneth may read (as it is sometimes misquoted) but
that he that readeth may run. The
Prophetic Word is always plain. It is
far from being the deep and complicated portion of God’s Truth that some make
it, but it needs an ear opened by the [Holy] Spirit of God.
Prophecy believed is a great stimulating agent to Christian service,
even as it is stated here, that the reader of the vision runs to spread the
message.
In the next place we hear of the certainty of the vision. It is for the appointed time. It hastens toward the end, and shall not
lie. The prophet is commanded to wait
for it, though it tarry, and then receives the assurance that it will surely
come and not tarry. These are important
instructions by which many a believer might profit. God has an appointed time for all His
purposes and their fulfilment. He cannot
be hastened, for His schedule was made before the foundation of the world. When the appointed time comes all visions
will be accomplished. It hastens toward
the end. That end is the end of the
times of the Gentiles, which began with the rising of the Babylonians, and the
first great king, Nebuchadnezzar, the golden head in the prophetic image of Daniel 2.
When the end of the times of the Gentiles comes, the world-power then,
final
Part of this is quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews. “For yet a little while, and He that
shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Heb. 10: 37). From this quotation we learn that the vision
which will surely come is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the centre of every vision and without
Him there is no vision. The Septuagint translation is the same: “If He tarry wait for Him, for coming He will come and not
delay.”
In the fourth verse, which
may properly be taken to be the opening statement for the vision which follows,
the all importance of faith in the vision is made known. The proud one who is mentioned must primarily
be applied to the haughty Chaldean, but it is equally true of the unbelieving,
proud Jew, and of the nominal Christian.
The proud, the puffed up one, his soul is not right within him, and God
resisteth the proud, while he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
“But the just shall live by faith.”
Criticism has not left this matchless sentence untouched. The Higher Critic Davidson labours to show that the Hebrew word for faith (Emunoh) means faithfulness, dealing in
faithfulness in money matters, that is, one who deals honestly. According to his statement the verse means if
an Israelite, or anybody else, does right he will live. But in Genesis we read, “Abraham
believed the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness.” As every intelligent Christian knows,
there was no Law then, and the New Testament in the testimony of the Holy
Spirit makes it plain that this is the Gospel of Grace in which the ungodly are
justified; justified by faith.
Interesting is the quotation of the sentence “the just
shall live by faith” in the three passages of the New Testament Epistles.
Romans 1: 17 quotes this sentence.
In this passage the emphasis is upon the word “just.”
The theme of Romans is the Righteousness of God, at least in the opening
chapters. It shows how a person, a lost
and guilty sinner, becomes righteous, and as such is saved. “For by grace are ye saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest
any man should boast.”
In Galatians 3: 11 the
emphasis is upon the word “faith.” “But no man is
justified by the law in the sight of God, as it is evident: for, the just shall
live by faith.”
In Hebrews 10: 38 the
emphasis is upon “live.” “For yet a little while, and He that
shall come will come, and will not tarry.
Now the just shall live by faith, but if any man draw back, my soul
shall have no pleasure in him.”
2. The Five-fold Woe upon the
Chaldeans: Verses 5-20.
The Lord uncovers the wicked conditions prevailing among the
Chaldeans. God had allowed the people
whom He loved to be chastised by an evil instrument; they were to be crushed by
injustice and by the actions of the cruel invader. But the character and conduct of the
oppressor, the Chaldeans, was not unknown to Him, as the prophet expressed it, “Who is of purer
eyes than to behold evil.” And now the righteous
Lord announces the five-fold woe upon the wicked world-power. While all this applies primarily to the
Chaldean, it is likewise a prophecy concerning the future. The
world powers remain the same to the end of the times of the Gentiles. It was true then, as it is true now, and will
he true in the future throughout this present age, “The world lieth in the Wicked One.”
There is no improvement to be
looked for among the world powers, and as we have seen so frequently in the
study of the prophets, the end of the age brings still greater opposition and,
defiance of God, with a corresponding moral decline. We see therefore in these verses a
description of the world conditions down to its very end. The word “wine” does not need to be interpreted in a
literal way, though drunkenness was one of the sins of the Babylonians. They were inflamed with an ambition for
conquest, like a drunken man is inflamed with wine. This intoxication made them treacherous, haughty,
restless: like death, which is never satisfied, so they are never satisfied;
constantly pressing on they spoil the nations, gather prisoners and act in
violence. How can God permit this to go
unjudged.
Then follows a taunting song in verses
6-7. Divine retribution is coming
for them. The spoiler is going to be
spoiled. It is the retribution which may
be read in all history, which still continues, for of nations it is true as of
individuals, “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”
The second woe is on account of their covetousness and their
self-aggrandizement. Like
Then comes a third Woe.
Verses 12-14 are of special interest,
for they give us a picture of a godless civilization and its appointed
end. Their cruel oppression, their
ungodly gains, had built up a magnificent city.
Excavations have shown what a marvellous civilization was in force when
And how true it is today, “The peoples labour for the fire, the
nations weary themselves for vanity.” The day is approaching
when this civilization will be swept away, and before the better things come,
the kingdom is established and He reigns whose right it is, there will be the
fires of judgment. And after that it
will be true, as it cannot be true before, “The earth shall be filled with the
knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
The fourth woe shows the corruption which held sway in the
Babylonian empire. Drunkenness here is a
figure of the utter prostration of the nations which the Chaldeans had
conquered; they stripped them in their wicked endeavours of all they
possessed. They spread a shameless
dissolution in every direction. For this they will have to drink the cup of
fury from the hand of the Lord, and shall be covered with vile shame, so that
their glory will be blotted out.
The fifth woe is on account of their idolatry. They worshipped wood and stone. Nebuchadnezzar set up his golden image in the
plain of Dura and demanded worship for it.
The spiritual
“But the Lord is in His holy temple;
let all the earth keep silence before Him.”
First, by way of contrast, their idols are dumb; Jehovah, the God of
Israel, is the living God. He is in His
holy temple; from there He takes notice of the doings of men. He is the Sovereign, the only Potentate; the
nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the
balance (Isa. 40: 15). “It is He that sitteth upon the circle
of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth
out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isa. 40:
22).
But this closing verse of the chapter of woe has a prophetic
meaning. When at last the world-power is
dethroned, when the Lord returns, He will take His place as King of Kings. He will be in His holy
THE
VISION OF THE COMING OF THE LORD
CHAPTER 3
1. The Prophet’s Prayer. 1-2.
2. The Coming of the Lord for Judgment
and Redemption. 8-15.
3. The Effect upon the Prophet. 16-19.
1. The Prophet’s Prayer: Verses 1-2.
Once more we hear the voice of the man of God in prayer. Shigionoth is the plural of Shiggaion, and is
found in the superscription of Psalm 7. Its meaning is “loud
crying.” The connection with the
seventh Psalm is interesting. In that Psalm
God appeared to David as the God of judgment, the righteous God who must save
His righteous people and condemn the wicked. (See Annotations on Psalm 7.)
The prophet had listened to the message and penned it as we have it in
the preceding chapter. It struck terror
to his heart and he trembled. Therefore
he pleads for a revival of the Lord’s work in the midst of the years. He must have taken a hasty glance over the
past history of his people, how God had worked in their behalf in
He knows that wrath is on the way. Not only wrath for the Chaldeans, but for his people, that the unbelieving,
the apostates, would also have to face the judgment. Therefore he pleads, “In wrath
remember mercy.” Such is the way of God always. Judgment is His strange work, and mercy is
mingled with His judgments. It will be
so in connection with the winding up of this present age, when judgment wrath
sweeps over the earth, and especially
The great inspired ode which follows is one of the greatest
sections of Prophecy. It is a wonderful theophany the Spirit of God
describes. Wrath and Mercy are
manifested, so that it is an answer to the prophet’s plea, “In wrath
remember mercy.”
It has been said, “The poet describes
a great storm, advancing from the south, the region of Paran and Sinai. In the dark storm clouds he conceives Jehovah
to be concealed; the lightning flashes which illumine heaven and earth disclose
glimpses of the dazzling brightness immediately about him; the earth quakes,
the hills sink, and the neighbouring desert tribes look on in dismay” (Canon Driver). Thus Higher Criticism reduces one of the
sublimest inspired prophecies, concerning the future appearing of the Lord, to
the level of poetry.
The great description of His coming must be linked with
similar prophecies (See Deut. 33: 2; Psa. 18: 8-19,
33, 34; Psa. 68: 8, 34; Psa. 77: 17-21).
The great ode, cast in the form of a Psalm, begins with the statement
that God cometh from Teman and the Holy One from
His glory covers the heavens, while the earth is filled with
His praise. Heaven and earth reflect the
glory of the Coming One. How all this
corresponds with the divine statements concerning His Coming in the New
Testament does not need to be pointed out.
He comes in power and great glory, in the clouds of heaven, as Daniel
beheld Him in the night vision, and as our Lord testified Himself. Brightness fills the sky as He appears in
person, while out of His hand glory rays emanate, the hiding of His power. The picture is evidently taken from the
rising sun, which shoots forth great rays, heralding its ascending. As Delitzsch
remarks, “His hand” means in a general sense, as signifying the hand generally,
and not a single hand only. May we not
have here a hint of His hands pierced once, but now emanating glory? Before Him
goes the pestilence, indicating the trouble which precedes His Coming, when the
four apocalyptic riders bring war, famine, pestilence and death in judgment for
this earth.
With the sixth verse He
draws nearer. Up to this point in the
theophany He is described as coming forth, like the sun out of His chamber,
heaven and earth reflecting His glory, but now He stands and measures the
earth; He looks and the nations tremble, while all creation is affected, and
earthquakes shake down the mountains.
Then the prophet sees the tents of Cushan in affliction and
the curtains of Midian tremble. Cushan means the Ethiopians, and the Midianites inhabited the Arabian coast along
the
The verses which follow (verses
8-15) are in the form of an address to God. The rivers and the seas, and the mountains
feel His wrath; they represent symbolically the nations and the
world-powers. He is seen marching in
anger through the earth and in His fury treading down the nations. It is a majestic picture the Spirit of God
gives of that coming day of wrath and judgment.
But while He comes thus, executing wrath and judgment upon the
ungodly, He comes in mercy. He goes
forth for the salvation of His people, for the salvation of Thine anointed,
that is, the elect nation and the God-fearing, waiting remnant of the last days
(see Psa. 105: 15). And there will be on the earth in that day
the head of the house of the wicked, the ungodly head, the man of sin, the
heading up of all apostasy and opposition to God. His doom is predicted in verse 13, followed by another Selah, like verses 3 and 9.
3. The Effect upon the Prophet: Verses 16-19.
The prophet now speaks of his own feeling, which reflects the feeling
of the godly among the Jews when this great theophany becomes history. There is fear and trembling in view of the
coming tribulation. When he heard it he trembled; he is completely prostrated. He desires rest in the day of trouble, the
day when the final enemy of God’s people marches through the land. Then faith is triumphant, and in one of the
most magnificent outbursts the prophet declares his confidence in his God (verse 17).
Such will be the faith of the godly who pass through the time of great
trouble. Finally he rejoices in the God
of his salvation and declares his hope that his feet will be like hinds’ feet
to escape to the high places. Even so
the remnant of
* * *
9
The
Prophet of Zephaniah
INTRODUCTION
Zephaniah is the last of the prophets before the captivity,
according to the arrangement of the Hebrew Bible. Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi are
post-exilic. His name means “Jehovah hides.”
His genealogy is traced back for four generations. Zephaniah was the son of Cushi, the son of
Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah. We have therefore more information concerning
him than of most of the other minor prophets.
There must be a reason why these four generations are given. We believe the reason is to show that he was
of royal descent, the great-grandson of the pious king of Judah, Hezekiah.
Hizkiah is the same as Hezekiah in the Hebrew.
Jewish tradition as well as the reliable rabbinical sources confirm
this. The objection that the royal title
is not given in connection with Hizkiah is insignificant; at any rate “king of
THE
DATE OF ZEPHANIAH
The date is given
in the first verse. He prophesied in the
days of Josiah the king of
THE
MESSAGE OF ZEPHANIAH
To understand the message we must consider the character of
the times in which the prophet lived, and the conditions in
Like the other minor prophets, judgment is announced first,
followed by exhortations to repentance, with the promises of glory for the
remnant of His people when the day of Jehovah is passed and the Lord is King
over all the earth. He proclaims the
judgment to come for the whole earth, as well as upon
In the second chapter the
exhortations begin. He exhorts the
nation to repent and to seek the Lord, so that they might be hid in the day of
the Lord’s anger. Then he announced that
the day is surely coming upon all the nations, and that the isles of the
nations will not escape.
In the third chapter the
prophet shows how the Lord will deal in judgment also with the ungodly among
His people. He announces His purpose
concerning the nations with the expectation that the godly remnant among the
Jews will fear Him then, and receive instruction and wait for Him.
Then follows the joyous message of the future salvation of the
elect people. It will be a poor
afflicted remnant which trusts in the Lord, which, born again, will be a holy
people, separated from evil. This is
followed by the singing times. “Sing, daughter of
THE
DIVISION OF ZEPHANIAH
Like Nahum’s prophecy, Zephaniah’s is one great prophetic
utterance. The division into three chapters,
as given in the Authorized version, is the correct arrangement, with the
exception of the first eight verses of chapter 3, which should be added to the
second chapter. The subdivisions will he
pointed out in the analysis and annotations.
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
THE
DAY OF THE LORD, THE DAY OF JUDGMENT
CHAPTER 1
1. The Judgment of all the World. 1-3.
2. The Judgment will Destroy the Evil
Doers in
3. The Day of the Lord. 14-18.
1. The Judgment of all the World: Verses 1-3.
The first verse is the superscription, and tells us, as
pointed out in the introduction, of the connection of Zephaniah and the date of
his prophecy.
Then comes the announcement of the judgment. It is to consume all things from off the face
of the land, man and beast, the fowls of heaven, the fishes of the sea, and end
the stumbling blocks of the wicked, that is, their idols and idol worship. The land is not to be understood as being
2. The Judgment will Destroy the Evil
Doers in
It will fall especially upon the house of
The hand of the Lord will be stretched out upon
As to the future curse of idolatry among the Jews, the passage
in Matthew 12: 43, 45, the words of our
Lord, gives us the full information. The
unclean spirit there is the spirit of idolatry, from which the Jews in their
dispersion are free; the unclean spirit has left the house. But it is to return, and the last state is
worse than the first: “Even so shall
it be also unto this wicked generation.” They will
worship the man of sin, the masterpiece of Satan, who in the end of the age
will take his place in the
The day of the Lord is at hand; a statement which verifies our
interpretation that this prophecy refers to the future day. The Lord has prepared His sacrifice and
hidden his guests. It is the supper of
the great God, to which He invites His guests.
Read in connection with this Revelation 19:
17-18. What that day will bring is described in verses 8-13.
All the evil doers will be
dealt with by the Lord.
3. The Day of the Lord: Verses 14-18.
The great day of the Lord is now more fully described. It is the day when the announced judgment
will take place. Higher criticism sees
nothing but some invasion of the land by hostile forces. But it is the same great day, the culmination
of the past ages, when Jehovah is revealed, so vividly described in Joel 2: 11. On that day the voice of the Lord will be
heard (Psa. 29; Isa. 66: 6). When that day comes the mighty man will cry
out in bitterness, for he is unable to save himself from the judgment tempest. In two verses the prophet describes vividly
the greatness of that day.
A day of wrath is that day,
A day of trouble and distress,
A day of ruin and desolation,
A day of darkness and gloom,
A day of clouds and cloudy darkness;
A day of the trumpet and the war cry
Against the fortified cities,
And against the lofty battlements.
Thomas of Celano used in 1250 the Vulgate translation
of the first sentence Dies irae, dies
illa in writing his famous judgment hymn.
It is well to compare Scripture with Scripture about that day. (For instance, verse
15 with Joel 3; Amos 5: 18, 20; 8: 9; Isaiah
13: 10, and many other passages.)
When that day comes the wicked will perish; distress will be upon
all. They will walk like blind men, that
is, trying to find a way to escape, but not able to find one. Nothing will be able to deliver from the fury
of that day, neither silver nor gold will avail anything.
THE
CALL TO REPENTANCE IN VIEW OF THE JUDGMENT
CHAPTERS 2 - 3: 8
1. The Call to Repentance. 1-3.
2. The Judgment of the
Philistines. 4-7.
3. The Judgment of
4. The Judgment of other Nations. 11-15.
5. The Woe and Warning to
1. The Call to Repentance: Verses 1-3.
As we found it in Joel, so it is here. In view of the coming of the day, the call
goes forth to the nation to humble themselves and to repent. On the near horizon in Joel the Assyrian
invasion was threatening. In Zephaniah
it is the Babylonian power. But all
points to the future day of the Lord.
They are to gather themselves together.
The word used for “gather” has the meaning of gathering stubble
or wood for burning. In their unbelief
they were worthless as stubble and dry wood, fit for the burning. The phrase “not desired” has been translated “which does
not turn pale.” But this cannot be sustained. The better meaning is “unashamed.”
The second verse gives the
reason why they should humble themselves and be ashamed of all their evil
doings. Because the decree of judgment
has gone forth, the fierce anger of the Lord in His day is about to pass as the
chaff. This is followed by the appeal to
seek the Lord. This is addressed to the
meek in the land, the godly remnant which fears the Lord, both in Zephaniah’s
day and in the end of the age, when “that day” comes. They are meek and seek to keep the statutes
and judgments of the Lord in a righteous life.
Still they are exhorted to seek meekness. For it is this, meekness and lowliness, that
pleases the Lord. The promise is held
out that they would be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger. Zephaniah means “hidden
by the Lord” or “whom the Lord hides;”
his name comes into play as a comfort that the godly will be hid in the day of
the Lord. In Isaiah we have a more direct
word about this. “Come, my
people, enter thou in thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself
as it were for a moment, until the indignation be overpast” (Isa. 26: 20). This has often been used as a proof text that
the true church is not to pass through the great tribulation period. But it has nothing whatever to do with the
church, but is the promise given to the godly remnant (See Rev. 12; the preservation of the seed of the
woman). It is the teaching of the New
Testament that the true church will be taken to her heavenly abode by the
coming of the Lord for His saints (1 Thess. 4:
13-18; 2 Thess. 2).
2. The Judgment of the Philistines: Verses 4-7.
Judgment is to come in that day upon
3. The Judgment of
This judgment of
4. The Judgment of other Nations: Verses 11-15.
The Lord, in that day, will he terrible unto all these
nations. The idol gods will all he
abolished. In their place He alone will
be worshipped (Zech. 14). All the isles of the nations will turn in
worship to Him. The Ethiopians, the African nations, will fall under the
judgment. He will stretch out His hand
against
5.
The Woe and Warning to
The filthy, polluted and oppressing city is
Their prophets and priests were also corrupt, as we have
learned before in the former prophets.
Yet the holy and just Jehovah was in the midst of them. Yet the unjust was not ashamed, but continued
in evil-doing.
Then Jehovah addresses the nation: “I have cut off nations; their towers
are desolate; I have made their streets waste, that none passeth by; their
cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none
inhabitant. I said, Surely thou wilt fear
me, thou wilt receive instruction; so their dwelling should not be cut off;
howsoever I punished them, they rose early, and corrupted all their doings.”
But they did not heed His plea.
They did not take warning from what happened to other nations.
