And will try them as gold is tried;
He shall call upon My name and I will answer;
I will say, It is My people,
And he shall say, Jehovah is my God.”
The question comes to every student of the word, why is here an interruption in the events which we have followed and which are given chronologically? Why is there no continuation bringing out other phases of Israel’s salvation and the coming of the Lord? The change is very abrupt, and there is a going back to events which are the events of His first coming and His rejection. The solution of the difficulty would be almost impossible if we would interpret the sixth verse of the wounded one as referring to the Lord, the Messiah. But the fact that in the sixth verse we have the person of Antichrist answers the question which we have asked. The change and the interruption is made to show the contrast between the Good Shepherd and the false shepherd. The devil’s masterpiece had been in the earth; perhaps he pointed to his wounds in his hands and to the fact that he was dead and became alive again, and mockingly he spoke of Jesus of Nazareth and His claim of having been dead and now living. The true Shepherd has appeared. He too is pierced, but He was pierced for their sins, and to make the whole complete a new thought is brought out which has not been seen so far in Zechariah. It is the same as in Isaiah liii, the suffering One, who is a man, and called My fellow, the fellow of Jehovah of Hosts, Jehovah Himself; who speaks here, and what does He speak? The sword is to work against His Shepherd and against His own Fellow. The blessed mystery of the atonement is thus brought out. Indeed it is the heart of the Gospel here. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have life eternal. The Lord, laid on Him the iniquity of us all. It speaks of Him, the forsaken One, the Son of God, forsaken in the hour of His agony, the sword upon Him and against Him. In the New Testament we find the passage quoted in the Gospel of Matthew, 26th chapter and 13th verse: Then saith Jesus unto them, all ye shall be offended because of Me this night; for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. In the last verses of the 13th chapter we have once more teachings concerning the remnant. These verses are not alone applicable to the remnant and the sheep in the time when our Lord was in the earth and immediately after he had suffered, they are not alone applicable to the remnant, which was in Jerusalem when the Roman armies came for destruction, but the application is to be made in connection with the people living in the land when Antichrist will reign, and the suffering of the remnant, the one-third, and the glorious privileges of that remnant are likewise future.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
The last conflict—Jerusalem surrounded by armies and besieged and taken—Jehovah’s intervention—The escape of the remnant—Living waters flowing out of Jerusalem—The enemies punished—The remnant of nations live as worshipers in Jerusalem—Jerusalem the holy city.
The last chapter in Zechariah is a very important one. It is a grand summing up and description of the events which stand at the close of the great tribulation, and as such it is one of the most striking chapters in the Old Testament. Post-millennialism surely fails here in trying to find some explanation for these prophecies. The chapter is unfulfilled throughout. Anyone who does not acknowledge this has only one other way of interpretation, and that is to spiritualize the whole and make out of it the development of the Church, the holiness of the Church, etc. this, of course, is a failure and cannot be done. The only true way of interpretation is the literal one, and that will teach us that the events seen in this chapter are future. This ought to be seen by any reader of the Word of God at the first glance. There is no siege and capture of Jerusalem in history which corresponds to the siege and capture which stands in the beginning of this chapter. The Lord never intervened in behalf of Jerusalem in the way that it is said here in going forth and fighting against those nations, nor did His feet stand upon the Mount of Olives for the purpose of completely destroying the enemies of His people. The whole chapter is of such significance that we have to take it verse by verse and illustrate it by many scriptures taken from different parts of the prophetic word.
Verse 1. “Behold a day cometh for Jehovah when thy spoils shall be divided in the midst of thee.”
The time when this prophecy will be enacted is here given. A day is coming for Jehovah. Now it is man’s day and God keeps silence, but His day, the day of Jehovah, is coming and will be a day of manifestation, glory, and power. “That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Zeph. i: 15). “Blow ye the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm in my holy mountain; let all the inhabitants in the land tremble, for the day of Jehovah cometh, it is nigh at hand” (Joel ii: 1). “There shall be a day of the Lord upon all that is proud and haughty” (Isa. ii:4). The great tribulation is about past, and now when Jerusalem is not alone besieged but taken, the spoil being divided by the victors in the midst of the city, and when the enemy seems to have succeeded, then the day for Jehovah will come and He will roar out of the heavens.