have shown that the prophecy of Zechariah is for the most part simply a renewal of that of Jeremiah, that he announces a second fulfilment, which will not merely be accidentally associated with the first announcement, but essentially connected with it, inasmuch as it rests upon the fundamental idea of the justice of God, which is sure to bring about a fresh fulfilment whenever it receives a fresh provocation.

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Matthew might certainly have quoted both prophets. But such lengthened quotations are contrary to the custom of the writers in the New Testament. For this a twofold reason may be assigned. They could justly presuppose a very accurate acquaintance with the Scriptures on the part of their readers; and they placed the human instrumentality employed, far behind the Divine author, the Spirit of God and of Christ, which spoke equally in all the prophets. Very frequently, therefore, in fact almost universally, the human author is not mentioned by name at all. The writer contents himself with the simple formula of quotation, "the Scripture saith," "as it is written," "for it is written," "as the Holy Spirit saith," or " as God hath said." It not infrequently happens that two or even three passages from different authors are combined together into one, and yet the name of only one author is given. The passage which presents the closest analogy to the one under consideration is Mark i. 2, 3: "As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying," &c. In this case two predictions are quoted under the name of Isaiah, one from Malachi and the other from Isaiah himself; and more than this, the prophecy of Malachi stands first. Isaiah was the more celebrated prophet; and it had become so much a custom to refer to the minor prophets as a whole, in consequence of their having been united together in a single collection, that it is very rarely indeed that any one of them is mentioned by name. (Compare Matt. xxi. 5, with Is. lxii. 11, and Zech. ix. 9; and Matt. xxi. 13, with Is. lvi. 7, Jer. vii. 11, Rom. ix. 27, 1 Pet. ii. 6 sqq.).

If Matthew had simply intended to call attention to the fulfilment of Zechariah's prophecy, he would have contented himself with a general formula of quotation. This is evident from the analogy of all the other quotations from Zechariah, in not one

of which the prophet is mentioned by name. Thus in John xix. 37 the words of chap. xii. 10 are introduced in this general way, "and again another Scripture saith ;" in John xii. 14, where a quotation from chap. ix. 9 occurs, we merely find," as it is written;" in Matt. xxvi. 31, where Zech. xiii. 7 is quoted, " for it is written" (compare Mark xiv. 27); and in Matt. xxi. 4, 5 a quotation from chap. ix. 9 is headed thus, "that which was spoken by the prophet," where the article shows that Matthew could take for granted that all his readers were well acquainted with the prophet referred to. But although it might appear to him unnecessary to mention Zechariah by name, this was not the case with Jeremiah. The fact that there was a fulfilment of his prophecy in the event narrated, and the extent to which this was the case, was not so immediately obvious, as to render directions for further research unnecessary. And yet, if this was overlooked, the meaning of Zechariah's prophecy would be involved in obscurity, and the most essential features of the fulfilment misunderstood.

It only remains to show, that the quotation in Matthew fully coincides with the passage before us, in substance at least, if not in words. We must, first of all, endeavour to determine the meaning of the words καὶ ἔλαβον τὰ τριάκοντα ἀργύρια, τὴν τιμὴν τοῦ τετιμημένου, ὃν ἐτιμήσαντο ἀπὸ υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ. We render them thus: "They took the price of him who was valued, at which they had valued him on the part of the children of Israel." To obtain this meaning we do not supply the rives before ἀπὸ τῶν ὑιῶν Ἰσραὴλ, which Fritzsche has very properly rejected, though he has not thereby established his own extremely forced interpretation. We rather apply the Hebrew and Aramean usage, according to which the third person indefinite, which again takes the place of the passive, is expressed by the third person plural. We may cite as an example from the New Testament, Luke xii. 20, την ψυχήν σου ἀπαιτοῦσιν ἀπὸ σοῦ. The words ἀπὸ υἱῶν ̓Ισραήλ, “ on the part of the children of Israel," answer to hy in Zechariah. (Compare James i. 13, ἀπὸ θεοῦ πειράζομαι: “I am tempted on the part of God.” The name is given in Matthew in the place of the pronoun, to call attention to the shameful character of the valuation. It was not the heathen, from whence it proceeded, but the people of the