JUDGMENT
AND GLORY
CHAPTER 3: 8-20
1. The Waiting for the End. Verse 8.
2. The Glory that Follows. 9-20
1. The Waiting for the End: Verse 8.
“Therefore wait for me, saith Jehovah,
for the day when I arise for the prey; for my determination is to gather the
nations, to assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, all my
fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.”
This verse leads us back to the opening exhortation of this
chapter. They are as a nation to wait
for Him, till the day comes in which He arises to execute the judgment of the
nations. It has been a long waiting.
Centuries have come and gone; His earthly people have been the wanderers among
the nations of the world where they have been a byword and a curse, yet
witnesses for Him also. Still they are
waiting for “that day,” the day which closes the times of the Gentiles, when the
stone strikes the great man image and becomes a mountain filling the whole
earth (Daniel 2).
2. The Glory that Follows: Verses 9-20.
The opening verse of this glory section has been variously
interpreted. It has been used by the “Pentecostal-delusion” as being a prophecy concerning
their imagined gift of tongues restoration.
In the first place it must be noticed that in the Hebrew the word people
is in the plural. We read therefore this
verse as follows: “For then will I turn to the nations a pure lip, that they may
all call upon the name of Jehovah, to serve Him with one shoulder.”
Luther paraphrased this verse
in the following way: “Then will I cause the nations
to be preached to otherwise, with friendly lips, that they may call upon the
name of the Lord.” But this
interpretation is not sustained by the text.
It means that the nations which
escaped the judgment-wrath of the day of the Lord will be converted, and as a
result of their conversion they will call upon the Lord with pure lips; all
idolatry will cease and all serve the Lord as one man.
While the peoples in verse 9
are the Gentiles, the suppliants in verse 10
are Jews brought back from the dispersion.
They are brought back by the converted Gentiles as an offering unto the
Lord (Isa. 66: 20). When that takes place
the restored nation will not have need to he ashamed for all their doings, for
the Lord in infinite grace will have cleansed them from their iniquity, and now
they are no longer proud and haughty, but a remnant humbled, trusting in the
Lord.
The great Grace chapter in Ezekiel tells us of the conversion
of this remnant (Ezek. 36). They will then be a righteous nation, do no
iniquity, nor speak lies. The speaking
of lies, the use of deceit, is one of the traits of the Jews today, and has
often been responsible for their sufferings among the Gentiles. But when that day comes the deceitful tongue
will not be found in their mouth. They
will feed and lie down and none shall make them afraid. They have become once more “the sheep of
His pastures,”
gathered by the Good Shepherd. The time
of singing and rejoicing has come.
“Sing, 0 daughter of
Shout, 0
Be glad and rejoice
With all thy heart,
0 Daughter of Jerusalem.
Jehovah has removed thy
judgments;
He has cast out thine enemy;
The King of
Is in the midst of thee;
Thou wilt see evil not more.
In that day it
shall be said to
Fear not
Jehovah thy God is in the
midst of thee,
A mighty One who saves;
He rejoices over thee with
gladness;
He rests in His love;
He rejoices over thee with
singing.”
What a glorious day that day will be! It will be glory for Him and glory for His
people. The great prophetic song
recorded by Isaiah (chapter
12) will then be heard in the midst of His redeemed people. The great Psalms of praise and worship will
fill
Then He will make them a name and a praise
among all the peoples of the earth. Thus
ends the great message of Zephaniah, the great-great-grandson of the pious King
Hezekiah.
*
* *
10
The
Prophet Haggai
INTRODUCTION
Between Zephaniah and Haggai is the period of the captivity of
the house of
Haggai means “My feast,” or
perhaps “the Festal one.” Nothing is known of his personal
history. He is mentioned in Ezra, chapter 5: 1 and 6:
14. The first verse of the book
which bears his name gives us the date of his prophecy. It was in the second year of Darius the
king. The king is Darius Hystaspes, and
the year is 590 B. C. Two months later
young Zechariah began to lift up his voice likewise. It seems that Haggai’s prophetic office
extended over four months only. Some
have concluded from chapter 2: 3 that he
must have known the first temple. If he
saw that temple he must have been at least 80 years old, if not older, when he
prophesied. But the passage upon which
this supposition rests does not necessarily imply this. He was probably born in the captivity, and a
young man like his greater associate Zechariah.
THE
TIMES OF HAGGAI AND ZECHARIAH
In order to understand the prophecies of Haggai as well as
Zechariah; the history contained in the book of Ezra must be carefully
studied. The reader will consult the
introduction to the book of Ezra and the annotations on the different chapters.
We mention here but a few of the leading historical facts of
this period. After the remnant had
returned from
The harvest also had turned out very poor; the blessing of the
Lord was lacking in all that they did, therefore the prophet spoke then and
told them that all was an expression of the displeasure of the Lord in
neglecting His house. “Ye have sown
much and bring in little; ye eat but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are
not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that
earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes” (1: 6).
These were outward circumstances which led the Spirit of God
to call Haggai to the prophetic office.
THE
MESSAGE OF HAGGAI
The purpose of his
message has been stated in the preceding paragraph. But the message goes far beyond his time, and
like the former prophets, leads up to the time of glory. He speaks of the Messiah, our Lord, as the
desire of all nations, and of the times when all nations shall be shaken; when
another house is to be filled with the Lord’s glory. This passage is quoted in Hebrews 12: 26, 27, and will be more closely
examined in the Annotations. Our
post-millennial brethren in their expositions have explained all these promises
as being realized in the church. The
second temple is, according to their views, a prophecy concerning the
church. In the language of one: “He announces that the time is not far off when the
privileges of Jehovah’s worship shall be extended over all the earth, and that
the treasures of all nations will then be brought to adorn this temple, and
exalt its glory above the departed splendour of the former house, while peace
and prosperity shall reign among the unnumbered worshippers.” But inasmuch
as none of the prophets knew
anything whatever about the body of Christ, the church, in which there is
neither Jew nor Gentile, this interpretation is incorrect. The church is the mystery which was not made
known in former ages (Eph. 3). Hence Haggai did not describe the church
under the term of the temple, but his
prophecy reaches beyond the church-age to the day of the Lord, when all nations
will be shaken, and the Lord will return and bring with Him the promised glory.
The message of Haggai is written in a
very simple style, quite different from the style of the pre-exilic
prophets. He makes frequent use of
interrogatives.
THE
DIVISION OF HAGGAI
The two chapters contain five addresses. The first address in chapter
1: 1-11 is one of reproof and warning, to arouse the remnant from the
apathy into which they had drifted in the building of the temple. The second address in chapter 1: 12-15 was made when the people responded to his
appeal, assuring them of the presence of the Lord in their obedience. The third address in chapter 2: 1-9 contrasts the glory
of the first house with the greater glory of the second house and introduces
the distinctively Messianic glory.
The fourth address in chapter 2: 10-19 contains moral instructions and
the assurance of blessing. The last
address, the conclusion of the message of Haggai, points still more prominently
to the day of the Lord, when heaven and earth is to be shaken and the kingdoms
of the nations will be overthrown. In
the last verse Zerubbabel, the servant of Jehovah, is a prophetic type of our
Lord.
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
HAGGAI’S
FIRST ADDRESS
CHAPTER 1: 1‑11.
1. The Introduction. 1.
2. The Reproof. 2-6.
3. Consider Your Ways. 7-11.
1. The Introduction: Verse 1.
Darius Hystaspes had been king one year and had entered upon the
second year, 590 B. C, when, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month,
the Word of the Lord was given by Haggai.
It was addressed to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of
Joshua is mentioned several times in Zechariah. He was the first high-priest after the
captivity, and is called in Ezra and Nehemiah-Jeshua, the name Joshua
transcribed into Greek. He and
Zerubbabel are prophetic types of our Lord as the King-Priest. Joshua was the son of Josedech (Jehozadak)
the high-priest who was taken by the Babylonians into captivity (1 Chron. 6: 15), and was the grandson of Seraiah,
who was put to death by Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah, after the capture of
2. The Reproof: Verses 2-6.
His message starts with the excuse which the people offered
for their apathy in the things of
God. “This people say, The time is not
come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.”
The Lord does not address them as “My people,” but in a way which is
deprecatory. It was an empty excuse,
that His time had not yet come; in reality they were cold towards the cause of the
Lord, and sought their own things in place of it. In their indifferent spirit they probably
took the relation to
Then the Lord answers them.
“Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled
houses, while this house lieth waste?” They had begun
well, as we read in Ezra 3, when they set
the altar upon its bases. But now they
had departed from their endeavour; the interest in the one thing had waned, and
selfish aims were substituted. They were
living in luxurious houses, while His house was completely neglected, it was in
a waste condition. The insincerity of
their vain excuse was therefore exposed.
Then comes the exhortation to consider their ways (literally:
set your heart upon your ways). Had it
been profitable for them? No. Ever since they left off building His house
bitter disappointment had been their lot.
All their self-seeking brought them no gain, but steady loss. The Lord’s blessing, given to His earthly
people concerning earthly things, had been withholden. They had sown much seed; there was a scanty
return. They had not been satisfied in
eating or drinking. Their clothing was
insufficient. The wages they earned may
have been good wages, but it was as if they put them into a bag with holes; the
greater part of them was lost. While all
this must be considered on the ground of the Jew, the principle nevertheless holds good for us as well. “But seek ye first the
3. Consider your Ways: Verses 7-11.
Consider your ways; the Lord spoke again. And now He commands them to go to the
mountains and fetch wood and to build the house. He declares that He will take pleasure in it
and that He will be glorified. How
graciously He craves the whole-heartedness of His people and their full
devotion to Himself. It is in worship,
indicated by the building of the house, that we glorify Him. It is worshippers the Father seeketh,
worshippers in Spirit and in Truth (John 4).
On account of their neglect, neglect of Himself and the honour
of His Name, as centered in the house, He could not give the blessing He is so
willing to bestow upon His people. He
withheld the dew and the rain; He prevented the fruitfulness of the fields, and
all else was stunted, on account of their attitude toward Him.
“It was Jehovah who blighted their
selfish efforts. He was dealing with
them on account of their unbelief and neglect.
It was not because He loved them not, but because He did. ‘Whom the Lord
loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.’ When the Lord
allows persons to go away without rebuke, it is the sure sign that all
practical bond is broken - if any bond did exist - that He now disowns them,
for a time at least. Hence these very
chastenings of the Jewish remnant were the proof that His eyes were still over
them, and that He felt their negligence of Him and resented - in divine
faithfulness - the failure of His people
in the care of His glory.”*
* William Kelley.
THE
SECOND ADDRESS
CHAPTER l: 12-15
The Spirit of God carried home the burning message of rebuke,
and that happened which did not happen with the generation before the
captivity. They considered their
ways. They took it to heart. They knew the Lord had spoken, and that He,
was right, the rebuke well earned. Happy
are all those who act always in this way, who humble themselves and are
obedient to the Lord. It is a refreshing
scene which the twelfth verse records.
They all united, Zerubbabel, Joshua, and all the remnant of the
people. There was not one dissenting
voice. They all obeyed the Lord and the
words of the prophet.
“Then Haggai, the Lord’s messenger,
spoke again in the Lord’s message unto the people.”
It is striking how it is made prominent that he did not speak of
himself, but was the Lord’s messenger and brought the Lord’s message. Would
to God that all those who claim the dignity of a minister of the Gospel were all
the Lord’s messengers, and spake nothing but the Lord’s message. The greatest curse in Christendom today is
the man who claims to be the Lord’s servant, but has no message from the Lord,
for the reason that he has lost faith in the Word of God.
Another has pointed out the fact that Haggai is the one
prophet who is directly called Jehovah’s messenger. He is the least of the post-exilic prophets,
yet the Lord puts this honour upon him.
In spite of his inferior style, according to the critics, the Lord owns
him by this title of distinction.
And what was his message at this time? “I am with you, saith the Lord.”
That is the content of the second address; just one sentence. But what a sentence it is! What assurance it brings to the heart, and
how it inspires faith to action. “I am
with you, saith the Lord.” Such is our
blessed assurance. “Lo, I am with
you always, even unto the end of the age.” And as we look
to Him and trust Him there is power.
The result was a mighty revival in the good work. The Lord stirred them up through His Word,
the brief message He sent. Every true
revival begins the same way. It has been
well said, “I am with you, is the saying principle for
faith in the weakest possible day, and let me add, what had they better in the
brightest day?”
THE
THIRD ADDRESS
CHAPTER 2: 1-9
Over a month later, after a good deal of work had been done,
the prophet delivered his third message.
He is commanded to speak to the same company, headed by Zerubbabel and Joshua;
but here the remnant of the people, the exiles who had returned, is also
included. If we consult Ezra 3: 10 we find that many old men, who had seen
the temple of Solomon, burst out in weeping when the small foundation was laid
for the new temple. A similar feeling
possessed the people when they resumed the temple work after Haggai’s first
message. In comparison with the former
temple, so grand and glorious, the new temple was a feeble and insignificant
affair. The prophet begins his message
by asking, “Who is left among you that saw this house in its former
glory, and how do ye see it now? Is it
not in your eyes as nothing?” No doubt there was
additional weeping when the prophet asked these questions.
Haggai then becomes the Prophet of
Comfort and of Hope. “Yet now be
strong” is in
literal translation, “And now be comforted, 0 Zerubbabel, saith Jehovah; be
comforted, Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be comforted all the
people of the land, saith Jehovah; for I am with you saith the Lord of Hosts.”
They were discouraged on account of the smallness of their cause. It is then when the Lord delights to comfort
and to cheer his trusting people. He was
with His people, though now no longer a mighty host as of old, but only a small remnant; yet had He not
forgotten the Word which He covenanted with them, when He brought them out of
[* So also in Old Testament times, the Holy Spirit indwelt every obedient
believer.]
Verses 6-9 contain the great prophecy concerning the future. It takes us beyond the time of Haggai, past
this present age, and puts before our hearts the same great and glorious day
when Christ comes again, when there shall be greater glory and peace. The question is, who is the desire of all
nations? It merits a closer examination,
for the critics have laboured to explain away the Messianic meaning of this
sentence and rob it of its true meaning.
For instance, Canon Driver in
the “Century Bible” makes the following
comment: “The desirable things of all nations shall
come, i.e., their costly treasures will be brought to beautify the temple.” The Hebrew is a peculiar phrase; the subject
is a noun, feminine, singular; the predicate is a plural masculine. The word “Chemdath” - desire, is the same as used in Daniel 11: 37, the desire of women. If literally translated it would read thus: “And the
desire of all nations, they shall come.” The Septuagint therefore translates it, “the choice
things of all nations shall come;” others have rendered it in the
following ways: “The things desired by all nations
shall come,” with the interpretation that it is the Gospel; “all the Gentiles shall come with their delightful things;”
“the beauty of all the heathen;” “they shall come to the desire of all nations;” “with the desire of all nations;” the “choicest of all nations (that is the best of them) will come,” etc.
With all these suggested renderings of the difficult phrase there can be
no question that it points to Christ, and must be interpreted as a great
Messianic prophecy. The most ancient
comments are on this line altogether.
Christ is the object of the desire of all nations. This does not necessarily mean that He is
subjectively the desire of the nations, but He is objectively, for through Him
alone the nations can he blest and receive the righteousness and peace which
they need.
First, the announcement is made, “I will shake
the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land.”
Have these convulsions been?
While there have been the shakings of kingdoms in the political sense,
and the earth has often been shaken physically and otherwise, this prophecy is yet to be fulfilled.
The Holy Spirit bears witness to it in the New Testament, for we read in Hebrews 12: 26 and 27,
“Whose
voice then (at
Sinai in a physical manifestation) shook the earth; but now He hath promised, saying,
Yet once more I shake not the earth only but also heaven. And the word Yet once more, signifieth the
removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that
those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved (the
coming [millennial]
kingdom and not the church) let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with
reverence and godly fear.”
This settles the question as to the futurity of this prophecy. Critics
have objected to this interpretation on account of the statement that this
universal shaking is to be in “a little while.”
They apply it therefore to the nearer political events of that
period. But the future in prophecy is
often fore-shortened, and besides this, the little while is not man’s little
while, but God’s; with Him a thousand
years is as a day. Furthermore, in
the political events of the times which followed the restoration of the Jews
from
It is important to read the ninth
verse in the right way, as our Authorized Version is incorrect. It does not say in the Hebrew, “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than the
former,” but the Hebrew is, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts; and in this place will I give peace,
saith the Lord of hosts.” The house of course is
the temple. The visible glory dwelt once
in the former house; the day is coming when there will be greater glory, the
day of His glorious manifestation; then in connection with His coming and that coming
restoration, He will give peace.
THE
FOURTH ADDRESS
CHAPTER 11: 10-19
A few
mouths later Haggai delivered another address of moral instruction and
admonition. The question the prophet
asks first is answered by the priests negatively. This is followed by a second question, “If one that
is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean?” This they answered affirmatively; for he that
is defiled puts defilement upon everything he handles. When they had given the right answers, the
prophet makes the moral application. “So is this
people, and so is this nation before me, saith Jehovah; and so is every work of
their hands; and that which they offer thereon is unclean.”
All their works and offerings were unclean, because they were in that
condition. They had to be cleansed first.
Separation from evil, from that which defiles, was therefore demanded. So it
is today. The order is “cease to do
evil” and then “learn to do
well.” We are, as Christians, no less exhorted
to purge ourselves, to separate from evil, and then to become fit vessels for
the Master’s use.
And then the Lord challenges them to prove Him, to see if they
separate from evil, are wholly for Him, how faithful He is going to be to
them. “From this day,” the
day of a true return to the Lord followed by obedience and separation, “I will bless
you.”
THE
FIFTH ADDRESS
CHAPTER 2: 20-23
The final address of Jehovah’s messenger is altogether
prophetic. It is addressed exclusively
to Zerubbabel, the governor, a son of David.
He tells the princely leader that the heavens and the earth will be
shaken; it is the same as in verse 6. When that comes the throne of the kingdoms
will be overthrown; the power of the kingdoms of the nations (the ten kingdoms;
Dan. 3) will be destroyed, for in that day,
the falling stone, typifying the Second Coming of Christ, will make an end of
Gentile dominion. The battle of
Armageddon will take place and end the military power of these nations. Zerubbabel, the son of David, is the type of
Christ, the Son of David. He will then receive the throne of His father David. He will be made a signet. The signet-ring was among those nations a
mark of honour. It was given by monarchs
to their prime-ministers, conferring all authority upon them. Thus the Lord Jesus Christ is pictured as
receiving from God the rule and authority.
* *
*
11
The
Prophet Zechariah
INTRODUCTION
Zechariah is the great prophet of the restoration, and, as
stated in the introduction to Haggai, was contemporary with him. The prophecies in both books are dated. These are as follows: -
In the sixth month of Darius’s second
year Hag. chap.1
In the seventh month of the same year Hag. 2: 1-9
In the eighth month, the same year Zech. 1: 1-6
In the ninth month, the same year Hag. 2:10-23
In the eleventh month, he same
year Zch. 1
- 6: 15
In the fourth year of Darius, ninth
month Zech. 7-14
Zechariah is named in Ezra 5: 1
and 6: 14; he was of priestly descent, which
we learn by consulting Nehemiah 12: 4, 16. His name means “Jehovah
remembers.” He was the son of
Berechiah, which means “Jehovah will bless;”
and his grandfather’s name was Iddo; Iddo means “the
appointed time.” These are
significant names; one might say the great prophetic message of Zechariah is
given in these three names in a nutshell.
