Zechariah 13:6

Zechariah 13:6. What are these wounds in thy hands “Two ancient usages,” Blayney thinks, “are alluded to; the one, that of the idolatrous priests and prophets, who sought to engage the attention and favour of their deity by cutting and slashing themselves, as the priests of Baal did, 1 Kings 18:28; the other, that of those who cut themselves, as a token of their grief and mourning for their deceased relations and friends:” see note on Jeremiah 16:6. It appears, also, from Jeremiah 48:37, that these cuttings were performed on the hands in particular. “When therefore the man, now ashamed of his pretensions to prophesy, came to be challenged for those scars that were visible on his hands, he would deny them to have proceeded from any idolatrous cause; but would have them thought to be marks left by those wounds which he gave himself in the house of his relations and friends, in the paroxysms of his grief for the loss of them.” The word מכות , however, here rendered wounds, may be translated strokes, or marks, and is thought by many learned interpreters to signify some particular marks or characters, imprinted on the body of the person here spoken of, in honour of the particular God he worshipped. Thus the worshippers of Bacchus had an ivy leaf imprinted on their bodies. These impressions were most frequently made on the hands, to which the expression, Revelation 13:16, receiving the mark of the beast on the right hand, alludes; so that, according to this interpretation, the meaning of what is said here must be that, in the times here spoken of, inquiry would be made of those in whose hands any marks or characters were perceived, by what means they came there, and what they signified. These marks, Bishop Lowth observes, on Isaiah 44:5, “were made by punctures rendered indelible by fire, or by staining; thus the slave was marked with the name of his master; the soldier of his commander; the idolater with the name or ensign of his god. And the Christians seem to have imitated this practice, by what Procopius says, ‘Because many marked their wrists, or their arms, with the sign of the cross, or with the name of Christ.’“ Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends This is given as the answer which the person who had been addicted to idolatry, and had received the marks of some false god in his hands, would make to the above-mentioned inquiry; he would conceal the truth, and pretend that they were not marks belonging to any god, but marks which he wore in his flesh by way of honour to, or in token of, his dependance on the family which had taken him under their patronage. Several interpreters understand this verse of the wounds of Christ, and the rather because a remarkable prophecy of his being wounded for our transgressions, by the sword of divine justice, follows in the next verse. And certainly the passage is very capable of such an interpretation; for, as the Jews professed to be the friends of the promised Messiah, and he had conducted himself in the most friendly manner toward them; when he was scourged, nailed to the cross, and pierced, he might, with great propriety, be said to have been wounded in the house of his friends.