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As a general reply, we may say, there can be no doubt that Lebanon is used here in a figurative sense. Bleek's opinion, that we have here the description of "a devastation of nature itself, and that by the hands of violent men," is proved to be incorrect by ver. 2, where the cedars of Lebanon are expressly called "the mighty," and also by the earlier passage, Jer. xxv. 34-38, where the shepherds and the mighty of the flock are the princes and magnates of the nation. The rest, therefore, must also be interpreted figuratively. But what are we to understand by Lebanon? We are not left to conjecture here, to which Hofmann has recourse, but can give an answer based upon a surer foundation. In the symbolical language of Scripture, and particularly in Zechariah (chap. iv. 7), mountains denote kingdoms. Now, Lebanon, as being the nearest range, which met the eyes of the sacred writers, and the border mountains between Palestine and the heathen world, might be taken as a symbol of the imperial power in the hands of the Gentiles. But it might also be regarded as a symbol of that kingdom, of which it originally formed a part, namely, the kingdom of Israel. We find the symbol employed in the Scriptures to represent both of these. Lebanon and Antilebanon are employed as symbols of the imperial power in the Song of Solomon iv. 8 (see the remarks on this passage) and Is. xxxvii. 24, xiv. 8. In Is. x. 34, and Hab. ii. 17, Lebanon is used to denote the Assyrian empire. It occurs in

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in the Talmud (Joma, 396) it is evident that Lebanon was supposed to represent the temple at Jerusalem. We will quote the words of this singular passage. Quadraginta annis ante excidium apertae sunt portae templi sua sponte. Abjurgavit igitur eas R. Jochanan fil. Zaccai et dixit: O templum, templum, quare tu terres te ipsum? novi ego, quod finis tuus erit, ut desoleris. Nam sic prophetavit de te Zacharias, filius Iddo aperi Libane portas tuas." This opening of the temple-doors is mentioned by Josephus also (de bell. Jud. vi. 5), and it is not improbable, that he regarded it as an omen of such importance to himself and his contemporaries, because the explanation referred to was so generally current at the time. The antiquity of this exposition among the Jews is also apparent from the fact that it is given by many of the Church-fathers, particularly Eusebius and Jerome, who probably borrowed it from them. The latter observes, "Lebanon opens its gates, that the Roman army may enter, and the fire consumes its cedars, either when the whole is destroyed by fire, or when the leaders and chiefs are overthrown by the attacks of the enemy." There were many even of the modern commentators, Grotius for example, who adopted the reference to the temple: Others, again, were of opinion that Lebanon meant Jerusalem generally; whilst there were others, such as Marck and Eichhorn, who understood by it the whole of Palestine, "of which this mountain formed the northern boundary, and which, like Lebanon itself, was distinguished in many ways above the other countries of the earth."

connection with the mountains of Gilead as a symbol of the kingdom of Judah in Jer. xxii. 6, 7, "Thus saith the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah: thou art Gilead unto me; surely I will turn thee into a wilderness, into cities which are not inhabited, and I sanctify over thee destroyers with their weapons, and they exterminate thy choice cedars, and cause them to fall together over the fire." In Ezek. xvii. 3, the family of David is represented as a lofty cedar upon Lebanon. In this case, therefore, Lebanon must be a symbol of the kingdom of Israel, which only existed in that of Judah in the time of the prophet. In the verse before us the symbol is used in the latter sense.-Hofmann's opinion, that this section contains the announcement of a universal judgment, is proved to be incorrect by the parallel passages in the two nearest prophets, Ezekiel and Jeremiah ;-by the fact that all the names employed as symbols are names of places in the holy land (Lebanon, Bashan, the pride of Jordan) ;—by chap. x. 10, "I will bring them to the land of Gilead and Lebanon, and they will not have room," where the land of Lebanon is the land of Israel (the threat in the verse before us is evidently intended as a contrast to the promise in the passage just quoted, in fact the same contrast may be traced throughout between chap. xi. and chaps. ix. x.);-and lastly by the connexion which has been shown to exist between ver. 1-3, and ver. 4 sqq.-If Lebanon then is the Kingdom of Judah, not as contrasted with the ten tribes, but including them (chap. x.), the cedars of Lebanon can only represent the chief men of the kingdom. We are led to this conclusion by the express declaration in ver. 2. Stately trees are generally the symbols of great men. In Ezek. xxxi. 3 sqq. Asshur is introduced as a cedar in Lebanon. Compare Is. x. 18, 19, xiv. 8, and my commentary on Rev. vii. 1.