For the covenant-keeping God remembers His people, which the visions and
messages of Zechariah show. When He
remembers them He will bless them, but it will be at the appointed time, and
the appointed time has not yet come, hence the greater part of Zechariah
remains unfulfilled.
He was born in
According to ancient sources he lived to be a very old man,
and was buried alongside of Haggai in
HIS
GREAT MESSAGE
Zechariah in his message does not
rebuke the people on account of their slackness in building the house of the
Lord, as we learned Haggai did, though his great prophecies were given to
encourage the remnant in their work. The
horizon of Zechariah’s visions and prophecies is far more extended than the
horizon of the other minor prophets. He
covers the entire future of
The Gentile world-powers, as prophetically announced in
Daniel’s great visions, are seen by him as domineering over
THE
MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN ZECHARIAH
Zechariah has more to say about Christ, His Person, His Work
and His Glory than all the other minor prophets combined. We mention here the more direct predictions
found in the book; there are others, which will be pointed out in the
Annotations.
1.
He speaks of Christ as “The Branch.” This is one of
the names of our Lord revealed to Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isa.
4: 2; Jer. 23: 5). Zechariah
speaks of Him twice under this title, in chapters 3
and 6.
2.
A great prediction concerning Christ is found in the sixth chapter, when
the prophet is commanded to order the crowning of the high-priest, symbolical
of our Lord, who is the crowned King-Priest.
3.
In chapter 9: 9, 10 we have the
familiar passage quoted in the New Testament concerning Christ’s entrance into
4.
He speaks of Him as the Shepherd, and the price of His betrayal, the thirty
pieces of silver, also quoted in the New Testament. Chapter 11: 12,
13 and Matt. 27: 9, 10.
5.
Another great Messianic prophecy is recorded in chapter
12: 10. Here His death on the
cross is predicted, and that He is the pierced One, on whom they shall look, on
account of whom they shall yet mourn. (See John 19
and Revelation 1.)
6.
Still another prophecy
relating to the sufferings of Christ is chapter 13:
7. The sword is to awake against
the Man, who is the fellow of God; that sword is to smite Him.
7.
Finally, we mention the passage in the last chapter, where the prophet
describes Him as coming for the salvation of His waiting people, and that His
feet in that day shall stand on the
There is an interesting Jewish work on Zechariah, the Yalkut of Zechariah. It gives interesting comment on his
prophecies. The great teacher Abarbanel confessed his inability to
interpret these visions. How could he
with his denials that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. And the much honoured Jewish exegete, Solomon Ben Jarchi, declared “his prophecy is very abstruse, for it contains visions
resembling dreams, which want interpreting; and we shall never be able to
discover the true interpretation until the teacher of righteousness arrives.”
That teacher, the Holy Spirit, has come. He guides us now into all Truth; He makes
plain things to come, as revealed in the prophetic Word. By comparing Scripture with Scripture, and
avoiding the “private interpretation” against which Peter warns (2
Peter 1) we understand the visions, which two of the greatest Hebrew
scholars and teachers declared unexplainable.
-------
The
Divisions of Zechariah
For a correct understanding of the book, the correct divisions
must be first of all ascertained. We give,
therefore, first the scope of the book.
After an introduction comprising the first six verses of the first
chapter, we have the record of his great Night-visions.
1. The Vision of the Man upon the Red
Horse Among the Myrtles. 1: 7-17.
2. The Four Horns and the Four
Smiths. 1:
18-21.
3. The Man with the Measuring
Line. Chapter
2.
4. The Vision concerning the Cleansing
of the High-Priest. Chapter 3.
5. The Vision of the Candlestick with
the Two Olive Trees. Chapter 4.
6. The Vision of the Flying Roll. 5: 1-4.
7. The Woman in the Ephah. 5: 5-11.
8. The Vision of the Four
Chariots. 6:
1-8.
Some have made ten visions out of it instead of eight; there
is no need for that. The vision which
they divided is the one in chapter 1: 18-21. But this is one vision; and so is the vision
in chapter 4. After these visions had been given the young
prophet was commanded to make crowns of silver and gold and crown the
high-priest. It was a great symbolical
action, foretelling Him, who wore on earth the crown of thorns, and who will be
crowned with many crowns when the night is gone and the day breaks.
This is the first section of the book. The second section is contained in chapters 7 and 8. It is a kind of parenthesis. Questions concerning certain fasts had been
asked by the prophet; they were answered by the Lord and their interesting
answers are recorded in these two chapters.
The third section is contained in chapters
9-14; it is the most majestic part of the book. It is arranged in two parts, each beginning
with the phrase “The Burden of the Word of the Lord.”
The first Burden is chapter 9: l and
the second is chapter 12: 1. It reveals in a remarkable manner the future
of
-------
Analysis
and Annotations*
*We call the attention of the reader to the author’s
book, “Studies in Zechariah” for a
complete exegesis.
1.
THE NIGHT VISIONS
Chapter 1 - 6: 15
CHAPTER 1
1. The Introduction. 1-6.
2. The First Night Vision. 7-17.
3. The Second Night Vision. 18-21.
1. The Introduction: Verses 1-6.
The first utterance of Zechariah concerns the past. “The Lord hath been sore displeased
with your fathers.” They were a disobedient,
stiff-necked people. The pre-exilic
prophets had called them to repentance, but they did not hearken. Then he gives the message to turn to the
Lord, with the promise that He will turn to them; they should not be like their
fathers. And their fathers, where were
they? They had passed away like the
disobedient ones in the wilderness; God’s judgment and displeasure had
overtaken them and they perished.
2. The First Night Vision: Verses 7-17.
After this opening message with its call to return, delivered
probably before the assembled congregation, the prophet received his great
night-visions. These were not mere
dreams, but the things he describes passed before him in divine vision. He beheld them in one night. They were not only given in one night, but
just as one followed the other without interval, so are they closely connected,
giving progressively coming events.
There is, of course, to a certain extent in some of these visions the
message of hope for the Jewish remnant of that day, but the visions concern the
future, and can only be understood in the light of other prophecies concerning
the end of the age and the glorious future of
Without quoting the text in full we give the interpretation of
each vision. He beheld an army of riders
upon different coloured horses, led by a man riding a red horse, who is the
centre of the vision. There is an
interpreting heavenly messenger, to whom the prophet turns to find out who the
riders are. They do not represent the
Persians, as some expositors have stated; they are angels. It is the man upon the red horse who
speaks. “These are they whom the Lord
hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth.”
The riders upon the horses give their report to the man in the
middle. “Behold, all the earth sitteth
still and is at rest.”
Who is the rider upon the red horse? He is called the “Angel of the
Lord.” There is no question but that the rider and
the Angel of the Lord are the same person.
And the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is an uncreated Being; He
is the Son of God in His pre-incarnation glory.
There are three very good reasons for this interpretation. 1. The colour red identifies him with our
Lord. He is the Lamb of God who shed His
blood in redemption; He is the Lion of the tribe of
The report of the angelic hosts was that the earth sitteth
still and is at rest. The nations were
at rest, in the state of prosperity; but His people is in trouble, the land of
promise under Gentile rule and
dominion. While the cities of the
nations were increased and had plenty, the city of the King was under the hoof
of the Gentiles; His people suffered.
Such is the condition of things throughout the time of the
Gentiles. In our comment, written in
1899 we made the following remarks:
“Prosperity, universal prosperity,
and with it universal peace, is the cry at the close of another century, and
will be more so as we advance towards the end of this age. Civilization, world conquest, commercial
extension and a universal peace, seem to be the leading thoughts among the
nations of our times. Truly it is
realized by some that our boasted civilization, liberty and prosperity is
nothing but a smouldering volcano which may burst open at any moment and make
an end of all boasting, but the majority of the people even in Christendom are
sadly deluding themselves with idle dreams.
And what of God’s thoughts and His eternal purposes? What of His oath-bound covenant promises? They are being misinterpreted, set aside and
forgotten. Thus it will continue till
the climax is reached, so clearly foretold in the second Psalm.”
This forecast has come true; the great war has come and gone
and now the age is rapidly approaching its predicted end.
Then follows in the vision the intercessory cry of the Angel
of the Lord. It concerns in the first
place the indignation of the seventy years.
But that dispersion is the prophetic type of their greater
dispersion. What was true then
concerning the nations and the state of
3. The Second Night Vision: Verses 18-21.
He saw next four powerful horns, the emblems of the powerful
Gentile nations who have scattered
CHAPTER 2
1. The Man with the Measuring
Line. 1-2.
2. The Message of the Third Night
Vision. 3-9.
3. The Glorious Kingdom. 10-12.
1. The Man with the Measuring Line: Verses 1-2.
The third night vision is one of the coming glory. The number three stands in the Word of God
for resurrection, life from the dead.
Thus in Hosea, concerning Israel, “After two days Thou wilt revive us,
and on the third day Thou wilt raise us up” (Hosea 6:
2). In this third vision
Zechariah sees the glorious restoration of
First stands the man with the measuring line. He is to bear witness to the coming
enlargement of
2. The Message of the Third Night
Vision: Verses 3-9.
The angel who had talked with
Zechariah was met by another angel. He
brings the message to Zechariah, who is addressed as “this young
man.” The coming restoration and enlargement of
3. The Glorious Kingdom: Verses 10-12.
The singing times have come (see Zeph.
3).
CHAPTER 3
1. The Fourth Night Vision. 1-5.
2. The Message of the Vision. 6-10.
1. The Fourth Night Vision: Verses 1-5.
The fourth vision is like the first and second, closely
connected with the foregoing one. It
gives the crowning event of
The high-priest Joshua in this vision stands as a type of the
sinful nation and her priestly calling.
Like Joshua in filthy garments, the nation is unclean and defiled. Yet in spite of his filthy garments Joshua
was still the high-priest. The gifts and
calling of God are without repentance;
He is the enemy of
The filthy garments are removed by those that stand before the
angel of the Lord. The iniquity is taken
away, and in place of the filthy garments there is the rich apparel and the
fair mitre upon the head. How blessedly
all this is waiting for its fulfilment in
2. The Message of the Vision: Verses 6-10.
CHAPTER 4
1. The Fifth Night Vision. 1-10.
2. The Questions of the Prophet
Answered. 11-14.
1. The Fifth Night Vision: Verses 1-10.
There was a rest for the prophet
between the fourth and fifth night vision.
He had fallen into a deep sleep.
He may have been overcome by the grand and important visions, and is now
awakened by the angel with the question, “What seest thou?”
The new vision is a very striking one.
A golden candlestick appears before the seer. An oil receiver is seen on top, from which
the oil flows to the seven lamps of the candlestick through seven pipes. Two olive trees stand alongside of the
candlestick and hang their fruit-laden branches over the golden bowl, filling
it with oil, which flows through the seven pipes into the seven lamps. The question of the prophet, “What are these, my Lord?” is answered by the angel
with this statement, “This is the word of Jehovah to Zerubbabel, saying, Not by
might and not by power but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts. Who art thou, oh great mountain, before
Zerubbabel? Be a plain! He shall bring
forth the top-stone with shoutings of grace, grace unto it. The hands of Zerubbabel who have laid the
foundation shall also finish it, and they shall rejoice and see the plummet in
the hand of Zerubbabel - even the seven.
The eyes of the Lord shall run to and fro through the entire earth.”
The Church in the New Testament is
typified by a candlestick. The oil is
the emblem of the Holy Spirit. But this is not in view in this vision.
We call attention to the fact that the vision is one which
speaks of perfection, completion, fullness.
The perfect and divine number seven is found three times in the vision,
seven lamps, seven pipes and seven eyes.
The seven lamps are united to one stem, this is union, and above it, is
a golden bowl. The Spirit conquers, and
not power or might does it, but His power.
The great mountain becomes a plain.
The top-stone is brought forth and crowns the building which is finished
by Zerubbabel. Shoutings, “Grace, grace,
unto it,” are
heard, and the seven eyes run to and fro the whole earth. It is a vision of fullness and
accomplishment. The candlestick shines
and sheds its glorious light, its pure gold glitters and reflects the light of
the seven lamps. The bowl is filled with
oil, and the two olive trees give a continual supply. The high mountain removed, the temple
finished, joy and victory abound. The
candlestick in the vision is exactly like the one in the tabernacle, only the
two olive trees are something new. The
candlestick in the tabernacle represents Christ, the Light of the world, and is
likewise a type of the Jewish theocracy.
Theocracy, the government of this earth by the immediate direction of
God, is once to be established, and when it is, it will be like a bright and
glorious candlestick shedding light and dispersing the darkness. We think the Yalkut on Zechariah (a Hebrew
commentary), is not so very far out of the way when it says, “the golden candlestick is
2. The Questions of the Prophet
Answered: Verses 11-14.
The prophet asks two questions concerning the two olive trees
and the branches which give the oil through the golden pipe. The two olive trees, filled with the supply
of the Spirit, are in all probability the two witnesses of Revelation 11.
Their testimony is given during the second half of the last seven years
of the times of the Gentiles, Daniel’s seventieth week (see Dan. 9). It
is the time of the great tribulation and these two witnesses stand in close
relation with the establishment of the kingdom.
See Annotations on Revelation.
CHAPTER 5
1. The Sixth Vision. 1-4.
2. The Seventh Vision. 5-11.
1. The Sixth Vision: Verses 1-4.
The three remaining night visions are of a different
character. The first visions the prophet
had were visions of comfort for
The sixth night vision is the one of the flying roll. The prophet’s eyes seem to have been closed
after the fifth vision, for we read, “And I lifted up my eyes again.”
The flying roll he sees is twenty cubits long and ten cubits broad. The interpreting angel tells the prophet that
it is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole land; for every one
that stealeth shall be cut off on this side according to it, and every one that
sweareth shall be cut off on that side according to it. The Lord of hosts has brought it forth and it
is to enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him that
sweareth by His Name to a falsehood, and it shall lodge in the midst of His
house and consume it, both its wood and its stone.
That this vision means judgment is evident at the first
glance. Ezekiel had a similar
vision. “And when I looked, behold, an
hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; And he spread it
before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein
lamentations, and mourning, and woe (Ezek. 2: 9, 10).” Ezekiel was to eat that book. This reminds us at once of the books in Revelation (chapters 5
and 10), which are likewise connected with
God’s judgments in the earth. The flying
roll is written on both sides, signifying the two tables of stone, the law of
God. Stealing and swearing falsely are
mentioned because the one is found on the one side of the two tables of stone,
and the other on the other side.
However, it is no longer “Thou shalt not,” but on the flying roll are written
the curses, the awful curses against the transgressors of God’s law which are
now about to be put into execution. The
curse is found in its awful details, as it refers to an apostate people in Deuteronomy 27 and 28. The roll is of immense size, and on it are
the dreadful curses of an angry God. The
vision must have been one of exceeding great terror. Imagine a roll, probably illumined at night
with fire, moving over the heavens, and on it the curses of an eternal God -
wherever it moves its awful message is seen; nothing is hid from its
awe-inspiring presence. It reminds one
of the fiery handwriting on the wall in the king’s palace. Surely
such an awful judgment is coming by and by, when our God will keep silence no
longer. One of the sublimest
judgment Psalms, the fiftieth, mentions
something similar to this flying roll. “When thou
sawest a thief, then thou
consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue
frameth deceit. Thou sittest and
speaketh against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son. These things hast thou done, and I kept
silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself: but I
will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes” (Psalm
50: 18-21). The flying roll
stands undoubtedly in connection with wickedness, theft and false swearing, as
it is found in so many forms in unbelieving
2. The Seventh Vision: Verses 5-11.
The Angel commands the prophet to lift
up his eyes to behold another startling vision.
What are the leading figures in the vision? An ephah - which is a Jewish measure standing
here for commerce. The eyes of all the
land (or earth) are upon it.
Commercialism is very prominent in Revelation in connection with the
full measure of wickedness, the climax of ungodliness. In Revelation 18
merchants are mentioned who have grown rich through the abundance of her
delicacies. Then the merchants are seen weeping, for no man buys their merchandise
any more. And then a long list
follows, including all the articles of modern commerce. Compare this with the
awful description of the last times in James 5. Rich men are commanded to weep and howl, for
miseries are come upon them. They heaped
treasure together for the last days, and it was a heaping
together by fraud, dishonesty in keeping back the hire of the labourers. They lived in pleasure (luxuriously) and
were wanton. Indeed, here is that
burning question of the day, capital and labour, and its final outcome, misery
and judgment upon commercialism, riches heaped up, and all in wickedness. In Habakkuk 2:12
the woe of judgment of that coming glory of the Lord is pronounced upon him
that buildeth a town with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity! The people are seen labouring for the fire
and wearying themselves for vanity.
Luxuries, increase, riches, etc., are mentioned in the second and third
chapters of Isaiah, chapters of judgment.
Other passages could be quoted, but these are sufficient for our
purpose. They show us that the climax of
wickedness as it is in the earth when judgment will come, and
In the second place let us notice that in the midst of the ephah there is seen a woman. She
is called wickedness. The Hebrew word
wickedness is translated by the Septuagint with “avouia”. We find that the Holy Spirit uses the
same word in 2 Thess. 2: 8, and then shall
be revealed the wicked one (avouia) whom
the Lord Jesus will slay with the Spirit of His mouth. The woman in the ephah personifies
wickedness. She has surrounded herself
with the ephah and sits in the midst of it.
Have we not here the great whore having a golden cup in her hand full of
abominations and filthiness of her fornication? Undoubtedly. This woman is the type of evil and wickedness
in its highest form. Let us glance at
that wonderful description of that woman in Revelation. She is the great whore sitting upon many waters.
She sits upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy,
having seven heads and ten horns. The
woman is arrayed in purple and scarlet decked with gold, precious stones and
pearls. Upon her forehead is seen her
name, Mystery,
CHAPTER 6
1. The Eighth Vision. 1-8.
2. The Crowning of Joshua, the
High-Priest. 9-15.
1. The Eighth Vision: Verses 1-8.
The last vision is the vision of the four chariots. We notice the similarity with the first
night-vision. The visions opened with
the hosts of heaven upon red, speckled and white horses. It was a vision of judgment for the Gentiles
and a vision of comfort to
The riders halted in a valley amidst a myrtle grove, but the
chariots rush forth to execute their terrible work from between two mountains
of brass. These mountains mean
undoubtedly
The angel interprets to the prophet that the chariots are the
four spirits of the heavens which go forth from standing before the Lord of the
earth. These agencies for wrath were
with God, standing before Him, the Lord of all the earth, but now at His
command they descend to scatter death and destruction. They go forth in sets, and the north country
and south country both so prominent in the prophetic word are mentioned. The bay horses, however, are not confined to
one direction, they go through the entire earth. At last in the judgment of the land of the
north the Spirit is caused to rest. The
overthrow of the enemies of
2. The Crowning of the High-Priest: Verses 9-15.
The memorable night with its great visions was gone. The first streaks of the morning heralded the
coming dawn. Then the Word of the Lord
came to the young prophet commanding him to make crowns of silver and gold and
crown Joshua, the High-Priest.
