Zechariah 6:12 - Exposition

Speak unto him, saying. The prophet is to explain to Joshua the meaning of this public act. Behold the Man whose name is The BRANCH ; literally, behold the man, BRANCH is his name (see note on Zechariah 3:8 ). The Targum has, "Behold the Man, Messiah is his name." It is plain that the term "Branch" or "Shoot" ( LXX ; ἀνατολή : Vulgate, Oriens ) could not be addressed to Joshua; indeed, the very form of the sentence, "his name," not "thy name," shows this. All who saw the transaction and heard the words must have understood that they had reference to the "Shoot" of David, the Messiah that was to come, to whom was committed the regal and priestly dignity. And he shall grow up out of his place; Septuagint, καὶ ὑποκάτωθεν αὐτοῦ ἀνατελεῖ , "And item beneath him he shall spring up;" Vulgate, Et subter eum orietur; Drake, "He shall sprout forth from under himself;" Revised Version margin, "And it (or they) shall bud forth under him;" Hitzig, Ewald, "From under him there shall be sprouting." But them is no need to alter the rendering of the Authorized Version, which indicates that the shoot shall grow from its own soil, that Messiah shall arise in his own country and nation, and shall spring from a lowly origin to the highest glory (see Isaiah 11:1 ; Isaiah 53:2 ). He shall build the temple of the Lord. He should build, not the material temple whose foundations Zerubbabel had laid, but the spiritual temple of which the tabernacle and the temple of Jerusalem were only the type and shadow—that new sanctuary which Ezekiel beheld (41), a house not made with hands, the Church of the living God ( Ephesians 2:20 , etc.; 1 Peter 2:5 ).