Ver. 2. "Howl, cypress, for the cedar is fallen, the glorious ones being made desolate; howl, ye oaks of Bashan, for the wood is felled, the defenced one."

The cypresses, it is true, are inferior to the cedars, but on account of the hardness and strength of their wood, and its suitable qualities for the building of palaces and ships, they are placed in the second rank; and there are other passages (e.g., Is. xiv. 8, xxxvii. 24, and Ezek. xxxi. 8), in which the two are connected together. The oak-forests of Bashan were also celebrated, the oak being generally classed among the noblest trees.

Compare Is. ii. 14, where the oaks of Bashan are classed with the cedars of Lebanon, as they are in this passage. Both in substance and in the expressions employed, there is a resemblance to the passage before us in such passages as Is. xxiii. 14, "Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, for your fortress is destroyed," and Jer. xlix. 3, "Howl Heshbon; for Ai is in ruins." It is a general custom with the prophets, when the strong has fallen, to call upon the weaker to tremble and mourn, and in this manner to give expression to the thought, that for the latter there is no longer any hope of deliverance (compare the remarks on chap. ix. 5).—The relative is equivalent here to "because" or "inasmuch as," and is introductory to the explanation. That O are not glorious trees, but the nobles of the nation, is evident from the earlier passage, on which this is founded (Jer. xiv. 3), "their nobles (glorious ones) have sent their little ones to the water," and xxv. 34-38, where the leading men are called the glorious ones of the flock. is also applied to wood,

His proud and lofty

which has been felled, in Is. xxxii. 19. trees come down, as it were, from the throne into the dust. The words of Isaiah are, "it hails, when the wood comes down." The world is represented there as visited by the judgments of God; and Michaelis interprets the words as referring to the time" when the kingdom of Antichrist will be destroyed." In the passage before us, on the other hand, the judgment falls upon the faithless covenant-nation. It is the more natural to conclude that there is some connexion between this passage and the one in Isaiah, since there is a link of connexion in chap. x. 11, "and the pride of Asshur is thrown down, and the sceptre of Egypt departs," to which the words before us evidently refer.

The supporters of the allegorical interpretation have from time immemorial justly looked upon these words as affording a direct confirmation of their views. In the Septuagint the clause is rendered ὅτι μεγάλως μεγιστᾶνες ἐταλαιπώρησαν. Jerome translates them "quoniam magnifice vastati sunt," and observes, "he now states more clearly, what he had already said obscurely. I want to know, what are these cedars of Lebanon, which are consumed, these fir-trees, to which howling is attributed, these pines, which fall to the ground; the great ones, he tells me, are laid low." Theodoret : καὶ ἑρμηνεύων, ἃ τροπικῶς ἔιρηκεν, ἐπήγαγεν κ.τ.λ. and Cyril, ότι δὲ περὶ ἀνθρώπων ὁ λόγος ἀταλαίπωρον ἰδεῖν· ἔφη γὰρ εὐθὺς, ὅτι μεγάλως μεγιστάνες εταλαιπώρησαν·

The leaf is turned. The judgment, which was formerly inflicted upon the world for the good of the Israelites, now falls upon the faithless covenant-nation itself." The wood, the strong one" is equivalent to "the wood, notwithstanding its strength." In the symbolical language of Scripture, the wood denotes the whole nation, as the lofty trees represent its leaders. Compare Is. ix. 17, x. 19, 34, xxxii. 19, xxxvii. 24, xliv. 23, "break forth, ye mountains, into singing, O forest, and every tree therein," where the mountains are the kingdoms, the wood the nation, and the trees men. The passage upon which this is more immediately founded is Ezek. xx. 46 sqq. The nation of Judah is described there as the forest of the south." "The forest of the south," says Hitzig, "is devoured by the fire of Jehovah (vers. 46—50), i.e., his sword will exterminate the inhabitants of the land of Judah (chap. xxi. 1-5); the men are trees, therefore the nation is a forest." The explanation is given in ver. 2, "prophesy against the land of Israel." The marginal reading, which is only used of the vintage, in the place of, which is very commonly employed in the sense of " firm, inapproachable" (in Ezek. xxi. 26, Jerusalem is called), probably arose from the passage being compared with Jer. vi. 9, for which there is no warrant.