Some consider this to be the ninth vision of the prophet. It is, however, the Word of the Lord which
comes to the prophet. There can be no
doubt but the command was actually carried out and Cheldai (robust), Tobiah
(God’s goodness), and Jedaiah (God knows), gave their silver and gold, and
crowns were made out of it and placed upon the head of Joshua the
high-priest. But the action had a much
deeper meaning. It was a highly typical
one. It must have astonished Joshua and
the people to hear such a command, for the
royal crown did not belong to the high-priest but to the descendant of David. He must have understood that the whole
command had a symbolical bearing. Joshua
hears it from the Word of the Lord that another person is only typified by him,
“Behold the man whose name is the
Branch.” It is
this man the Branch who will be a priest upon the throne. This,
of course, is our Lord Jesus Christ.
The name of the high-priest Joshua is in itself very significant, for
the meaning is, God is salvation, Saviour, Jesus. Pontius
Pilate was fulfilling prophecy when he stood there leading out Jesus of
Nazareth before that tumultuous multitude, and when he said “Behold the man.” If the assembled Jews had known the
Scriptures they would have recognized the phrase. But how did He then come forth? He wore a crown of thorns upon His meek and
loving brow, and the people gazed into the blood-stained face of the Lamb of
God now ready to be placed upon the altar and slain. But once again it will sound forth, “Behold the
man,” for when He appears it will be after He has
gathered His saints, and then He will come as the Son of Man in the heavens,
and the sign of the Son of Man will he seen there. He
will be crowned again, too, but not with the crown of suffering and shame, but
with the crowns of glory[; and the whole world
will see it!]. Thus He is seen in Revelation
19:12 as wearing many crowns.
He comes to build the
2. QUESTIONS CONCERNING CERTAIN FASTS
Chapters 7 - 8
CHAPTER 7
1. The Question. 1-3.
2. The Reproof. 4-7.
3. The Lessons of the Past. 8-14.
1. The Question: Verses 1-3.
Nearly two years had passed since Zechariah’s great visions, and
during that time the people had been obedient to the vision and built the
house. Soon the ancient worship was to
be resumed. A question arose in the
minds of the people concerning certain Jewish days of fasting. The principal day was the day set apart in
memory of the destruction of
2. The Reproof: Verses 4-7.
The word of the Lord comes now to the prophet. The message is for all the people and for the
priests. The two fasts are mentioned.
The one in the fifth mouth as already stated was the one in remembrance
of the destruction of the city. The fast
of the seventh month was kept on the anniversary of the murder of Gedaliah at
Mizpah, (Jeremiah 41). But why did they keep these fast days? Why do they keep these days indeed
still? The Lord asks, “Is it unto me, unto me?” No, it was not for the honour and glory of
God, but their own selfish interests were at the bottom of it. Indeed God had never asked them to fast. These institutions were man-made, and highly
displeasing to Jehovah. And is it not so
now, not alone with the Jews but with Christendom? Oh, the man-made institutions and outward
observances which only dishonour God and are for the selfish interests of the
people! The eating and drinking, the
fast being over, was not unto the Lord, but unto themselves. It was
obedience the Lord required.
Had they listened to the words spoken by the prophets they would not
have been in captivity, there would have been no need for a solemn fast. Unbelief was at the bottom of it all, and so
it is still with the nation in dispersion.
3. The Lessons of the Past: Verses 8-14.
Here are moral lessons and instructions. They were to execute true judgment, show
mercy and compassion, oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the poor or the
stranger. These were His demands in the
past, but their fathers did not listen, and as a result the judgment of the
Lord came upon them and they were scattered with a whirlwind. History has repeated itself. What happened in the past happened again.
CHAPTER 8
1. The Restoration Announced. 1-3.
2. The Peace of
3. The Return to the Land. 6-8.
4. The Blessing of the Land and the
People. 9-23.
1. The Restoration Announced: Verses 1-3.
The answer is now given to the question, and it is an answer
which none of the petitioners expected.
The answer is closely linked with the third night vision in chapter 2, for here is an enlarged prophecy
concerning the restoration of
2. The Peace of
The misery of
3. The Return to the Land: Verses 6-8.
They all return to the land.
In the second chapter the North country was mentioned (
4. The Blessing of the Land and the
People: Verses 9-23.
What a contrast with the former days of judgment and
dispersion and misery! For before these
day’s there was no hire for man, nor any hire for beast. ... Little fruit was had from the ground; there was nothing for man
and beast. ... Neither was there any
peace to him that went out or came in on account of the affliction. ... There was no rest, no peace, but
uncertainty and affliction. Those that
went out from the land had no peace, and they that came into the land found no
peace. The curse said, No rest for the
sole of their feet, and how literally it has been fulfilled. Again the people seek a resting place in the
land without their God and their Saviour, all in the confidence of the
flesh. They will succeed in their
restoration plans only to find themselves at last in greater difficulties and
facing worse afflictions than ever before.
Then every one will be against his neighbour (verse
10). Money spent by the millions
in building channels for irrigation, planting of trees and vines, building
railroads, etc. (just what modern Zionism proposes and has undertaken to do),
may succeed in transforming the land in spots into a fruitful garden, but the
time of Jacob’s trouble will sweep that all away. The Lord will be gracious to the very land in the day of His manifestation. There will
be a time of peace, the vine will give her fruit, the ground her increase, the
heavens their dew.
The curse will then be changed into a blessing and the remnant
will be a holy people. Fast days become
feast days; national calamities of the past are forgotten, and in the place of
weeping there is praise and worship. The
Songs of Praise with which the Book of Psalms closes will undoubtedly then be
sung by the restored nation. This great restoration chapter closes with a vision of the conversion of the whole
world (verses 20-23). The nations are seeking the Lord of Hosts in
3.
THE TWO PROPHETIC BURDENS - THE GREAT PROPHECIES OF THE FUTURE
Chapters 9-14.
1.
THE FIRST BURDEN
Chapters 9-11.
CHAPTER 9
1. The Burden of the
2.
3. The Near-event of the Invasion by
Antiochus Epiphanes. 13-17.
1. The Burden of the
The final section of Zechariah is of still greater
interest. The Deliverer, King Messiah,
is revealed in this section as suffering, rejected, pierced, slain. The great finale leads us up to the great
conflict and final siege of
The
But this prophetic burden leads us up also to the final days,
for we read here the promise that “no oppressor shall come over them any more.”
This brings it in connection with the final coming deliverance of
2.
A great prophecy follows.
The true King of Israel comes here before us in His humiliation, and
coming exaltation.
“Rejoice greatly, daughter of
Shout
aloud, daughter of
Behold
thy king cometh to thee,
Just
and having salvation;
Meek
and riding upon an ass,
Even
upon a colt, the she-ass’s foal;
And I will cut off the
chariot from Ephraim,
And the horse from
And the battle bow shall be
cut off,
And He shall speak peace
unto the nations,
And His dominion shall be
from sea to sea,
And from the river to the
ends of the earth.
As
for thee also, for the sake of thy covenant blood.
I send forth thy prisoners
from the waterless pit,
Return to the stronghold -
Prisoners of hope
Even today I declare I will
render double unto thee.”
This stands in contrast
to the Grecian conqueror, and it needs no proofs that the coming King whom
Zechariah beholds is the King Messiah. The Jews acknowledge it as such.
One of the greatest Jewish commentators (Rashi) says: It is impossible to interpret it of any other than
King Messiah. An interesting fable is
based upon this prophecy, and well known among orthodox Jews. Rabbi
Eliezer says, commenting on the words lowly and riding upon an ass, “This is the ass, the foal of that she-ass which was created
in the twilight. This is the ass which
Abraham our father saddled for the binding of Isaac his son. This is the ass upon which Moses our teacher
rode when he came to Egypt, as it is said, And he made them ride upon the ass (Exod. 4: 20). This is the ass upon which the Son of David
shall ride!” Other interesting
quotations could be given from Jewish writings, but this is sufficient to show
that the Jews believe it to be a Messianic prophecy. And
what blindness that they do not see Him who is the Messiah; but is not the
so-called “higher criticism” existing today in
Christendom being taught in churches and schools, that there are no Messianic
prophecies in the Old Testament, much greater blindness? Alas! so it is, and the outcome can be
nothing else in the end than the denial of the divinity of our Lord, or
Unitarianism.
Every reader of the New Testament knows that this prophecy is
quoted in the Gospels. In the Gospel of Matthew we read (chapter
21: 5): “All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken
by the prophet, saying, Tell the daughter of Sion, Behold thy King cometh unto
thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, upon a colt the foal of an ass.”
The context shows a great multitude crying, Hosanna to the Son of David:
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. But
soon the cry is changed unto, This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee. Notice the
Holy Spirit quoting from Zechariah leaves out the sentence, “He is just, having
salvation.” This is not an error, but it is the divine
right of the Spirit who gave the prophecies in olden times to apply them
correctly in the New Testament. In the
Gospel of Mark in the eleventh chapter there is likewise the description
of Christ’s entry into
We see from this that the four Gospels give each an account of
the entry of the Lord into
A superficial exposition of the Word claims that Zechariah’s
prophecy was fulfilled in the event recorded by the Gospels. As far as His entry into
It is His second
coming to
The tenth and eleventh verses show clearly that the prophecy is yet to be fulfilled, and can be
only fulfilled in the [second] coming of the Son of Man in His glory. One of the
reasons why modern Judaism rejects Jesus of Nazareth, and does not believe Him
to be the promised Redeemer, is in this prophecy. Rabbi
F. De Sola Mendes, of
Of course the Jew is
right in expecting the literal fulfilment of this prophecy, and it will
be fulfilled when He comes again and the restoration of all
things will follow, as spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets.
When He appears again, in like manner as He went into heaven,
that is not for His saints but [after the time
of the ‘First Resurrection’] with His saints, there will be peace for Ephraim
and for Jerusalem, and the kingdom is then
restored to Israel, that is, to the house of Judah and the house of
Israel. The chariot, the horse and the
battlebow will [then] be cut off.
Not alone will He bring peace to the covenant people but to [all] the nations.
He will speak peace. “And He shall
stand, and shall feed His flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of
the name of Jehovah His God, and they shall abide; for now shall He be great unto the ends of the earth. And this man shall be our peace” (Micah 5:
4, 5). There will be abundance of
peace (Psa. 72: 7). His
dominion will he from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth.
The prisoners of hope to be released,* by
the blood of the covenant, from the pit wherein there is no water, is the
nation whose captivity is now ended. How
strange that people should take a passage like this and interpret it as meaning
the restitution of the wicked and the ungodly from the pit. There is nothing taught in the Word like that
which some people term a larger hope.
The restitution (restoration) of all things is not left to the fanciful
interpretation of the human mind, but is clearly defined by the Word itself, as
spoken by the prophets. In the vision of
the dry bones in Ezekiel 37,
[* NOTE
This must also
refer to the time of the ‘First Resurrection’
of the holy dead from the underworld of Hades. Matt. 16: 18;
Luke 16: 19-31; Rev. 6: 9-11, etc.]
3. The Near-Event of the Invasion by
Antiochus Epiphanes: Verses 12-17.
The scene changes once more.
One of Alexander’s successors, Antiochus
Epiphanes, and the Maccabean victory is the topic of these verses. On this invader see Daniel
8, where he is predicted as the little horn and his abominable work
there is fully described. He entered “the pleasant
land,” the
This terrible visitation of the land and the wonderful victory
of the Maccabeans is foretold by the prophet in the closing verses of the ninth
chapter. We will quote the passage:-
“I bend for me
And
I will stir up thy sons,
And
make thee like the sword of a mighty man.
Jehovah
shall be seen over them,
And
His arrow shall go forth like lightning,
And
the Lord Jehovah shall blow the trumpet.
He
shall go with whirlwinds of the South.
The
Lord of Hosts shall cover them;
They
shall devour and tread down sling-stones,
And
they drink and make a noise as from wine.
And
they shall be filled like bowls, as the corners of the altar.
And
Jehovah their God saves them in that day, as the flock of His people;
For
jewels of a crown shall they be, glittering over His land,
For
how great is His goodness and how great His beauty!
Corn
shall make the young men flourish, and new wine maidens.”
But again we have to remark that this prophecy is only
partially fulfilled. The terrible
tribulation of the
We cannot leave this chapter without calling attention to the
blessed statement:-
“For jewels of a crown they shall be,
glittering over His land.”
The slain who suffered
martyrdom are meant, and all those who fought for Jehovah’s name and honour.
May not the statement in Hebrews 11
refer to this time? “Others had trials
of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were
stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the
sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins: being destitute, afflicted,
evil entreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and in
mountains and caves and the holes of the earth” (Heb.
11: 36-39).
And all will find a repetition during the coming tribulation, but the time for reward has not yet come. The
throne of glory is not yet revealed, and the jewels, the saints made up in a
crown, glittering over the land, are not yet seen. But the assurance is given, “They shall be
Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day* when I make up my jewels” (Mal. 3: 17).
[* See 2 Pet. 3: 8.]
The first verse of the next chapter is misplaced; it belongs
to the close of chapter 9. When the time of blessing comes, the latter
rain will fall upon the land and produce the promised fruitfulness.
CHAPTER 10: 2-12.
1. The Apostasy of
2. The Victory over the Enemies. 5-7.
3. Deliverance and Restoration. 8-12.
1. The Apostasy of
Idolatry was the great sin of both
The fourth verse is of much
interest. “From him will be the cornerstone,
from him the nail, from him the battle-bow, from him every ruler goeth forth at
once” (corrected
translation). The nail in the Oriental
house is a large pin, often very beautifully ornamented, and the most costly
things are hanged thereupon. “And I will
fasten him as a nail in a sure place and he shall be for a glorious throne to
his father’s house. And they shall hang
upon him all the glory of his father’s house” (Isa. 22:
23, 24). The Shemoth rabbah, a Jewish interpretation, says on this verse, “this is King David; as it is said, the stone which the
builders rejected is become the chief cornerstone.” Some say it is spoken concerning the Lord, that He is the cornerstone
and the nail. It refers to Him, no doubt, but what is spoken of Him finds also
a fulfilment in restored
2. The Victory over the Enemies: Verses 5-7.
The great final victory is announced
in this section. They shall fight and
conquer, for the Lord of hosts is with them as of old. They will be saved out of the time of Jacob’s
trouble, “For I have mercy
upon them; and they shall be as though I
had not cast them off; for I am the
Lord their God, and I will hear them.”
Ephraim will be there, the
restored ten tribes.
3. Deliverance and
Restoration: Verses 8-12.
They will be delivered in that
day, redeemed and restored. Let us
notice that the eleventh
verse must be applied to the Lord.
He is with them in the sea of affliction, as He was with them in
CHAPTER 11
1. The Judgment of the Land; the
2. The True Shepherd Set Aside and
Rejected. 7-14.
3. The Foolish Shepherd. 15-17.
1. The Judgment of the Land; the
Verses 1-6.
This chapter presents a dark prophetic picture. We have seen in the preceding chapters the
blessings and mercies in store for the
The correct interpretation is that it includes all the devastation
of the land, the burning of the temple, the slaughter of the flock, the
spoiling of the shepherds, the Jewish leaders and the complete overthrow of the
land and of the people. How awful the
fulfilment of the prophecy has been! The
Lord’s voice, full of tears cried, long after Zechariah’s mournful vision, “If thou hadst
known, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now
they are hid from thine eyes! For the
days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee and
compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side. And shall lay thee even with the ground, and
thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon
another.” The measure was full. After terrible wars amongst themselves, the
fire advanced in the direction from
2. The True Shepherd Rejected: Verses 7-14.
The prophet acts again symbolically in taking two staves, one
called Beauty, the other Bands. Much has
been written on this interesting but difficult passage. The first sentence speaks of divine
love. The true Shepherd came, the
Messiah, and He fed the flock of slaughter, the poor of the flock. He looked on the multitudes and was moved
with compassion, for they were scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. The
prophet as representing the true Shepherd has two staves. The one is named Beauty; or, as we read in
the margin, graciousness. The second one
is named Bands. The Shepherd carries a
staff to protect and to guide His flock.
God’s Mercy and Favour are clearly indicated in these two staves. The first one, Beauty, which is cut asunder
first, and that before the wages of the Shepherd, the thirty pieces of silver,
are given, stands no doubt for the gracious offer with which the King, preaching the kingdom,
came among His people, to His own. He
proclaimed that which prophets had spoken before, God’s mercy and love, long
promised, now to be carried out. He
Himself had come to redeem His people and deliver them from their mighty
enemies as well as from the false leaders.
But the offer, the kingdom preaching, is rejected, the staff,
Beauty, is cut asunder, the covenant with the peoples (Amim in Hebrew), His
own, is now broken. The kingdom is to be taken away and given
to another nation. After the breaking of
the staff, Beauty, there comes the giving of the wages, the thirty pieces of
silver. The Shepherd who broke the staff is treated like a slave.
The second staff in His hands, Bands, speaks of union, binding together, bringing into fellowship. It typifies the priestly side of the good
Shepherd who died for the flock. This
staff is broken after the thirty pieces were given for Him, and cast into the
temple. They cried, Away with Him! we
have no King save Ceasar! Crucify
Him! His blood be upon us and upon our
children! The cross bears the superscription,
This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, and from the lips of the
rejected King and Shepherd there came the prayer for His people, Father,
forgive, them for they know not what they do.
The doom came not at once upon the nation. Once more the love of the Shepherd is
preached to the miserable sheep, and the remission of sins offered in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it ends in rejection too; no bringing together
into One followed. The foolish shepherd
appears next, and after him the good Shepherd will appear again with His two
staves, Beauty and Bands, kingdom and mercy, bringing and binding
together. He will then be a Priest upon
His throne. This interpretation is the
most satisfactory one, and in harmony with the entire scope of Zechariah’s
visions and prophecies.
Who are the three shepherds to be cut off in one mouth by the
Shepherd? The three shepherds are not
persons, but they stand for the three
classes of rulers which governed
But there are mentioned the wretched of the flock that gave
heed unto the Shepherd, and they knew that it was the word of Jehovah. These
wretched ones are the faithful ones who followed the Shepherd, the small
remnant (compare with chapter 13: 7). The others who rejected the King and the
Shepherd were indeed not fed, but were dying and cut off.
The wages of the good Shepherd, thirty pieces of silver, and
these thrown into the house of Jehovah to the potter is to be considered next. Thirty
pieces of silver was the price of a slave who had been killed. If the ox gore a man-servant or a
maidservant, the owner shall give unto their master thirty shekels of silver (Exodus 21: 32).
Oh, what unfathomable love! The
Lord from heaven became like a slave.
The love He looked for He found not.
It was refused to Him, and instead He was insulted, mocked and treated
like a miserable slave. There was one of
the twelve who was called Judas Iscariot. He went to the chief priests and
said, What are you willing to give me, and I will deliver Him unto you? And they weighed unto him thirty pieces of
silver (Matt. 26: 14). The money at the command of Jehovah is thrown
away by the prophet with indignation into the house of Jehovah, to the
potter. Perhaps the prophet never knew
the real significance of his act, but we know it from the New Testament. “Then Judas
which betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned, repented himself and
brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
saying, I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood. But they said, What is this to us? See thou to it. And he cast down the pieces of silver into
the sanctuary, and departed and hanged himself.
And the chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, It is not
lawful to put them into the treasury since it is the price of blood. And they, took counsel and bought with them
the potters’ field to bury strangers in.
Wherefore that field was called the field of blood unto this day. Then
was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah, the prophet, saying, And they
took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him that was priced, whom
certain of the children of Israel did price, and they gave them for the
potters’ field, as the Lord appointed me” (Matt. 27: 3-9). How striking the [literal] fulfilment.
