The Israelites were engaged in rebuilding the Temple, but notwith- standing their own zeal and earnestness, and the ostensible permission and encouragement of the Babylonian king, they found themselves making little progress. They were being continually thwarted. The work halted in their hands. We can well imagine the thoughts which may have troubled many at so unexpected an event. Had then God indeed cast them off ? Would the Lord no more dwell upon Mount Zion ? Was it a vain effort to attempt to raise from its ruins their holy place ? Meditations like these may well have swept across their minds, and made their souls disquieted within them. And now what is the message from the Lord ? It comes in a vision to Zechariah. In this vision is laid bare the whole secret of the hindrances which so bowed the hearts of the people. In this they are led to trace the radical cause of all their difficulties. The Jewish Church and nation are suitably represented in the person of the high priest. Their moral condition contaminated with past idolatry, and their struggling against opposition to rebuild the Temple, is with equal pre- cision denoted by the foul garments of the high priest and the close neighbourhood of Satan. Then follows the consolation. Satan is rebuked ; the inglorious apparel is taken away, the mitre set upon Joshua's head, and a sublime promise added, that if Joshua, having been thus readorned, shall discharge his office faithfully, he shall retain a perpetual priesthood; if, in other words, the Israelites would walk in God's law, they should never be rejected,
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414 BRAND PLUCKED OUT OF THE FIRE
I.
The Accused.
"He shewed me Joshua the high priest."
1. This Joshua was a leading figure of the period. In the contemporary prophet Haggai he is frequently mentioned. There we learn that he was the son of Jehosadak, and that he was closely associated with Zerubbabel in all the pious and patriotic undertakings of those days. The one, indeed, was the ecclesi- astical and the other the civil head of the new community.
In Ezra and Nehemiah this Joshua is called Jeshua. His grandfather, Seraiah, who was high priest at the time of the capture of Jerusalem, was executed at Eiblah by Nebuchadnezzar, and his father Jehosadak was carried captive to Babylon, where Joshua was probably born. On the arrival of the caravan at Jerusalem, Joshua naturally took a leading part in the erection of the altar of burnt-offering, and in the laying of the foundations of the Temple.
2. When it is said that he was seen standing before the Lord, the first notion suggested by the words is that, as high priest, he was engaged in the duties of his sacred office ; because to stand before the Lord is frequently mentioned in Scripture as the privilege of the priesthood. It is probable, however, that the image presented to the mind of the prophet was totally different. It was not in the Temple that Joshua seemed to him to be, but in the hall of judgment. To stand before the judge is a phrase used of the prisoner at the bar ; and that this is its signification here is proved by the statement which follows — that Satan was standing at his right hand to accuse him ; for this was the position of the prosecutor in a court of justice. And the same view is further supported by the fact that Joshua was clothed in filthy garments — a condition in which the high priest could, under no circumstances, have appeared before God in the service of his office, but which befits exactly the position of a criminal.
Josephus says that among the Jews persons who had to appear
ZECHARIAH m. i, 2 415
at the bar of a judge as accused usually, on such occasions, were habited in black garments. The garments, however, in which Joshua was seen were not black, but filthy ; they may have been originally white or splendid, but they were unclean, sordid, or befouled. Now, as clean and white garments betokened purity and righteousness, garments dirtied and defiled indicated the opposite — a state of humiliation, impurity, and guilt. The filthy garments, therefore, in which Joshua was attired indicated his being in a state of moral impurity and sinfulness. Unlike the worthy few in the Church at Sardis " who had not defiled their garments," that is, had kept themselves free and blameless, he had come under sin, and appeared before the Angel of the Lord as one encompassed with iniquity.
TJ Let a man persevere in prayer and watchfulness to the day of his death, yet he will never get to the bottom of his heart. Though he know more and more of himself as he becomes more conscientious and earnest, still the full manifestation of the secrets there lodged is reserved for another world. And at the last day who can tell the affright and horror of a man who lived to himself on earth, indulging his own evil will, following his own chance notions of truth and falsehood, shunning the cross and the reproach of Christ, when his eyes are at length opened before the throne of God, and all his innumerable sins, his habitual neglect of God, his abuse of his talents, his misapplication and waste of time, and the original unexplored sinfulness of his nature, are brought clearly and fully to his view ? Nay, even to the true servants of Christ, the prospect is awful. " The righteous," we are told, "will scarcely be saved." Then will the good man undergo the full sight of his sins, which on earth he was labouring to obtain, and partly succeeded in obtaining, though life was not long enough to learn and subdue them all. Doubtless we must all endure that fierce and terrifying vision of our real selves, that last fiery trial of the soul before its acceptance, a spiritual agony and second death to all who are not then supported by the strength of Him who died to bring them safe through it, and in whom on earth they have believed.1