10. _Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: In those days ten men, of all languages of the nations, shall take hold of the skirt of a Jew and say, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you._
[931] Cf. chap. vii. 3: _the priests which were of the house of Jehovah_.
[932] Jer. xli. 2; 2 Kings xxv. 25.
[933] The Hebrew text is difficult if not impossible to construe: _For Bethel sent Sar’eser_ (without sign of accusative) _and Regem-Melekh and his men_. Wellhausen points out that Sar’eser is a defective name, requiring the name or title of deity in front of it, and Marti proposes to find this in the last syllable of Bethel, and to read ’El-sar’eser. It is tempting to find in the first syllable of Bethel the remnant of the phrase _to the house of Jehovah_.
[934] To stroke the face of.
[935] The fifth month Jerusalem fell, the seventh month Gedaliah was murdered: Jer. lii. 12 f.; 2 Kings xxv. 8 f., 25.
[936] So LXX. Heb. has acc. sign before _words_, perhaps implying _Is it not rather necessary to do the words?_ etc.
[937] Omit here ver. 8, _And the Word of Jehovah came to Zechariah, saying_. It is obviously a gloss by a scribe who did not notice that the כה אמר of ver. 9 is God’s statement by the former prophets.
[938] Cf. the phrase _with one shoulder_, _i.e._ unanimously.
[939] So Heb. and LXX.; but perhaps we ought to point _and I whirled them away_, taking the clause with the next.
[940] See above, pp. 271 f.
[941] Cf. especially Isa. xl. ff.
[942] Isa. i. 26.
[943] Not merely _My people_ (Wellhausen), but their return shall constitute them a people once more. The quotation is from Hosea ii. 25.
[944] So LXX.
[945] _But he that made wages made them to put them into a bag with holes_, Haggai i. 6.
[946] Read כי אזרעה השלום for כי זרע השלום of the text, _for the seed of peace_. The LXX. makes זרע a verb. Cf. Hosea ii. 23 ff., which the next clauses show to be in the mind of our prophet. Klostermann and Nowack prefer זַרְעָהּ שָׁלוֹם, _her_ (the remnant’s) _seed shall be peace_.
[947] In the tenth month the siege of Jerusalem had begun (2 Kings xxv. 1); on the ninth of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jer. xxxix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth City and Temple were burnt down (2 Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was assassinated and the poor relics of a Jewish state swept from the land (Jer. xli.). See above, pp. 30 ff.
[948] LXX. _the citizens of five cities will go to one_.