However, here is a difficulty. In
Matthew it is stated that Jeremiah spoke the prophecy, and Zechariah’s name is
not mentioned at all. How can this be
explained?
The prophecy certainly as it was fulfilled was not given by
Jeremiah at all, but through Zechariah.
There can be no doubt that his name should appear here instead of
Jeremiah, but that Jeremiah’s name is quoted must have a meaning. Let us notice that it does not say in Matthew 27 that it was written by Jeremiah, but it is stated that it
was spoken by Jeremiah. Is there anything in Jeremiah which can be
linked with this prophecy? We have
indeed in Jeremiah a similar action of the prophet, corresponding to Zechariah 11: 13, and which is seen fulfilled in
the Gospel. Read Jeremiah 18 and 19. The word “Tophet” used there means an unclean place, a
burial ground. Jeremiah’s name appears
in Matthew’s Gospel, to call attention to the fact that Jeremiah also spoke of
the same event, the rejection of the true Shepherd.
3. The Foolish Shepherd: Verses 15-17.
The foolish shepherd is
the false Messiah, the man of sin, the son of perdition.
The prophet impersonates him likewise.
He no longer holds the staves of Beauty and Bands, but has the
instrument of the foolish shepherd to wound and to hurt. This false Christ is the opposite from the
true Christ. The true Shepherd came to
seek, to save, to feed, to heal and to gather; the false shepherd does the
opposite.
The true One rejected, the nation becomes the prey of the
foolish shepherds. Poor, blinded
The eleventh chapter in Zechariah is the darkest in
THE
SECOND BURDEN OF ZECHARIAH
Chapters 12 - 14
CHAPTER 12
1.
2. The Vision of the Pierced One and
its Results. 10-14.
1.
The second burden begins with this chapter. It is wholly unfulfilled with the exception
of the prophecy at the end of chapter 13
concerning the Shepherd who was smitten.
The great future events recorded in these closing chapters of Zechariah
are the following: The victory of Jerusalem, the overthrow of the hostile
nations from the west (the nations which constitute the revived Roman Empire),
the outpouring of the [Holy] Spirit upon the remnant, the appearing and the
vision of the Pierced One, the national repentance, the cleansing of the
people, the invasion from the north, the appearing of Christ standing upon the
Mount of Olives, the establishment of the [millennial] kingdom and the glory of Jerusalem. Historically no such gathering of all nations
against
“Behold, I
make
To all the nations round
about:
Upon
In the siege against
Jerusalem.
And it shall come in that
day,
I make
All that are burdened with it
shall he wounded
All the nations of the earth
shall gather against it.”
This does not take place till the end of the age is reached,
the end which begins after the true Church [“able to escape all that is about to happen,” (Luke 21: 36, NIV)]
is taken to glory. Then the nations
satanically blinded will form the confederacy which in prophecy is the
reconstruction of the
In 1899 the author wrote as follows: “An
exodus of Jews will take place, the land will become theirs, and the well laid
plans and schemes of the present time will be carried out. Political combinations will be their chief
hopes for success.” This
anticipated return is now a historic fact as one of the chief results of the
great war. When finally the Jews think
that they have reached the goal of their fleshly, unbelieving hopes, their
greatest trouble begins. There is yet to
appear the Beast who makes a covenant with them. But according to Daniel’s great prophecy (Dan. 9) the covenant will be broken in the middle
of the seventieth week. Then the Beast
heads the armies of the nations to come up against the land and against
Here also is given the order of how the Lord will save the
remnant of His people. Those who live in
tents outside the city will be saved first;
[* Better to have written, - David’s Son shall be as God, as the Angel of Jehovah
before them: and David himself will, after his resurrection from amongst the dead,
be ‘before them’. ]
2. The Vision of the Pierced One and
its Results: Verses 10-14.
This is another great Messianic prophecy mentioned in the New
Testament. In John
19: 37 it is written, after the blessed side of our Lord had been
pierced, “And again another Scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they pierced.”
It is significant that the Holy Spirit speaking in the preceding verse, “that the
Scripture be fulfilled,” avoids this well known phrase in the verse we quoted and does not say that
the looking on Him has been fulfilled. It
was not then fulfilled, nor is it fulfilled during the age of Gospel preaching,
but its fulfilment comes in the day
which is prophetically described in the verses before us. Matthew 24: 30
and Revelation 1: 7 refer also to this
portion of our chapter.
We do not follow the rationalistic reasonings of the school of
criticism on this passage, nor do we mention the many question marks which
these modern infidels have put over against this great prophecy. One of the mildest critics, Canon Driver, says: “The passage is, however, one of those which our ignorance of
the circumstances of the time makes it impossible to interpret as a whole
satisfactorily or completely. As the
text stands the speaker must be, of course, Yahweh, and it is, no doubt, true
that the Jews had pierced Him metaphorically by their rebellion and ingratitude
throughout their history. ... ‘They pierced Him
literally and as the crowning act of their contumacy, in the Person of His Son
on the Cross’ (T. T. Perowne; quoted by
Driver), but these considerations do not explain the passage here.” The New Testament quotations as given above
are to any believer sufficient evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ is meant,
and therefore explain the passage fully.
What a day it will be when the Spirit of grace and
supplication comes upon the remnant of His people, when He appears in the
clouds of heaven, when they shall see Him and know Him by the pierced
side. The great vision of Saul on the
road to
CHAPTER 13
1. The Cleansing. 1.
2. The Blessed Results of the
Cleansing. 2-6.
3. The Smitten Shepherd. 7.
4. Salvation and Condemnation. 8-9.
1. The Cleansing: Verse 1.
This verse is misplaced; it belongs to the preceding
chapter. It is a prophecy of the
cleansing of the repenting portion of God’s earthly people. The fountain of cleansing, so beautifully
expressed by Cowper:-
There is a fountain filled
with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s
veins,
And sinners plunged beneath
that flood,
Lose all their guilty
stains -
was in existence throughout all the centuries of
2. The Blessed Results of the
Cleansing: Verses 2-6.
The cleansing is followed by the cutting off of the names of
the idols, so that they will no longer be remembered. The false prophets and
the unclean spirits, which had control during the great tribulation will be
cast out and forever pass away.
We have seen before in the 10th
chapter that
On the spot where the Lord’s house stood, there stands to-day
the mosque of the false prophet. All is
idolatry. Of course when the Lord
returns these false temples will be destroyed, and the Greek and Latin
idolatries, as well as Islam, will forever pass out of existence. There will be a purging of the land from
these abominations. This may be included
in the prophecy here. Still, it is the
people of
We must look to Revelation for a key. It is well known to all students of the
prophetic word that all which comes after the third chapter in the last book of
the Bible is future still. We are yet in
the things which are present. When the
Lord has taken the Church to Himself then the great visions, tribulations,
wrath and judgment will be fulfilled.
Aside from the scenes in heaven we learn from Revelation the events in
the earth during the great tribulation which ends with the wrath from heaven.
Now in the 9th chapter
and the 20th verse of Revelation we read, And the rest of mankind which
were not killed with these plagues repented not of the works of their hands
that they should not worship demons and the idols of gold, and of silver, and
of brass, and of stone, and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.
Who is the person mentioned in verse six? In “Studies in Zechariah” we speak of this man as
representing the counterfeit Christ, imitating the true Christ. But after more careful consideration we have
come to the conclusion that this view is untenable. It is Christ Himself. He is here contrasted with the false
prophets. It is the Pierced One. After they look upon Him they will inquire
about those wounds in His hands and He will answer them, revealing the story of
His rejection. This leads to the
prophecy in the next verse.
3. The Smitten Shepherd: Verse 7.
This certainly is Christ, whose rejection, more than His
rejection by His own, is here revealed.
It is the same as in Isaiah 53, the
suffering One, who is a man, and called My Fellow, the fellow of Jehovah of
Hosts, Jehovah Himself, who speaks here, and what does He speak? The sword is to work against His Shepherd and
against His own Fellow. The blessed
mystery of the atonement is thus brought out.
Indeed it is the heart of the Gospel here. For God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have
life eternal. The Lord, laid on Him the
iniquity of us all. It speaks of Him,
the forsaken One, the Son of God, forsaken in the hour of His agony, the sword
upon Him and against Him. In the New Testament we find the passage quoted in the Gospel of
Matthew, 26th chapter and 13th
verse: Then saith Jesus unto them, all ye shall be offended because of Me
this night; for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd and the sheep of the
flock shall be scattered abroad.
4. Salvation and Condemnation: Verses 8-9.
There is a very misleading idea among many students of
prophecy as if the statement of Romans 11: 25,
“all
CHAPTER 14
1. The Last Conflict and the
Manifestation of the Lord. 1-5.
2. The Complete Salvation. 6-11.
3. The Punishment of the Enemies. 12-15.
4. The Conversion of the World. 16-19.
5. The Holiness of
1. The Last Conflict and the
Manifestation of the Lord: Verses 1-5.
Post-millennialism has tried to find some explanation of this
chapter, but has failed. The common view
that the destruction of
Nor is it true that previous sieges have fulfilled this
chapter. Ptolemy Soter took
What siege then is it?
Some premillennial expositors have a very convenient way of calling
everything “the battle of Armageddon” and claim that the twelfth and the
fourteenth chapters predict one and the same event. But this is erroneous. It is not the Beast, the head of the ten
kingdoms, the Roman revived Empire. The
details of prophecy concerning the last events can only be understood by
distinguishing between the leaders of opposition. There is the Beast, the political head of the
Western nations, the little horn of Daniel 7. He is in league with the second Beast, coming out of the earth, with two horns
like a lamb (Rev. 13). This is the false Christ, the man of sin, who
is also called in Revelation the false prophet. He has his seat in
“And Jehovah my God shall come, and
all the saints with Thee.” Different manuscripts
and versions have instead of “with Thee” - “with
Him.” But the difficulty is cleared up when we
consider that it is the Seer who addresses Jehovah, whose feet shall stand on
the
2. The Complete Salvation: Verses 6-11.
Verses six and seven have been
rendered in different ways, and have been differently interpreted.
“And it shall come to pass in that day
That
the light shall not be with brightness and with gloom,
And
the day shall be One.
It
shall be known unto Jehovah.
Not
day and not night.
And
at evening time there shall be light.”
We believe that the passage means the physical phenomena in
nature which are always connected with the day of the Lord (see Amos 5: 18; 8: 9; Joel 2: 31; Matt. 24: 30, and
other passages). Changes will then occur
which will mean that the present order of day and night are superseded by another
order, so that when the evening time comes it will be light. That day will just be one day of light and
glory. The glory light will probably he
shining throughout the thousand years, and cover the earth as the waters cover
the deep.
From verse eight we learn
that living waters shall go out from
Other physical changes in the land are indicated in verse ten, and from verse
eleven we learn that there shall be no more curse and that
3. The Punishment of the Enemies: Verses 12-15.
This is the description of the dreadful punishment which will
befall the enemies in that day. It is to
be read in connection with the third verse, the Lord fighting against those
nations, and the punishment will be upon them when He appears. Thus it is seen in Revelation
19. He appears, and after His
appearing there is the scene of punishment of the enemies. “And I saw an angel standing in the
sun; and he cried with a loud voice to all the birds that fly in mid heaven,
Come and be gathered together unto the great supper of God; that ye may eat the
flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the
flesh of horses and them that sit thereon, and the flesh of all men, both free
and bond and small and great” (Rev. 19: 17, 18).
“And they shall go forth, and look
upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm
shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an
abhorring unto all flesh” (Isa. 66: 24).
4. The Conversion of the World: Verses 16-19.
It is clear from this passage that some nations, or
representatives of nations, will be left of those who came against
On the other hand verses 17-19
acquaint us with the fact that even
during the coming age of the kingdom-glory there will be disobedience among the
nations, which will be fully demonstrated at the close of the millennium, when
a final revolt takes place.
5. The Holiness of
The most holy person in
And of the new Jerusalem it is written, “There shall
in no wise enter into it any thing unclean, or he that maketh an abomination
and a lie, but only they that are written in the Lamb’s book of life. ...
Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the
murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie” (Rev. 21:
27 and 22: 15).
* * *
12
The
Prophet Malachi
We know nothing of the person of this prophet. His name only is given in the record. Critics have therefore doubted whether
Malachi is really the personal name of the prophet, and many believe that it is
merely an ideal name, given to the unknown person, on account of his
message. Malachi means “My Messenger” or “the
Messenger of Jehovah.” The Targum
Jonathan, an Aramaic paraphrase, adds after the name of Malachi, “Cujus nomen
appelatur Ezra soriba,” whose name is called Ezra the Scribe, thus
claiming that the great and good Ezra is Malachi. But why should Ezra hide behind an assumed
name? This is unworthy of the man, and
more so of the Holy Spirit. Many of the
leading expositors have accepted the theory that Malachi is the official name
of the prophet, whoever he may have been.
One of the reasons for this theory is that “the
first verse does not contain any further persona description, and that nothing
is said about his father or place of birth.” But Obadiah and Habakkuk show the same
omissions. Nor is it true that nothing
was known historically of a person by name of Malachi. The Talmud has a statement which makes
Malachi a member of the great synagogue, to which also the two post-exilic
prophets Haggai and Zechariah belonged.
Other traditions claim that he was of the tribe of Zebulon, born in
Supha. There is no reason to doubt that
Malachi is the real name of the prophet.
THE
DATE OF HIS PROPHECY
This also has caused a great deal of dispute. That he prophesied after the captivity has
never been doubted. Furthermore, the
reading of his utterances makes it clear that he prophesied after Haggai and
Zechariah. We learn that the temple had
been completely finished, and the temple worship with priests had been restored
for a number of years. After Ezra and
Nehemiah’s beneficent influence had passed the people went into a decline, and
the conditions which the prophet rebukes were the results of their
backsliding. The abuses which were
corrected by Ezra and Nehemiah had taken hold upon the people again. The exact time can hardly be fixed. It seems by comparing Malachi 1: 8 with Nehemiah 5: 15
and 18 that Nehemiah was no longer governor
when Malachi exercised his office.
THE
MESSAGE OF MALACHI
As the last prophetic voice
of the Old Testament, Malachi, in unison with all other prophets, announces the
coming of the Messiah and points once more to Him. The next prophetic voice, after the four
hundred silent years, is the voice in the wilderness, the herald of the King,
of whom Malachi predicted that he should come.
But the message of Malachi is overwhelmingly condemnatory. “The great moral
principle unfolded in this book is the insensibility of the people to that
which Jehovah was for them, and to their own iniquity with respect to Jehovah -
their want of reverence for God, their despisal of Jehovah. Alas! this insensibility had reached such a
point that, when the very actions which proved their contempt were laid before
their consciences, they saw no harm in them.
Nevertheless, this did not alter the purposes and counsels of God,
although it brought judgment upon these who were guilty of it” (see chapter 1: 2, 6, 2: 14, 3: 7, 13 - Synopsis).
It is unquestionably true that the spirit manifested by the
people in Malachi’s day assumed later the concrete forms expressed by the two
leading sects of Judaism, when our Lord was on earth, the Pharisees and the
Sadducees. “The
outward or grosser kind of idolatry had been rendered thoroughly distasteful to
the people by the sufferings of the exile; and its place was taken by the more
refined idolatry of dead-work righteousness, and trust in the outward
fulfilment of the letter of the divine commands without any deeper confession
of sins, or humiliation under the Word and the will of God.” It has been well stated that “Malachi is like a late evening, which brings a long day to a
close; but he is also the morning dawn, which bears a glorious day in its womb.” The shadows are dark, but there is the rising
of the Sun of Righteousness, still to take place, when all shadows flee away.
But beside the apostate masses of the people, steeped in a
dead formalism, there is seen in the book of Malachi the faithful remnant. It is interesting to follow this remnant, we
have so often mentioned in our annotations, through the entire Jewish history,
past, present and future. There was
always a godly remnant. We see that
remnant in the wilderness wandering of
In Romans 11 we read that
at the present time, during this age, there is likewise a remnant according to
the election of grace. It is not a small
remnant, who, during this age, turn to the Lord, believe on Christ and thus
become members of the Body of Christ, in which there is neither Jew nor
Gentile. And when the age closes, and
the nation faces the final calamity in the great tribulation, and the
acceptance of the false Christ, there will be that godly remnant, as we have so often shown in our comments on the
prophetic word.
THE
LESSONS FOR OUR AGE
The Jewish age with all its glorious manifestations of the
Lord in behalf of His people
THE
DIVISIONS OF MALACHI
We divide the prophecy of Malachi in six sections: 1. Jehovah’s Love for His People; chapter 1: 1-5.
2. The Rebuke of the Priests;
chapter 1: 6-2: 9. 3.
Rebuke of the Social Conditions; chapter 2: 10-16. 4.
The Announcement of the Messenger and the Day of the Lord; chapter 3: 1-6. 5.
Rebuke for Defrauding the Lord; chapter 3: 7-15. 6.
The Remnant and the Concluding Prophecy; chapter 3:
16-4: 6.
-------
Analysis
and Annotations
1. JEHOVAH’S LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE
CHAPTER 1: 1-5
The Message of Malachi begins with the sublime statement, “I have loved
you, saith Jehovah.” It is the message to
Then the Lord in infinite patience answered them, “Was not Esau
Jacob’s brother? saith Jehovah: yet I loved Jacob, and hated Esau, and laid his
mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.”
This takes us back to Genesis, but in vain do we look for this statement
in that first book of the Bible. Though
it is quoted also in Romans 9, it is nowhere
to be found in connection with the story of the birth of the twins. The late scholar, William, Kelly, has expressed the whole matter so well that we can
do nothing better than to quote his excellent comment. “It is only in
Malachi that He says ‘Esau have I hated.’
I could conceive nothing more dreadful than to say so in Genesis. Never does Scripture represent God as saying
before the child was born and had manifested his iniquity and proud malice, ‘Esau have I hated.’ There is where the mind of man is so
erroneous. It is not meant, however,
that God’s choice was determined
by the character of the individual. This
would make man the ruler rather than God.
Not so; God’s choice flows out of His own wisdom and nature. It suits and is worthy of Himself; but the
reprobation of any man and of every unbeliever is never a question of the
sovereignty of God. It is the choice of
God to do good where and how He pleases; it is never the purpose of His will to hate any man. There is no such doctrine in the Bible. I hold, therefore, that, while election is
most clearly taught in the Scriptures, the consequence that men draw from
election, namely, the reprobation of the non-elect, is a mere reproduction of
fatalism, common to some heathen and to all Mohammedans, the unfounded
deduction of man’s reasoning in divine things.” With these good words we agree perfectly, The
hatred against Esau is mentioned in this last book, because it was well
deserved, after all the opposition and defiance of God the descendants of Esau,
Edom, had manifested. But the love
wherewith Jacob was loved was undeserved.
His love for His people had been fully manifested, as well as His
displeasure against
2. THE REBUKE OF THE PRIESTS
CHAPTER 1: 6 - 2: 9
The priests, the religious leaders of the people, are
described first in their evil ways, and rebuked. But the rebuke includes the entire people,
for it is true, “like priests like people.”
The Lord called
Verse 10 has often been interpreted to mean that the priests were
covetous and demanded money for every little service, the opening of doors and
the kindling of a fire. It has another
meaning. The better rendering is, “0, that some
among you would even shut the doors of the temple.”
The doors are the doors which lead from the outer court into the holy
part. The Lord declares that it would be
more profitable if they would shut these doors, and kindle no longer a fire
upon the altar for nought; in other words, He wishes that the whole outward
worship might be stopped. The last
sentence of this verse shows this is the correct interpretation. “I have no pleasure in you, saith the
Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.”
