Zechariah 2:1-13

THE THIRD VISION: THE CITY OF PEACE

Zechariah 2:5-9

Like the Second Vision, the Third follows from the First, another, but a still more significant, supplement. The First had promised the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and now the prophet beholds "a young man"-by this term he probably means "a servant" or "apprentice"-who is attempting to define the limits of the new city. In the light of what this attempt encounters, there can be little doubt that the prophet means to symbolize by it the intention of building the walls upon the old lines, so as to make Jerusalem again the mountain fortress she had previously been. Some have considered that the young man goes forth only to see, or to show, the extent of the city in the approaching future. But if this had been his motive there would have been no reason in interrupting him with other orders. The point is that he has narrow ideas of what the city should be, and is prepared to define it upon its old lines of a fortress. For the interpreting angel who "comes forward" is told by another angel to run and tell the young man that in the future Jerusalem shall be a large unwalled town, and this, not only because of the multitude of its population, for even then it might still have been fortified like Nineveh, but because Jehovah Himself shall be its wall. The young man is prevented, not merely from making it small, but from making it a citadel. And this is in conformity with all the singular absence of war from Zechariah’s Visions, both of the future deliverance of Jehovah’s people and of their future duties before Him. It is indeed remarkable how Zechariah not only develops none of the warlike elements of earlier Messianic prophecies, but tells us here of how God Himself actually prevented their repetition, and insists again and again only on those elements of ancient prediction which had filled the future of Israel with peace.

"And I lifted mine eyes and looked, and lo! a man with a measuring rope in his hand. So I said, Whither art thou going? And he said to me, To measure Jerusalem: to see how much its breadth and how much its’ length should be. And lo! the angel who talked with me came forward, and another angel came forward to meet him. And he said to him, Run and speak to yonder young man thus: Like a number of open villages shall Jerusalem remain, because of the multitude of men and cattle in the midst of her. And I Myself will be to her-oracle of Jehovah-a wall of fire round about, and for glory will I be in her midst."

In this Vision Zechariah gives us, with his prophecy, a lesson in the interpretation of prophecy. His contemporaries believed God’s promise to rebuild Jerusalem, but they defined its limits by the conditions of an older and a narrower day. They brought forth their measuring rods to measure the future by the sacred attainments of the past. Such literal fulfillment of His Word God prevented by that ministry of angels which Zechariah beheld. He would not be bound by those forms which His Word had assumed in suitableness to the needs of ruder generations. The ideal of many of the returned exiles must have been that frowning citadel, those gates of everlastingness, {Psalms 24:1-10} which some of them celebrated in Psalms, and from which the hosts of Sennacherib had been broken and swept back as the angry sea is swept from the fixed line of Canaan’s coast. {Isaiah 17:12-14} What had been enough for David and Isaiah was enough for them, especially as so many prophets of the Lord had foretold a Messianic Jerusalem that should be a counterpart of the historical. But God breaks the letter of His Word to give its spirit a more glorious fulfillment. Jerusalem shall not "be builded as a city that is compact together," {Psalms 122:3} but open and spread abroad village-wise upon her high mountains, and God Himself her only wall.

The interest of this Vision is therefore not only historical. For ourselves it has an abiding doctrinal value. It is a lesson in the method of applying prophecy to the future. How much it is needed we must feel as we remember the readiness of men among ourselves to construct the Church of God upon the lines His own hand drew for our fathers, and to raise again the bulwarks behind which they sufficiently sheltered His shrine. Whether these ancient and sacred defenses be dogmas or institutions we have no right, God tells us, to cramp behind them His powers for the future. And the great men whom He raises to remind us of this, and to prevent by their ministry the timid measurements of the zealous but servile spirits who would confine everything to the exact letter of ancient Scripture-are they any less His angels to us than those ministering spirits whom Zechariah beheld preventing the narrow measures of the poor apprentice of his dream?

To the Third Vision there has been appended the only lyrical piece which breaks the prose narrative of the Visions. We have already seen that it is a piece of earlier date. Israel is addressed as still scattered to the four winds of heaven, and still inhabiting Babylon. While in Zechariah’s own oracles and visions Jehovah has returned to Jerusalem, His return according to this piece is still future. There is nothing about the Temple: God’s holy dwelling from which He has roused Himself is Heaven. The piece was probably inserted by Zechariah himself: its lines are broken by what seem to be a piece of prose, in which the prophet asserts his mission in words he twice uses elsewhere. But this is uncertain.

"Ho, ho! Flee from the Land of the North (oracle of Jehovah); For as the four winds have I spread you abroad (oracle of Jehovah). He to Zion escape, thou inhabitress of Babel. For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts to the nations that plunder you (for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye), that, lo! I am about to wave My hand over them, and they shall be plunder to their own servants, and ye shall know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me. Sing out and rejoice, O daughter of Zion";

"For, lo! I come, and will dwell in thy midst (oracle of Jehovah). And many nations shall join themselves to Jehovah in that day. And shall be to Him a people. And I will dwell in thy midst (And thou shalt know that Jehovah of Hosts hath sent me to thee). And Jehovah will make Judah His heritage, His portion shall be upon holy soil, And make choice once more of Jerusalem. Silence, all flesh, before Jehovah; For He hath roused Himself up from His holy dwelling."