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Ver. 3. "The voice of the howling of the shepherds, for their ornament is spoiled, the voice of the roaring of the lions, for the pride of Jordan is spoiled."

The prophet is describing what took place in a vision, and this will explain the absence of the verb, which could not be accounted for merely on the supposition of an ellipsis. The passage, on which this is based, is Jer. xxv. 34 sqq. Jeremiah is speaking there of the Chaldean judgment, a repetition of which is announced by Zechariah here; hence the connection between the two passages is a purely internal one. In Jeremiah the judgment falls upon Judah and the surrounding heathen world. But Judah is the central point. Verse 36 agrees almost word for word with the first half of the verse before us, "the voice of the crying of the shepherds and the howling of the glorious one of the flock for the Lord lays waste their pasture." Verse 38 corresponds to the second clause: "they leave, as a lion, their

camp; for their land will be for a desolation."

The only thing which is peculiar to Zechariah, is the fact that the lions are represented as being frightened out of the pride of the Jordan, the noble wood, which covers its banks, and prevents you from seeing the water till you have passed it, and which still affords shelter to innumerable wild beasts, though there are no longer any lions among them (Burckhardt 2 p. 593; Rosenmüller Alterthumskunde 2. 1. p. 196 sqq.). Even this has been taken from other passages of Jeremiah.2-The connection, in which the allusion to the shepherds at the end of the introduction stands to the prophecy generally (" feed," ver. 4; “ye shepherds," ver. 5, &c.), has been correctly pointed out by Ewald: "the prophecy has thus by a sudden leap approached the shepherds, of whom it treats in a much more serious tone after this lively prelude." As the shepherds referred to afterwards (in vers. 4, 5, 8, 15) are the rulers of the nation, it must also be to them that

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1 According to Zechariah, the whole body of shepherds is to be regarded as the subject of and not Jehovah (compare Ezek. xix. 1 sqq.). 2 Schnurrer (on Jer. xii. in Velthusen, Kühnol, and Ruperti comm. theol. 3. p. 372) maintains that the expression, "the pride of the Jordan," gradually worked its way into the language of the people as a strictly geographical term. But this is wrong, for it never loses its appellative signification as a term of honour. Not only do we find the expression itself in three passages of Jeremiah, and in no other book, but in all three passages the pride of the Jordan is specially described as the abode of lions. Now this can hardly have been the case previous to the depopulation of the land through the devastations caused by the wars, which attended the breaking up of the kingdom (compare 2 Kings xvii.), and certainly was not the case in the age to which the second portion of Zechariah has latterly been assigned. Moreover, this was so far from being an exclusive mark, that we can only explain its recurrence in Zechariah on the ground that it was taken from Jeremiah. In Jer. xlix. 19 we find this passage in the prophecy against Edom, "behold he will come up like a lion from the pride of the Jordan to the fold of the strong" ("the land of Edom which boasts of its impregnable strength." Schmid). The same sentence occurs word for word in chap. 1. 44 in the prophecy against Babylon. The repetition is intentional. It points out the retributive justice of God. In Jer. xii. 5, "in the land of peace thou trustest, but what wilt thou do in the pride of Jordan," a safe district is contrasted with the neighbourhood of the Jordan, which was rendered dangerous by lions. If we pay attention to such phenomena as these, we cannot but marvel at the blindness of those who transfer the second portion of Zechariah to the period antecedent to the captivity. Bleek (p. 279) reverses the order. He says that Jeremiah borrowed the expression from the passage before us. But this is contrary to analogy. Every word in Jeremiah indicates its priority in age. And in addition to this the perfectly independent use of the phrase in chaps. xii. 5 and xlix. 19 is also a proof of the originality of Jeremiah.

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