Nor has He today any pleasure in
the unscriptural worship of ritualistic Christendom, or the dead, Spirit-less
worship of an apostate Protestantism.
The next verse (verse 11)
is a prophecy. Is it fulfilled to-day,
during this age? We think not; it refers
to the millennial age. Critics say that
the passage refers to the worship of God among the heathen, under different
names, as expressed lines by a poet (Pope):
“Father of
all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by
sage,
Jehovah, Jove or Lord!”
Canon S. D. Driver
says on this passage, “It is a tribute to the truer
and better side of heathen religion.”
It is no such thing. But why should
it not be applied to this Gospel age, in which among all nations His Name is
known and called upon? There is a
statement which excludes this interpretation: “and in every place incense
shall be offered unto My Name, and a pure offering.”
The Romish Catholic Church uses this passage as one of her proof texts for that abomination, the
Then follow additional expostulations on account of these
conditions.
In the second chapter the priests are
again addressed. If they do not hear, do
not lay it to heart, if their consciences are not aroused, to give glory unto
His Name, He would curse their blessings; yea, they had been cursed already; He
would punish them severely for their contempt.
Levi and the covenant with him is especially mentioned, on account of
his faithfulness at the time when the golden calf had been set up by Israel in
the wilderness, in contrast with Aaron who gave way to the demand of the
people. But what a contrast between Levi
and the priests in Malachi’s day! For
the priests’ lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his
mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts. Such is the calling of the priest. But they had departed out of the way; they
caused many to stumble at the law; they had corrupted the covenant of
Levi. Therefore the Lord made them
contemptible and base before all the people.
3. THE REBUKE OF THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS
CHAPTER 3: 10-16
The priests were corrupt, and with their bad example the
people were likewise corrupt. It is the
prophet who speaks in verse 10. The One Father was Jehovah, with whom the
nation was in covenant relation. They
had one Father, and were one as a nation.
By profaning that covenant they dealt treacherously every man against
his brother. The abomination in social
life, by which the covenant was profaned, and the holiness of the Lord
outraged, was the marriage with the daughters of the heathen. They had put away their own Israelitish wives
in order to enter into these unholy alliances.
The Jew acted faithlessly toward his brother, both when he contracted a
marriage with a heathen woman, and when he put away his legitimate wife, and
thereby desecrated the covenant of the fathers, i.e., the covenant that Jehovah
made with their fathers when He chose them to be a separated people. Those who have done this will surely he cut
off. Verse
13 describes the weeping and the tears of the abandoned Jewish wives; it
is the same condition, only worse, which is recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah. All was an abomination unto the Lord. Over fifty years ago a writer called
attention to the divorce evil in the
“The frequency of divorce in the United
States, so that in one of the States divorce is allowed for “misconduct,” reveals the
same state of things existing now, as was here condemned by Jehovah, and must
bring with it the same evils, and the same punishment. What tongue can adequately tell, what heart
conceive, the untold misery from this cause, especially to the deserted wives,
and the children left without a mother’s care!
How little is the indissoluble nature of the marriage relation regarded!
and the fact, that the Lord was the witness of it, and will be a swift witness
against those who violate it! The
Saviour only allows of one cause of divorce, and regards divorce for any other
as adultery.”
Since then this evil has increased a hundredfold or more among professing Christians, so that it threatens to undermine the home and all
family life. It is the sign of the rapid [decline
into unbelief, disobedience, apostasy and the ultimate]
disintegration of our nation.
And yet rebuked for these social conditions and wicked deeds,
they could ask another “Wherefore?” They were so hardened that they could not see why they were
to blame. The difficult fifteenth verse refers to the marriage relation,
in which God makes of twain one. He made
the woman for man, though He had the residue of the Spirit, the creative power
by which he might have made many women for one man. And wherefore one? that is, one woman for the
man that He might seek a godly seed, to perpetuate those who are godly, which is counteracted by divorce, such as
they had practised. It seemed as if
the remnant who feared Him were being influenced by these corrupt practices,
hence the warning. “Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal
treacherously against the wife of his youth.”
4. THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE MESSENGER
AND THE DAY OF THE LORD
CRAPTER 3: 1-6
In this chapter and in the next we have the prophecies of
Malachi as to the Messiah and His forerunner.
The last verse of the preceding chapter belongs rightly to this chapter. “Ye have wearied the Lord with your
words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we
wearied Him? When ye say, Every one that
doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them; or,
Where is the God of judgment?” It is this last bold
question, produced by their arrogant pride and self-security which opens the
way for the prophetic message in this chapter.
“Where is the God of judgment?”
The answer is, “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the
way before me; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple,
even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold, he shall come,
saith the Lord of hosts.” The first announcement
of the messenger, who goes before the Lord, is quoted in Matthew 11: 10; Mark 1: 2; Luke 1: 76 and 7: 27. Isaiah, too, had spoken a similar
prophecy in chapter 40: 3. This prophecy was fulfilled in the person of
John the Baptist, as the herald of His first coming; still this prophecy
considered in the light of the prophecy in the next chapter, concerning the
coming of Elijah, remains yet to he fully accomplished. John the Baptist was not Elijah; Elijah is still to come and do his
work preceding the [second] coming of the Lord.
The messenger is followed by the Lord, the messenger, or Angel (the
meaning of the Hebrew word) of the Covenant.
The word Lord is here the word Adon with the article, always used of God. It is the Lord God who comes, and His
official title is “The Angel of the Covenant.”
Many expositors have blundered here in that they imagined the word
covenant means the new covenant of which the Lord Jesus is the Mediator (Heb. 9: 15).
But it is not the truth. The
Messenger of the Covenant is the same “Angel of the Lord” who appeared frequently in
As the result of this judgment in store for the nation, when
the sorcerers, the adulterers, the false swearers and the oppressors will be dealt
with, we read in the fourth verse “Then shall the offering of
5. REBUKE FOR DEFRAUDING THE LORD
CHAPTER 3: 7-15
Another rebuke is administered. They were alway a stiff-necked people, never
obedient to His ordinances. His gracious
call to return unto Him, and the promise that He will return unto them is
answered by “Wherein shall we return?”
They had robbed God of what was His right. The tithes and offerings which He demanded in
the law covenant had been withheld. On
account of it the blessing was lacking and curse was upon the nation. Then follows a command to bring all the
tithes into the storehouse, the challenge to prove Him, the assurance of
abundant blessing. It is strange that
even those who have a good knowledge of the truth, the dispensations and the
heavenly position of a Christian, should
fall back upon this verse and claim that it is binding and should be
practised among believers. For a system like Seventh Day Adventism, a
system which has perverted the Gospel of Grace, which denies God’s oath-bound
covenants with Israel, which claims to be the true Israel, the system to which
applies the term “the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are
not;” for such a
cult to make this command a binding law
is not surprising. But well taught believers should never look
upon this passage as in any way in force today. True Christian giving, like
everything else in the life and service of a true believer, must be done, not
by law but through grace, under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Nowhere
in the New Testament is there anything said about tithing. A
believer must be a cheerful giver, giving as the Lord has prospered him, communicating
to others, doing good, remembering the poor, ministering in temporal things to
those who minister in spiritual things; but all this giving must be under
the direction of the Spirit of God.
The day will come when His earthly people will minister to the
wants of the Lord’s house (a Jewish term), so that there will he an abundant
supply for sacrifices. That will be in
the future day of their restoration, when the devourer will be rebuked (verse 11).
It is at that time, when the millennium has come, that all nations will
call them blessed, when they shall be a delightsome land (Isa. 62: 4).
This has never been since it was written by the pen of Malachi.
6. THE REMNANT AND THE CONCLUDING
PROPHECY
CHAPTER 3: 16 - 4: 6
In the midst of all these moral conditions, the apostasy of
the masses, we find a pleasing picture of a godly portion, whom the Lord
mentions in a special manner. There were
those who feared the Lord. They had no sympathy with the wicked practices of
their brethren; they did not share the contempt and unbelief manifested by the
rank and file of the people. They were
drawn together by the Spirit of God; they had fellowship one with another. They came together to think upon His Name, to
honour Him, to read His Word, to call unto the Lord. And the Lord heard; He was pleased with them,
and He is represented as recording their names in the Book of Remembrance, the
bookkeeping in glory (Psa. 56: 8). He has a special promise for such. “And they shall be mine, saith the
Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels;
and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.”
Such a remnant of godly ones was in existence in Malachi’s
day, and when they passed away others took their places. The Lord preserved such a godly seed in every
generation throughout the four hundred silent years. And when that silence was broken, by the
Angel’s message to the ministering priest Zechariah, we see such a remnant on
the threshold of the New Testament. Good
old Anna and Simeon, the shepherds and others belonged to this waiting,
God-fearing remnant. And so it will be
before His second coming. A similar remnant will then be on earth
awaiting His glorious return.
It is so in Christendom.
Departure from the faith soon manifested itself in the professing
church. Decline followed decline, till
the awful Romish apostasy was consummated.
But in every generation the Lord kept a people separated unto Himself. The Reformation came, followed by revivals
and recovery of [some long forgotten] Truth. But
the [Holy]
Spirit of God does not predict that this age ends in universal acceptance of
the Truth and universal righteousness and peace, but He predicts a universal
apostasy. But even then He has a remnant
true to Him. That remnant is seen
prophetically in the Church message to
In the fourth chapter is the final message of the Old
Testament Prophetic Word. The Day, that
coming Day of the Lord, so often mentioned in every portion of the Old
Testament, is once more brought before us. It is the day of fire, the day of
reckoning with the wicked, who will be consumed like stubble. But that day brings not only the fire of
judgment, the winding up of “Man’s Day,” the dethronement of evil, but it will be the day of
the sunrise. “The Sun of
Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings.” The Sun of Righteousness is the Lord
Jesus Christ. It is the beautiful symbol of His personal, visible and glorious coming to
usher in that day, which will last for a thousand years, in which He will rule
in power and glory. The Old Testament knows nothing of His coming
as the Morning Star. That coming is
exclusively revealed in the New Testament in relation with the Church. The Morning Star precedes the
[* See footnote.]
When the Sun of Righteousness arises, He will bring healing
and blessing. His waiting earthly
people, the remnant, will be filled with joy and gambol as calves, while the
wicked will be trodden under foot.
The whole chapter is a future prophecy. While there has been a partial fulfilment of
the first verse of the third chapter, everything in this concluding chapter
awaits its fulfilment. Elijah the
prophet is announced, John the Baptist came in the Spirit and power of Elijah,
but he was not the Elijah promised here.
If ye will receive it, said our Lord, this is Elijah who should
come. It was a testimony to faith and
not the fulfilment of Malachi's prophecy.
If the Jews had accepted Christ, John would have been Elijah. Our Lord bears witness to this. “Elias truly shall come first and
restore all things. But I say unto you,
That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him
whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall
also the Son of man suffer of them.” When the age closes another
one will appear, the Elijah announced by Malachi, who does his work of
restoration before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. His work will be carried on among the people
The close of the Old Testament Prophetic Word is majestically
solemn. In the beginning of the Old
Testament stands written the sin and the
curse which came upon the race through the fall of man. The final testimony in Malachi speaks of Him
who comes to take the curse upon Himself, the promised Christ; who comes to
deal with the wicked, who comes to bless and to remove that curse. The New Testament which follows tells us of
Him and of His matchless work, the fullness of redemption and the
all-sufficiency of Grace. And the final
New Testament book shows the consummation, the coming judgments, the righteous
judgments of the Lord, and the fulfilment of all “which was spoken by His holy
prophets;” ending
with the great words, “Surely I come quickly!
Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”
* *
*
[*FOOTNOTES]
1. The Christian’s calling is to enter
the millennial
2. “The second coming of Christ is the one event,
the one doctrine bound up with and fulfilling every fundamental doctrine, every
sublime promise, every radiant hope, giving inspiration to every practical
exhortation, and furnishing the basis of Apostolic appeal to the highest type
of Christian living.”
-
3. Paul tells the Thessalonian believers (2 Thess. 1: 5) that rather than their sufferings be punishment
from God, they were “a manifest token of the righteous
judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the
4.
“What is so wonderful, so unique in the Christian
life is that in every believer there is such undreamed of possibilities. On the human plane we are so hopeless. Our friends assess us at our true value. They know our weaknesses, our deficiencies,
our limited capacity, how few are our talents, how puny our possibilities. They have sized us up so clearly, sometimes
so cruelly. But when a child of God
steps out in faith and on God, and discovers the secret of taking hold of God,
of taking Him at His Word by faith, then a new factor is introduced which
confounds all calculations, and nullifies all estimates.”
- Dr. NORTHCOTE DECK.
* *
*
Finally -
The Prophet Daniel.
At the close of the history of Hezekiah, the noble king of
About one hundred years after this startling prophecy was
literally fulfilled. The opening verses
of the book of Daniel introduce us to this.
The Babylonian king came and besieged the city of
This young man, the captive in
Of his personal history, his character and remarkable
experiences we know more than of any of the other prophets of God. As a mere lad he was brought to the strange
land as a captive. We behold him and his
companion, true to Jehovah, maintaining their God-given place of
separation. He honoured Jehovah and
Jehovah honoured him. Soon the Lord used
the young captive by revealing unto him the forgotten dream of Nebuchadnezzar
and the interpretation of the dream.
Then followed the exaltation of the obscure captive; and afterwards he
seemed to have been the close companion of the great Gentile monarch, who
acknowledged finally the Lord-God of
As an old man he had been quite forgotten during the reign of
the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. Belshazzar; only the Queen mother, the aged
wife of Nebuchadnezzar, remembered him.
In that memorable night when
What a man of prayer he was we learn from the ninth
chapter. He reached a very old age,
continuing even into the reign of Cyrus, and when his great work was done, ere
the Lord called him home, he received the promise: “But go thy
way till the end he; for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of days” (12: 13). In the
great faith chapter of the Hebrew Epistle his name is not mentioned, but his
deeds are there. “Who through
faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the
mouths of lions” (Hebrews 11: 33).
The Authenticity of Daniel.
Perhaps no other book of the Bible has been so much attacked
as the Book of Daniel. It is a veritable
battlefield between faith and unbelief.
For about 2,000 years, wicked men, heathen philosophers and infidels have
hammered away against it; but the Book has proven to be the anvil upon which
the critics’ hammers have been broken into pieces. The Book has survived all attacks, and we
need not fear that the weak and puerile critics, the most subtle infidels of
Christendom in our day, can harm the Book.
It has been denied that Daniel wrote the book during the Babylonian
captivity. Kuenen and Wellhausen
and their imitating disciples like Canon
Farrar, Driver and others of
inferior calibre, claim that the work was not written in the Exile, but
centuries later. Daniel had nothing to do
with the Book at all; a holy and gifted Jew wrote it instead, and it is avowed
fiction. Such are a few of the infidel
statements made against this sublime Book.
These critics follow the wicked assailant of Christianity of the third
century, Porphyr, who contended that
the Book of Daniel is a forgery, that it was written during the time of the
Maccabees, after Antiochus Epiphanes,
so clearly foretold in this book, had appeared.
The whole reasoning method of the destructive Bible-Criticism may he
reduced to the following: Prophecy is an impossibility, there is no such thing
as foretelling events to come. Therefore
a book which contains predictions must have been written after the events which
are predicted. But how could the man who
committed such a forgery be a pious Jew?
No, the Book of Daniel is either Divine or it is the most colossal
forgery and fraud. No middle ground is
possible.
We give a few of the evidences which answer the infidel
attacks upon this great fundamental
prophetic book.
It should be enough for
every Christian that our Lord, the infallible Son of God, mentions Daniel by
name in His great prophetic discourse delivered on Olivet (Matthew
24: 15). There can be no question
that our Lord at least twice more referred to the Book of Daniel. When
He speaks of Himself and His coming again in the clouds of heaven as the Son of
Man, He confirms Daniel’s vision in chapter 7: 13;
and when He speaks of the stone to fall in
Matthew 21: 44, He confirms Daniel 2: 44-46. How does the critic meet this argument? He tells us that our Lord accommodated
Himself to the Jewish views current in His day.
They say, perhaps He knew better, and some say that He did not know. In other words, they deny the infallibility
of our Lord, and with this invention that He accommodated Himself against His
better knowledge, they accuse our Lord of something worse. When the Lord uttered the words, “Daniel the
Prophet” He put at
once His unimpeachable seal on both the person and the Book of Daniel.
But there are other evidences.
The heathen Porphyr declared
that the Book was written during the days of the Maccabees; as stated above the
modern critics have echoed the opinion of that lost heathen soul. But the
Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which was made before the times of the
Maccabees, contains the Book of Daniel.
It was in the hands of the learned Hebrews, who translated in the third
century before Christ the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek. The Book therefore antedates the time of
Antiochus Epiphanes.
Furthermore during the days of the Maccabees a book was
written, the first book of the Maccabees, a historical account of those
eventful days. This Maccabean work not
only presupposes the existence of the Book of Daniel, but shows actual acquaintance
with it, and therefore gives proof that the Book must have been written long
before that period (1 Macc. 1: 54,compare with Daniel
9: 27; 2: 59 and Daniel 3).
The reliable Jewish historian Josephus also furnisheth historically an evidence for Daniel. He tells us that when Alexander the Great, who is mentioned in Daniel’s prophecy (chapter 8), came to
Then we have the testimony of another prophet of the exile,
the prophet Ezekiel. He speaks twice in
the highest terms of Daniel, whose contemporary he was. (See Ezekiel 14: 14-20 and 28:
3.)
Daniel also betrays such an intimate acquaintance with
Chaldean customs and history, as well as their religion, such as none but one
who lived there and was an eye-witness could have possessed. For instance, the description of the Chaldean
magicians perfectly agrees with the accounts found in other sources. The account of the insanity of Nebuchadnezzar
is confirmed by the ancient historian Berosus.
Then there has been a most striking vindication of this Book
through the Babylonian excavations, tablets. cylinders and monuments. Into this we cannot fully enter, but we cite
but one of the most striking.
The name of Belshazzar furnished for
long time material to the infidels to reject the historical accuracy of the
book. The father of Belshazzar was
Nabonnaid, who was not a son of Nebuchadnezzar at all. How then could Belshazzar be a grandson of
Nebuchadnezzar? This objection is
seemingly strengthened by the fact that no ancient historians include in the
list of Babylonial kings the name of Belshazzar.
Berosus, who lived about 250 years after the Persian invasion,
gives the following list of Babylonian monarchs:
Nabuchodonosar (Nebuchadnezzar). Evil Marudak, who is the Evil Merodach of the
Bible. Neriglissor. Laborosoarchod. Nabonnaid.
Cyrus, the Persian conqueror.
Different attempts were made to clear up this difficulty, but
they failed. Now, if Daniel wrote his
Book he must be correct. But the critics
are ever ready to put the doubt not on the side of history, but on the side of
the Bible. So they said Berosus was not mistaken and that if
Daniel really had written the Book which bears his name he would have been
historically correct. This is how
matters stood up to 1854. In that year Sir Rawlinson translated a number of
tablets brought to light by the spade from the ruins of the Babylonian
civilization. These contained the
memorials of Nabonnaid, and in these the name of Bil-shar-uzzar appeared frequently, and is mentioned as the son of
Nabonnaid and sharing the government with him.
