only involve them in certain destruction. This diffi- cult passage Stiihelin admits he cannot solve to his sat- isfaction, but contends that it may have been designed to teach the new colony that it was not a part of (iod's purpose to reunite the severed tribes; and in this he sees an argument for the post-exilian date of the prophe- cy, inasmuch as the union of the ten tribes with the two was ever one of the brightest hopes of the prophets wlio lived before the Captivity.
Having thus shown that there is no reason why the section ix-xi should not belong to a time subsequent to the return from Babylon, Stiihelin proceeds to argue that the prophecy directed against the nations (ix, 1-7) is really more applicable to the Persian ffira than to any other. It is only the coast-line which is here threat- ened; whereas the earlier prophets, whenever they threaten the maritime tribes, unite with them Moab and Amnion, or Edom. Moreover, the nations here mentioned are not spoken of as enemies of Judah ; for being Persian subjects they would not venture to attack the Jewish colony when under the special protection of that power. Of Ashdod it is said that a foreigner ("ifrip, A. V. "bastard") shall dwell in it. This, too, might naturally have happened in the time of Zecha- riah. During the Exile, Arabs had established them- selves in Southern Palestine, and the prophet foresees that they would occupy Ashdod ; and, accordingly, we learn from Neh. xiii, 24 that the dialect of Ashdod was unintelligible to the Jews, and in iv, 7 the people of Ashdod appear as a distinct tribe unite'd with other Arabians against Judah. The king of Gaza (mentioned in Zech. ix, 5) may have been a Persian vassal, as the kings of Tyre and Sidon were, according to Herod, viii, 67. A king in Gaza would only be in conformity with the Persian custom (see Herod, iii, 15), although this was no longer the case in the time of Alexander. The mention of the " sons of Javan" (ix, 13 ; A. V. "Greece") is suitable to the Persian period (which is also the view of Eichhorn), as it was then that the Jews were first brought into any close contact with the Greeks. It was, in fact, the fierce struggle between Greece and Persia which gave a peculiar meaning to his words when the prophet promised his own people victory over the Greeks, and so reversed the earlier pre- diction of Joel iv, 6, 7 (A.V. iii, 6, 7). If, however, we are to understand by Javan Arabia, as some main- tain, this again equally suits the period supposed, and the prophecy will refer to the Arabians, of whom we have already spoken.
(II.) We come now to the section xii- xiv. The main proposition here is, that however hard Judah and Jerusalem may be pressed by enemies (of Israel there is no further mention), still with God's help they shall be victorious; and the residt shall be that Jehovah will be more truly. worshipped both by Jews and Gen- tiles. That this anticipation of the gathering of hos- tile armies against Jerusalem was not unnatural in the Persian times may be inferred from what has been said above. Persian hosts were often seen in Juda;a. We find an instance of this in Josephus ( A nt. xi, 7, 1 ), and Sidon was laid in ashes in consequence of an insurrec- tion against Persia (Diod. xvi, 45). On the other hand, how could a prophet in the time immediately preceding the Exile — the time to which, on account of xii, 12, most critics refer this section — have uttered predictions such as these? Since the time of Zephaniah all the proph- ets looked upon the fate of Jerusalem as sealed, whereas here, in direct contradiction to such views, the preser\'a- tion of the city is announced even in the extremest ca- lamities. Any analogy to the general strain of thought in this section is only to be found in Isa. xxix-xxxiii. Besides, no king is here mentioned, but only " the house of David," which, according to Jewish tradition (Herz- feld, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, p. 378 sq.), held a high position after the Exile, and accordingly is mentioned (xii, 12, 13) in its different branches (comp. Movers, Z>as
ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF 1076 ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF
Pkoniz. A llerlh. i. 531), together with the tribe of Levi ; the prophet, like the writer of Psa.lxxxix, looking to it with a kind of yearning, which before the Exile, while there was still a king, would have been inconceivable. Again, the manner in which Egypt is alluded to (xiv, 19) almost of necessity leads us to the Persian times; for then Egypt, in consequence of her perpetual efforts to throw off the Persian yoke, was naturally brought into hostility with the Jews, who were under the pro- tection of Persia. Before the Exile this was only the case during the interval between the death of Josiah and the battle of Oarchemish. It would seem, then, that there is nothing to compel us to place this section xii-xiv in the times before the Exile ; much, on the con- trary, which can only be satisfactorily accounted for on the supposition that it was written during the period of the Persian dominion. Nor must it be forgotten that we have here that fuller development of the Messianic idea which at such a time might be expected, and one which, in fact, rests upon all the prophets who flourished before the Exile.