The existence of Belshazzar and the accuracy of Daniel were at once
established beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Daniel was promised by Belshazzar to become the third ruler in
the kingdom (Dan. 5: 16).
Why the third and not the second? Because Nabonnaid was the first, Belshazzar his
son was the second and vice-regent.
Nabonnaid had a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar for wife and therefore
Belshazzar from his mother’s side was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar.
But have the critics learned by this complete defeat? Have they profited by this experience and
will they leave the Bible alone? Not by
any means. They will continue to look
for flaws in the infallible Book. Some day
they will discover the seriousness of their work.
The Important Prophetic
Message of Daniel.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the Book of
Daniel. It is the key to all prophecy;
without a knowledge of the great prophecies contained in this book the entire
prophetic portion of the word of God must remain a sealed book. One of the reasons why so few Christians have
a correct knowledge of the prophetic forecast in the Bible is the neglect of
the Book of Daniel. The great prophetic
portions of the New Testament, the Olivet discourse of our Lord (Matthew 24 and 25),
and above all the great New Testament book of prophecy, the Book of Revelation, can only be understood through the
prophecies of Daniel.
To both, the Babylonian king and God’s prophet were revealed the political history of the “Times of the
Gentiles” (Luke 21:24). The rise and fall of the great
monarchies,
It will be impossible in our brief annotations to do justice
to all the details of this prophetic book.
The larger work on “The Prophet Daniel” by the author of the
Annotated Bible may be obtained at a small cost from the publisher and this
exposition should be carefully studied with the accompanying pages.
-------
The Division of Daniel.
The Book of Daniel is written in two languages, in the Hebrew
and in the Aramaic, the language of
We find in the book two main sections:
1. DANIEL IN
HISTORICAL EVENTS. Chapters 1 - 6.
Chapter 1.
Daniel and His Companions in
Chapter 2.
The Great Prophetic Dream of Nebuchadnezzar.
Chapter 3-6.
Historical Events.
2. THE GREAT PROPHECIES OF DANIEL. Chapters 7- 12.
Chapter 7.
The Night Visions of Daniel.
Chapter 8.
The Vision of the Ram and the He-Goat.
Chapter 9.
The Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks.
Chapter 10. Preparation for the Final
Prophecy.
Chapter 11. The Wars of the Ptolemies and
Seleucidae Predicted. The Coming Events
of the End.
Chapter 12. The Great Tribulation and
-------
Analysis
and Annotations.
1.
DANIEL IN
DREAM.
HISTORICAL EVENTS.
Chapters 1-6.
CHAPTER 1.
DANIEL AND HIS COMPANIONS IN
1. The Introduction. Verses 1-2.
2. The King’s Command. Verses 3-5.
3. Daniel and His Companions. Verses 6-21.
1. The Introduction: Verses 1-2.
Divine judgment, which had threatened so long, had finally
fallen upon
2. The King’s Command: Verses 3-5.
As already stated in the introduction the young captives of the
king’s seed and of the princes (both of
3. Daniel and His Companions: Verses 6-21.
Daniel means - God is my Judge; Hananiah is - Beloved of the Lord; Michael - Who is as God; Azariah - The Lord is my help. These beautiful names were soon changed into
names of heathen meaning, to blot out the very memory of Jehovah. Daniel becomes Belteshazzar (Bel’s prince); Hananiah is named Shadrach (Illumined by the sun-god); Mishael is called Meshach (who is like Shach-Venus); and
Azariah is changed to Abednego (the
servant of Nego).
The purpose of the four expressed their loyalty to the God of
their fathers and their obedience to His law. The Lord rewarded them for their
loyalty and faithfulness, as He is still the rewarder of all who trust in Him
and walk in separation.
CHAPTER 2.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S DREAM AND
ITS INTERPRETATION.
1. The Forgotten Dream. Verses 1-13.
2. The Prayer Meeting in
3. Daniel Before the King. Verses 24-28.
4. The Revelation and Interpretation
of the Dream. Verses
24-45.
5. The Promotion of Daniel and His
Companions. Verses
46-49.
1. The Forgotten Dream: Verses 1-13.
The King had a dream which was occasioned by thinking
concerning the future (verse 29). God answered his desire by this dream, which made
a great impression on him. But he had
forgotten the dream. The soothsayers,
wise men and magicians, who were kept by him to interpret dreams, were unable
to reveal the forgotten dream: they confessed their utter helplessness. The king condemned them to death. Inasmuch as Daniel and his companions were
counted among the wise men, “they sought Daniel and his companions to be slain.”
2. The Prayer Meeting and the Answer: Verses 14-23.
And now Daniel steps to the front. But there is no haste and no hurry connected
with it, for “He that believeth shall not make haste.” He is brought before the king and promises to
the king the meaning of that dream. It
was the language of faith; he had confidence in God. He knew that the same Jehovah who had given
another captive wisdom, Joseph in
3.
Daniel Before the King: Verses 24-28.
After Daniel had praised the God of heaven he requested an
audience with the King. How beautiful he
is in the presence of the mighty Monarch!
What an opportunity to glorify himself!
But he hides himself
completely and gives God all the glory.
Then he tells the king that in the dream he is about to relate God has
made known unto him “what shall be in the latter days.”
4. The Revelation and Interpretation
of the Dream: Verses 24-45.
Daniel then told to the king the forgotten dream:-
Thou, 0 King, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was
excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his
breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of
iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the
image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the
silver and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the
summer threshing-floors; and the wind came and carried them away, that no place
was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain,
and filled the whole earth (verses 31-35).
The great man image is the prophetic symbol of the “Times of the
Gentiles.” This expression “The Times of
the Gentiles” is
not found in the Book of Daniel, but it is a New Testament phrase. Our Lord used it exclusively. In that part of His prophetic discourse which
is reported in the Gospel of Luke and which relates to the fall of Jerusalem
and the dispersion of the nation, our Lord said: “And they shall fall by the
edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations; and
Jerusalem shall he trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles
shall be fulfilled” (Luke 21: 24). Now, the times of the Gentiles did not begin
when
I have made the earth, the
man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my
outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me. And now have I given all these lands into the
hands of Nebuchadnezzar the king of
Therefore the golden head in this prophetic man-image
represents Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire. The chest of silver, according to Divine
interpretation, stands for an inferior monarchy which was to follow the
Babylonian empire. This second world
empire is the Medo-Persian. The belly
and thighs of brass represent the third great monarchy, the Graeco-Macedonian. The fourth great monarchy which was to rise
during the times of the Gentiles, represented by the two legs of iron, is the
iron empire,
Everything which this image represents has been fulfilled,
except the last portion, when a stone falls out of heaven and strikes the ten
toes and the clay, so that the whole colossal figure goes to pieces, the
different constituent metals become like the chaff on the summer threshingfloor
and the striking stone becomes a mountain and fills the whole earth.
The fourth Empire, the Roman, has not yet fulfilled its history. The final form, and with it the final form of
the times of the Gentiles is yet to pass into history. This final form is symbolically seen in the
ten toes and the clay, in the feet of the image. The territory which constituted the now
extinct
But what does the smiting stone represent, the stone which
abolisheth the image and becomes itself a great mountain filling the whole
earth?
The Stone is Christ.
That the stone represents Christ is seen from the Scriptures. “Behold, I lay in
The stone doing its work in smiting the image is a prophecy of the second coming of our
Lord. The mountain filling after
that the earth foreshadows that kingdom
which will be established with the return of Christ and His enthronement as
King of kings.
5. The Promotion of Daniel and His
Companions: Verses 46-49.
The heathen monarch then acknowledged Daniel’s God in a
threefold way: The God of gods (the Father); the Lord of Kings (God the Son);
the Revealer of secrets (God the Holy Spirit).
Daniel is lifted from the place of humiliation to a place of
exaltation. He did not forget his
companions; they share honour and glory with him. It is a beautiful picture of that day when
our Lord will receive the throne and when His own will not be left behind in
sharing with Him His glory.
HISTORICAL
EVENTS
CHAPTERS 3-6.
The four chapters which follow the great dream of
Nebuchadnezzar are of a historical character.
They do not contain direct prophecies, but record certain events which
transpired during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, his successor and grandson
Belshazzar, and Darius, the Mede. On the
personal history of these three persons and where they are found in profane
history we have little to say, as a deeper examination of this subject would
lead us too far and would be tedious.
But this much must be said that the criticism which charged Daniel with
being incorrect has been completely silenced by the Babylonian cylinders of
Cyrus and Nabonnaid, and the so-called annalistic tablets, the very records of
those days. It is true the personality
of Darius the Mede has not yet been definitely located historically. However, we do not believe the Bible because
its historical statements can be verified from profane history. We believe the Bible because its records are
divinely inspired and therefore correct.
What would we know of the genuineness of these ancient tablets and
cylinders covered with cuneiform inscriptions if it were not for the Bible? These witnesses from the stones, which indeed
cry out, do not verify the Bible, they are rather declared genuine and correct
by the Word of God.
These four chapters then give us historical events. Each has a prophetic meaning, though direct
prophecy is not found in them.
These chapters describe the moral conditions which held sway
during the two first world empires; they indicate prophetically the moral
conditions which continue to the end of the times of the Gentiles. Five things may he traced in these four
chapters: The moral characteristics of the times of the Gentiles; what will
happen at the close of these times; the faithful remnant in suffering; their
deliverance and the Gentiles acknowledging God, as King and the God of heaven.
CHAPTER 3
THE IMAGE OF GOLD
1. The Image of Gold. Verses 1-7.
2. The Faithful Three. Verses 8-18.
3. The Miraculous Deliverance. Verses 19-25.
4. The Worshipping King.
1. The Image of Gold: Verses 1-7.
He had an immense statue of gold made, the image of a man, no
doubt, and he set it up in the plain of Dura in the
The civil power tried to force this universal religion upon
the people. The great governors, judges,
captains and rulers had to appear for the dedication of the image. But then the whole thing had a religious
aspect. Listen, after looking at this
great awe-inspiring image of gold - the sweetest music - the cornet, the flute,
the harp, the sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of music sounds
forth. No doubt, the Chaldean priests approached
chanting some sweet Babylonian song. Why
all this? To stir up the religious
emotions, and aid in this way the worship of an idol. It is intensely interesting that the ancient
Babylonian worship, with its ceremonials and chanting is reproduced in
* The Book by Mr. Hyslop “The Two Babylons” gives reliable and important
information on this fact.
2. The Faithful Three: Verses 8-18.
The companions of Daniel refused to worship the image and were
cast into the fiery furnace. Notice
their wonderful trust in God.
3. The Miraculous Deliverance: Verses 19-25.
The very men who cast them down were consumed by the
flames. But when the King looked towards
the furnace he beheld to his great astonishment not three men bound and burning
up, but four men loose and actually walking in the fire. “They have no hurt and the form of the
fourth is like the Son of God.” And when they were
brought up from the fiery furnace, no smell of fire was about them, not even a
hair was singed, only the bands which has bound them were burned off. The fire had set them free but it could not
touch them. But did the King speak true
when he beheld the fourth like the Son of God? Little did he know what he said
or what it meant, but assuredly he saw in that fire the Son of God, Jehovah,
for He had promised His people, “When thou walkest through the fire
thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle on thee.”
The faithful Lord kept His promise to His trusting servants.
And has not all this been repeated throughout the times of the
Gentiles especially daring the
And during the great tribulation will a faithful remnant of
Jews [and Christians]
suffer under the man of sin, as these three Hebrews suffered; but they will likewise [if
obedient to their Lord and Saviour, (Rev. 2: 26; 3:
3)] be delivered.
4. The Worshipping King. Verses 26, 30.
Once more Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged God and made a decree
that severe punishment should be the lot of all who say anything amiss against
the God of Daniel’s companions.
CHAPTER 4
THE
TREE VISION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR
1. The King’s Proclamation. Verses 1-3.
2. The King Relates the Tree
Vision. Verses
4-18.
3. Daniel Interprets the Vision. Verses 19-27.
4. The Tree Vision Fulfilled. The King’s Abasement and Restoration. Verses 28-37.
1. The King’s Proclamation: Verses 1-3.
This chapter is in form, at least in part, of a
proclamation. This proclamation must
have been written after the king had passed through the experience recorded in
this chapter.
2. The King Relates the Tree Vision: Verses 4-18.
Read carefully the vision the king had and compare with
Ezekiel 31: 3 and Matthew 13, the parable of the mustard seed. In each case the great big tree is the symbol
of pride and self-exaltation.
3. Daniel Interprets the Vision: Verses
19-27.
The prophet’s interpretation of this dream needs no further
comment. A careful reading will make it
clear in its meaning.
4. The Tree Vision Fulfilled.
The King’s Abasement and Restoration: Verses 28-37.
Twelve months later he walked in the palace of the
The great characteristic here is pride and self-exaltation.
As judgment came upon the great monarch in the beginning of
the times of the Gentiles, so judgment will yet fall upon this proud and
self-exalting age of the Gentiles. That political and religious tree will some
day be hewn down and be destroyed.
And Nebuchadnezzar’s great humiliation
in becoming a beast for seven times (seven years,)* points us to the end of this Gentile
age once more. Apostasy from God will be the great characteristic of that end. There will be no more looking up to God, but the attitude of the beast will be the
attitude of the nations. We see much of this already. They mind earthly things and become the “earth-dwellers” so frequently mentioned in the Book
of Revelation. Madness and bestiality
will seize upon the Gentiles, after the One who hinders, the Holy Spirit is
removed. Then proud and apostate
Christendom will believe the lie and follow the beast with its lying wonders. This will last seven times, that is, seven
years.
* The attempt to ascertain from this “seven
times” the length of the times of the Gentiles as some do lacks the
support of Scripture. The seven times mean seven years.
The stump of the great tree which remains
in the field suggests the fact that the judgments which fall upon the nations
in the time of the end will not completely destroy all nations. Many of them will he swept away. For those who wilfully rejected the Gospel
and turned away from the truth, there is no hope. But there are others which will be left and
when these judgments are in the earth, the nations learn righteousness.
The millennium is also
seen in this chapter in the restoration of Nebuchadnezzar and in the praise He
gives to the Most High. In the previous chapter the three
friends of Daniel speak of “Our God,” but in this chapter we hear of “The Most High.”
It is the millennial name of God.
We see then in the fourth chapter the pride and self-exaltation of the
Gentiles, and how the Gentiles will be humiliated and judged. First there is
self-exaltation, that is followed by judgment, and then follows restoration and
the acknowledgement of the Most High.
That nothing more is now reported of Nebuchadnezzar, that the
last which we hear of him in Scripture is his acknowledgment of the Most High,
is also not without meaning. It foreshadows the universal acknowledgment
of God in the Kingdom which the God of heaven will set up, when the stone fills
as the mountain the whole earth.
CHAPTER 5
BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST
1. Belshazzar’s Licentious Feast. Verses 1-4.
2. The Writing on the Wall. Verses 5-9.
3. Forgotten Daniel. Verses 10-16.
4. The Message of Daniel. Verses 17-31.
1. Belshazzar’s Licentious Feast: Verses 1-4.
This feast of wickedness and blasphemy needs no further
annotations. But it shows the great
decline morally in the great Babylonian empire.
Nebuchadnezzar, no doubt, had handled the golden vessels of the house of
the Lord most carefully. He had stored them
away, fearing to misuse them. The
grandson sent for these vessels to drink out of them wine with his harlots and
to praise his idols.
2. The Writing on the Wall: Verses 5-9.
A mysterious finger then wrote over against the candlestick on
the wall. The king saw plainly the part
of the hand that wrote. The feast of
licentiousness became suddenly a feast of gloom and consternation. Nor could the astrologers and wise men read
the writing which had appeared on the wall.
3. Forgotten Daniel: Verses 10-16.
At this point the Queen, the aged widow of Nebuchadnezzar,
appeared on the scene and called attention to an old man, who played such an
important part during the reign of her husband.
Daniel is sent for.
4. The Message of Daniel: Verses 17-31.
Daniel refused the honours of the king. He knew that ere long the blaspheming king
would be no more. And Daniel was more
than an interpreter of the handwriting on the wall. He is God’s prophet and messenger, as a reading of this portion of the chapter
shows.
This chapter reveals the blasphemous character of the end of
the Babylonian monarchy. Blasphemy, rejection of God’s Truth are
about us on all sides. There is a “Mene, Mene,
Tekel” for apostate Christendom and for that final
phase of
CHAPTER 6
UNDER DARIUS THE MEDE. DANIEL IN THE LION’S DEN.
1. The Decree of Darius. Verses 1-9.
2. Daniel’s Faith and
Steadfastness. Verses
10-15.
3. Daniel Cast into the Lion’s Den,
and the Deliverance. Verses 16-24.
4. The Degree of Darius. Verses 25-28.
1. The Decree of Darius: Verses 1-9.
From the opening of this chapter we learn that Daniel also
held a very high position in the beginning of the second monarchy, which had
conquered
2. Daniel’s Faith and Steadfastness: Verses 10-15.
It is a beautiful scene.
When Daniel knew the decree had been signed, he went calmly back into
his house and with his windows open towards
Well may we think here of another Law and another Love. God, a holy and righteous God and a God of
love, found a way to save man. God’s
holy Law condemns man, who is a sinner and the curse of the law rests upon
him. God’s Love is set upon the world,
and He “so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The curse of the Law came upon Him who knew no sin and who, was made sin
for us, and therein is Love manifested.
Daniel is cast into the lions’ den as our blessed Lord was given to the
lion (Psalm 22: 21), and a stone is laid
upon the mouth of the den and it is sealed with the King’s signet. He is so to speak in a grave, as good as dead
in the eyes of the world, for who has ever heard of hungry lions not devouring
a man. And all this brings before us
that other place, the tomb in the garden, where He was laid and the stone
before it, which bore the seal of the Roman world power. But as Daniel could not be hurt by the lions,
so He who went into the jaws of death could not be holden by death. The tomb is empty and He is victor over death
and the grave. All this is blessedly
foreshadowed in this experience of God’s prophet.
The Lord in whom Daniel trusted and whom he served delivered
him from the lions. His accusers and
their families were given to the ferocious beasts, which devoured them at once.
4. The Decree of Darius: Verses 25-28.
King Darius also acknowledged the God of Daniel.
The final characteristic of the times of the Gentiles is man
worship. The heads of these empires
including the Roman Caesars claimed divine honours. Papal
Rome also puts up man as the viceregent of the Lord. And all about us we find the deification of
man. Finally there comes the head of all
this apostasy, the son of perdition, the man of sin, who demands worship for
himself (2 Thessalonians 2).
2. THE GREAT PROPHECIES OF DANIEL
Chapters 7 - 12.
CHAPTER 7
THE NIGHT VISIONS OF DANIEL
1. The Night Vision of the Three
Beasts. Verses
1-6.
2. The Night Vision of the Fourth
Beast. Verses
7-8.
3. The Judgment Vision. Verses 9-12.
4. The Son of Man and His
Kingdom. Verses
13-14.
5. The Interpretation of the Visions
Given. Verses
15-28.
1. The Night Vision of the Three
Beasts. Verses 1-6.
The sea in the vision is the type of nations (Rev. 17: 15).
The three first beasts he saw represented the same great monarchies
which were shown to Nebuchadnezzar in his dream by the gold, silver and
brass. The lion Daniel saw first rising
out of the sea stands for the Babylonian empire symbolized by the lion (Jere. 4: 7).
The plucking of the wings and the man’s heart must refer to
Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity and restoration (chapter
4). The bear is the emblem of the
Medo-Persian monarchy (corresponding to the chest of silver in the image). One side of the bear was raised up, higher
than the other, because the Persian element was the strongest. The three ribs denote the conquest of three
provinces by this power. The leopard
with four heads and wings is the picture of the great Alexandrine empire, the Graeco-Macedonian (corresponding to the
belly and thighs of brass in the image).
The four wings denote its swiftness, the four heads the
partition of this empire into the kingdoms of
2. The Night Vision of the Fourth
Beast: Verses 7-8.
This represents Rome, corresponding to the two legs of iron
and the ten horns with the little horn between has the same meaning as the ten
toes on the feet of the image. The
little horn we find more fully mentioned in another portion of this chapter. Thus the prophet beheld the same monarchies
revealed in the second chapter under the emblem of ferocious beasts. Such the nations are and in their standards
and national emblems they have borne witness to their beastly characters. Notice also here the same process of
deterioration as in the image. The
monarchies degenerate from lion to bear, from bear to leopard and then into a
great nondescript.
3. The Judgment Vision: Verses 9-12.
This vision bring us to the close of the times of the
Gentiles. When the fourth beast with the ten horns and the little horn, the last
thing spoken of this world empire, is in full swing, then the end comes. It is a great judgment scene which is here
before us. How different the end of this
age as revealed in the Word and as it is believed in Christendom. The great mass knows nothing whatever about
this age coming to an end. It will go on
indefinitely, so they believe, and its future is world progress, better times
and the triumph of the Christian civilization.
But others concede that a judgment must come and they think of the
judgment here as the universal judgment, the great white throne judgment. This
judgment is not the last judgment at all.
It is a judgment which precedes the final judgment by 1,000 years. This
judgment here must be read in connection with passages like Matthew 25: 31-46 and Rev.
19: 19-21. In reading the
last passage no one can doubt that we have the same judgment here revealed to
Daniel. But who is the One who occupies
the central place in this vision of judgment?
There can be but one answer. It
is our ever blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. John 5: 29,
gives the conclusive answer: “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed
all judgment unto the Son.” The Ancient of Days is
the Lord Jesus Christ. It is still more
demonstrated if we turn to John’s great
4. The Son of Man and His Kingdom: Verses 13-14.
These words are so plain that every Christian knows what they
mean. They describe the second coming of
Christ and the [Millennial] Kingdom He then receives from the Father’s
hands. If this passage were more considered, Christians would stop speaking
about the kingdom now. No kingdom till Christ comes again. Both
the judgment vision and the vision of His coming to receive the kingdom
correspond to the stone which smites the image and as a mountain fills the
whole earth.
4. The Interpretations of the Visions
given: Verses 15-28.
First, Daniel hears about the four beasts. But there is a significant statement in verse 18, the
Saints of the most High receiving the kingdom.
Who are the Saints of the Most High? The fact that the term “Most High” is in the plural and may also be translated
with “The most high or heavenly places” has led some expositors to say that the
Saints are the same who are seen in the Epistle to the Ephesians in which “the heavenly places” are repeatedly mentioned: in
other words, the Saints which compose the church. It is true the church will be with the Lord
in Glory and “we shall reign over the earth,” but this does not necessarily mean
that the Saints here represent the church.
There are other Saints besides “Church Saints.”
The Saints of whom Daniel was thinking were his own beloved people. To that people is promised a kingdom in the
days of the Messiah. With Him, the Lord
in Glory, there is a heavenly people, so as Messiah and the Son of Man in
connection with the earth He has an earthly people, Saints which will receive
and possess with Him that kingdom which will fill the whole earth. These Saints are the God fearing Jews, who
pass through the great tribulation and inherit the blessings and promises which
God gave through their own prophets.
Another important matter is the little horn of whom now Daniel
hears more fully. The ten horns are
kings and the little horn in their midst will be the final imperial head of the
revived Roman empire, that world domineering person of whom we read repeatedly
in the Word of God. He must be
distinguished from another one, the personal anti-Christ, the man of sin and
son of perdition. In Revelation the revived
CHAPTER 8
THE
RAM AND THE HE-GOAT.
1. TheVision. Verses l-14.
2. The Interpretation of the Vision. Verses 15-27.
1. The Vision: Verses 1-14.
Beginning with this chapter to the end of the book prophecy
will lead us mostly upon Jewish ground. While some of these prophecies were fulfilled
in the past, most of them are related to the future when the great end fulfilment
takes place before the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven to
receive the kingdom. The phrases “the latter
times,” “the time of the end,” “in the last end of the indignation,” appear several times in these
chapters. These phrases describe the same period of time mentioned in the seventh
chapter, “a time, times
and dividing of times;” the 1,260 days or 43 months in the
book of Revelation. It is the great tribulation which is recorded
in the last chapter of this book.
The time and place of the vision in this chapter are given in
the beginning. The Ram, according to
divine interpretation (verses 15, etc.), is
the Medo-Persian monarchy - the silver kingdom, the kingdom also typified by
the bear. The He-goat with a notable
horn is the Graeco-Macedonian monarchy and the notable horn is Alexander the
Great. In 334 B. C., Alexander leaped
like a swift he-goat across the Hellespont and fought his successful battles,
then pushed on to the banks of the Indus and the
Then a little horn appeared out of one of these divisions; it
sprung up out of
History does not leave us in doubt of how and when this great
prophetic vision was fulfilled. This
little horn is the eighth king of the Seleucid dynasty. He is known by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes; after his wild and
wicked deeds he was called Epiphanes, the madman. Long before he invaded the pleasant land (
In verses 13-14 is an
angelic conversation. The 9,300 days
(literal days) cover just about the period of time during which Antiochus did
his wicked deeds. When they were ended Judas Maccabaeus cleansed the sanctuary
about December 25, 165 B. C.
We believe these 2,300 days are therefore literal days and
have found their literal fulfillment in the dreadful days of this wicked king
from the North. There is no other
meaning attached to these days and the
foolish speculations that these days are years, etc., lacks scriptural
foundation altogether. Such views and
fanciful interpretations bring the study of Prophecy into disrepute. We have special reference to the Seventh Day
Adventist delusion. They teach the
abominable falsehood that the Lord Jesus Christ did not enter into the Holiest
till the year 1844 had been reached, because this is according to their
reckoning 2,300 years after Cyrus had issued the command to build the temple. That this is a denial of the Gospel itself and
satanic is self-evident.
2. The Interpretation of the Vision: Verses 15-27.
Gabriel is the interpreter of the whole vision. It should be carefully studied. It points to a future fulfilment.
Gabriel told Daniel that the vision has a special meaning for
the time of the end. Four different
expressions are used to denote the time of the final fulfilment of the vision:
(1) “The time of the end,” 8: 17. (2) “The last end of the indignation,” 8: 19.
(3) “The latter time of their kingdom” 8: 23.
(4) “When the transgressors are come to
the full,” verse 23.
Once more, at the close of the age, before the Lord comes in
visible glory, in the days of the great tribulation, the time of Jacob’s
trouble, an invasion from the North takes place.
CHAPTER 9
THE PROPHECY OF THE SEVENTY
WEEKS.
1. The Time and Occasion of Daniel’s Prayer. Verses 1-2.
2.
The Prayer. Verses 3-19.
3.
The Answer and the Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. Verses 20-27.
1. The Time and Occasion of Daniel’s
Prayer. Verses
1-2.
It was in the first year of Darius, of the seed of the Medes,
that Daniel understood by the sacred writings of his people, especially by the
prophecy of Jeremiah, that the end of the years of the captivity was at hand. The promises in the Word of God led him at
once to seek the face of the Lord and he poured out a wonderful prayer in His
presence.
2. The Prayer: Verses 3-19.
It has three parts. Verses 4-10: Confession of the failure of his
people and acknowledgment of God’s covenant mercies. Verses 11-14:
The deserved curse as written in the law of Moses. Verses 15-19:
pleadings for mercy, to turn away His anger, and to remember His city,
3. The Answer and the Prophecy of the
Seventy Weeks: Verses 20-27.
The prayer was not ended. How near heaven is may be learned from verses 20-32. Heaven is not far away, for there is no space
and no distance with God. When Daniel
began his confession and humiliation the Lord called Gabriel and instructed him
what he should tell the praying prophet, and then Gabriel was caused to fly
swiftly through the immeasurable space, and before Daniel ever reached the “Amen” the messenger stood before him and
stopped his prayer. What blessed assurance!
The moment we pray in the Spirit and in
His Name our voices are heard in the highest heaven.
We give a corrected text of the great prophecy, perhaps the
greatest in the entire prophetic Word.
Seventy weeks are apportioned out upon thy people
and upon thy holy city to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins,
and to cover iniquity, and to bring in the righteousness of the ages, and to
seal the vision and prophet, and to anoint the holy of holies. Know therefore and understand: From the going
forth of the word to restore and to rebuild
The literal translation of the term “seventy weeks” is “seventy-sevens.” Now, this word “sevens” translated “weeks” may mean “days” and it may mean “years.” What then is meant here, seventy times seven days or seventy
times seven years? It is evident that
the “sevens” mean year weeks, seven years to each prophetic week. Daniel was occupied in reading the books and
in prayer with the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity. And now Gabriel is going to reveal to him
something which will take place in “seventy-sevens,” which
means seventy times seven years. The
proof that such is the case is furnished by the fulfilment of the prophecy
itself. Now seventy-seven years
makes 490 years.
What is to be accomplished. Verse 24
gives the great things which are to be accomplished during these seventy-year
weeks or 490 years. They are the following:
(1) To finish the transgression. (2) To
make an end of sins. (3) To cover
iniquity. (4) To bring in the
righteousness of ages. (5) To seal the
vision and prophet. (6) To anoint the
Holy of Holies.
It must be borne in mind that these things concern exclusively
Daniel’s people and not Gentiles but the holy city
Now, these seventy year-weeks are divided into three parts. The first part consists in seven weeks, that
is seven times seven, 49 years. During
these 49 years the street and the wall of
* For
full proof ace “The Coming Prince,” by
Then we have a remarkable prediction concerning the fate of
But all this leaves seven years, that is one week, unaccounted
for. We have up to now 483 weeks, and
there are to be 490 years. The last week
of seven years is still future. The
course of the Jewish age was interrupted. It is an unfinished age. Between the 483 years which ended when the
nation rejected the Lord of glory and the beginning of the last seven years of
the Jewish age, this last year-week is this present age, the un-reckoned period
of time during which God does His great work in sending forth the Gospel of His
Grace to the Gentile nations, to gather out of them a people for His Name. This age of Grace is still on but it will end
some day when God’s purpose is accomplished. Then the true church will be gathered home to
glory and the Lord will turn again to His people
CHAPTER 10
THE PREPARATION FOR THE FINAL
PROPHECY
This chapter contains the preface to the final great prophecies
as found in the last two chapters of this book. The certain man who appeared unto Daniel at
the banks of the river Hiddekel (
The delayed answer by the angelic messenger is explained by
the power of darkness. A powerful demon-prince,
a satanic agency, having control over
CHAPTER 11
THE
WARS OF THE PTOLEMIES AND SELEUCIDAE PREDICTED,
THE COMING EVENTS OF THE END.
1. The Wars of the Ptolemies and
Seleucidae. Verse
1-35.
2. The Time of the End. The Man of Sin. Verses 36-45.
1. The Wars of the Ptolemies and
Seleucidae: Verses 1-35.
Here we have history prewritten and the greater part of this
chapter (verses 9-35) is fulfilled
historically. So accurate are these predictions and their subsequent fulfilment
that the enemies of “the Scripture of Truth” have declared that it could never have been written by
Daniel several hundred years before these persons came into existence and
fought their battles. The pagan Porphyry in the third century in his “Treatise against Christians” bitterly
attacked the belief that Daniel wrote these predictions. He argued that all was written after the
events had taken place. The same
arguments are used by the critics. Such
is this most subtle infidelity that it can make use of the statements of a poor
heathen in opposition to the divine revelation.
The prophecies given here were minutely fulfilled during the
years 301 B.C., to 168 B.C. History verifies everything. The history covers a good part of the Persian
and Graeco-Macedonian Empires, but mostly the wars of the Ptolemies and
Seleucidae. Artaxerxes, Darius,
Alexander the Great, Ptolemy Lagris, the King of the South, Ptolemy Euergetes,
Seleucus Calinicus, Ptolemy Philopater, Antiochus Epiphanes, even the Roman
fleet (the ships of Chittim), all enter into this prophecy. A detailed exposition of the prophecy and its
fulfilment would fill many pages. (See
the Exposition on Daniel pages 168-179).
Before we pass on we desire to say again that all in these
verses we have briefly followed has been historically fulfilled. We
point out a mistake in which some have fallen. In verse 31
we read of “the abomination that maketh desolate.” Our Lord in His Olivet discourse (Matthew 24: 15) said: “When
ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken by Daniel the
prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth let him understand).” Some believe that when our Lord spoke these
words he referred to Daniel 11: 31, and that
this is the abomination of desolation. This
is not quite correct. The abomination
that maketh desolate of verse 31 is past and happened in the days of the
atrocities committed by Antiochus
Epiphanes. The abomination of desolation to which our Lord refers is mentioned in chapter 12: 11, and it points, as we shall find
later, to the abomination set up by the Antichrist, the second beast, in the
middle of the week. The typical
meaning of Antiochus Epiphanes and his crimes in the
2. The Time of the End. The Man of Sin: Verses
36-45.
The time of the end is mentioned in verse
35. What is to befall Daniel’s people in the latter days as Daniel was told in
chapter 10: 4 is now revealed. Between verses 35
and 36 we must put a long and un-reckoned
period of time. Antiochus Epiphanes and
the victorious Maccabees end the historical fulfilment of the predictions of
the great prophecies in the first part of this chapter, and since then over 2,000 years have come and gone and the fulfilment
of verses 36-45 have not yet been. First we read of a wilful King. Who is this king so fully pictured in verses 36-45?
Many expositors of Daniel apply this passage to Antiochus
Epiphanes, because they see not the important
interval which exists between verses 35 and 36. However, a closer examination of the
description of this King shows that he cannot be Antiochus. He is another person altogether, and as we
shall see later, will be a Jew and assume Kingly honours in the midst of the
Jewish people. Antiochus was a Gentile. Others again identify this King with the first
beast in Revelation 13, and say that the
head of the revived Roman Empire, one like Napoleon is meant, while others see
here a reference to the pope in
The Wilful King is the
Antichrist. The Jewish people rejected their King, the
Messiah, who came to His own, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord told the Jews: “I am come in
my Father’s name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name,
him ye will receive” (John 5: 43). This other one has not yet come. We have his photograph here. He appears in
Zechariah calls him “the idol
shepherd” (Zech. 11: 15-17).
He 1s repeatedly mentioned in the Psalms as “the wicked
man” – “the man of the earth” – “the bloody and deceitful man.” In the Book of Revelation he appears as the
second beast out of the land (
In the New Testament he is called in the writings of John “the
Antichrist”. (See 1 John 2: 18-22, 4: 3; 2 John 7). Another great prophecy of the same person is
found in 2 Thess. 2, where he is called “the man of
sin, the son of perdition.” The early church
believed that this evil person will be a real man, a Jew, and be energized by
Satan. That he is the papal system or
something else was invented later.
In verses 40-45 we have a
prophecy of the wars and conflicts during the time of the end. The false
While the King of the North and his proud hosts are thus
overthrown by the Array of the Lord, what becomes of the wilful King, the
Antichrist in the City? The King of the
North cannot touch him. But the Lord
Himself will deal with that wicked one. “Whom the Lord
shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness
of His coming” (2 Thess. 2: 8). Thus ends the great conflict of the time of
the end. The eternal abode of the
satanic instruments of the time of the end, the beast, that coming Prince, the Antichrist
and the King of the North will be the lake of fire.
CHAPTER 12
THE GREAT TRIBULATION AND
“And at that time.” What time? The time of the end, the time of trouble such
as never was before; the same time to which our Lord refers in Matthew 24: 21.
Michael, the great prince which standeth for the Jewish
people, is now also mentioned again. He
will stand up and take a leading part in the events of that time. From the Book of Revelation we learn (chapter 12) that there will be war in heaven, that
is where Satan has his dominion now as the prince of the power of the air. Michael, assisted by his angels, will cast out
the great dragon, the devil and his angels. They will be forced down to the earth. Then when Satan and his angels are cast out
the great tribulation will be instituted (Rev. 12: 19,).
Michael will stand up in another sense
and take a definite part in the deliverance of Daniel’s people. It is not fully revealed what that will be.
The deliverance of which we read in these verses and the
awakening of those “who sleep in the dust of the earth” has likewise been
grossly misinterpreted. Because expositors
have not seen the application of all this to the Jews in their future history
in the land, they have read the church in here, and even what they term a
general resurrection on a general judgment day. But we shall see now what is meant by the
deliverance of Daniel’s people.
Physical resurrection (as so often stated: a general resurrection) is not taught in
the second verse. Physical resurrection is used as a figure of the national
revival of
[* On the contrary, it most certainly will
be a literal
resurrection “out from the dead”
(Phil. 3: 11. Lit. Gk.) cf. Luke 14: 14; Heb. 11: 35; Rev. 6: 9-11, etc.): a
resurrection out from the dead, not of Jews only, but of all “who are considered worthy” to rule with Christ
in the “age” yet to come: (Luke 20: 35, NIV).
God had promised Daniel this millennial inheritance when
Christ returns to rule this world in righteousness and
peace, (1 Thess. 4: 16): “At the end of the days you
[Daniel] will rise [from Hades the place of the souls of the dead “in the heart of the earth” (Matt.
12: 40. cf. Luke 23: 43; 16: 18; Acts 2: 27,
34; 7: 5, etc.)] to receive your
allotted inheritance”: (Dan. 12: 13)
– the double portion due to all firstborn sons: which will be accompanied
with both priestly and kingly rights: a millennial
inheritance upon this earth as well as an eternal inheritance in the “new earth” (Rev. 21: 1).
That is, a Firstborn status which Esau lost and Jacob (after his
struggle with God, and His consequent blessing) attained! See Heb. 12: 14-17.]
There will be two classes, the godly and the ungodly. The ungodly accept the false Messiah, and in
their national revival, shame and everlasting contempt awaits them, while the
others, the godly, will enjoy life in the kingdom. The wise in verse
3 are the Jewish teachers and witnesses in the end time, those which
compose the godly remnant. A special
reward will he theirs during the kingdom, they shall shine as the stars
forever. The same holds good, only in a higher sense for all those who are
witnesses for Him during this age, who are faithful to Christ.
Then Daniel is addressed and beholds angels once more, as well
Him who appeared clothed in linen, none other than the Lord. Then Daniel asked his final question.
Verses 11-12 have puzzled many readers of the book. Difierent theories are given.
But what is the meaning of these 1,290 and 1,335 days? Can there be anything plainer than the fact
that these 1,990 and 1,335 days are literal days? Who authorizes us to make of these days years?
By what process of exposition are we to
arrive at the conclusion that “days” mean “years?” It is worse than folly
to do that.
Now, the great tribulation lasts for 1,260 days. But here we have 30 days or a whole month
added. The Lord will be manifested at
the close of the great tribulation of 1,260 days, three and a half years. Matthew 24: 29-31 teaches us this. The extra month will in all probability be
needed to make possible certain judgment events especially with the overthrow
of the nations which came against
FINIS