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covenant, who had received such innumerable proofs of the love and mercy of the Lord. The apparent discrepancy, arising from the fact that in Matthew it is the rulers of the Jews, who are said to take the pieces of silver, and throw them upon the potter's field, whereas Zechariah attributes this to the shepherd, is removed by Matthew himself in the words καθὰ συνέταξε μα núpios, which he introduces at the end, and which answer to the He evidently intimates in these words that he regards the rulers of the nation, not as acting independently, but merely as instruments through whom the Lord accomplished his purposes. Moreover, Matthew had the words of our verse in his mind, for a long time before he actually quoted them. Compare chap. xxvi. 15, "what will ye give me (answering to the words 'give me my wages' in the verse before us; the evangelist looks upon Judas as an instrument in the hands of Christ, who demands his wages, as it were, through him at the hands of the Jews), and I will deliver him unto you. And they covenanted (ornoav, the Septuagint rendering in this passage) with him for thirty pieces of silver."

Ver. 14. "And I broke my second staff, the united ones, to destroy the brotherhood between Judah and Israel."

Its

(Compare ver. 7.) There is no intimation of the staff having been originally composed of two distinct pieces of wood. fitness as a symbol was purely ideal, and it was only when it was broken that there was an actual resemblance between the sign and the thing signified. It is not without a reason, that the payment of the wages of thirty pieces of silver is placed between the breaking of the first and second staves. It served at the same time to justify the first judgment, and provoke the second. The meaning of the prophet is this: after the Lord has forsaken his people, the most pernicious discord will arise among them, discord as destructive in its character as the former conflicts between Judah and Israel. He expresses this in his usual figurative style (see the remarks on vers. 10, 11) in these terms, "the Lord will cause the brotherhood between Judah and Israel to cease," which is equivalent to the declaration in ver. 9, "they will eat one another's flesh." The prophecy was fulfilled, as we have already observed, in the time of the Roman war, when the

Jews destroyed one another in the fury of their party contentions. In Zechariah's days the severe wound inflicted upon the nation by the separation of Judah and Israel (Is. vii. 17) began to heal; and in chap. 10 he predicts a perfect cure. The restoration of unity is one of the most delightful prospects, which Ezekiel sets before the nation (chap. xxxvii. 15 sqq.). But at a still later period a fresh sin on the part of the nation would again deprive it of the blessing."

Ver. 15. "And the Lord said to me, take unto thee again the instruments of a foolish shepherd.”3

Again: that is, still continuing to set forth in symbol the fate which awaits the nation. Ewald renders the passages, “take to thee still farther." y links this action to the previous one, and shows that they are to be looked at from the same point of view. If the prophet acts as the representative of a coming shepherd in the first instance, he must do the same in the second. It is very evident, that by the foolish shepherd, we are not to understand any one individual, but the whole

1 This is so obvious, that it even forced itself upon Abarbanel's mind, quia tempore excidii latrones aucti sunt, et cum amore etiam fraternitas est imminuta in tribu Juda, et insuper inter hos et filios Israelis, sacerdotes et Levitas, qui apud ipsos erant, idcirco hic ait, ad irritum faciendam fraternitatem inter Judam et Israelem."

2 The commentators, who dispute Zechariah's authorship of the second part, generally pass very quickly over this verse. It is inconceivable, how Bleek could assert, that it points to a period antecedent to the breaking up of the Ephraimitish kingdom. If the authorship of Zechariah is denied, the only possible conclusion to which we can come, is that the prophecy belongs to an earlier period than the division of the two kingdoms, and this is not for a moment to be thought of. There is an account in 1 Kings xii. 20 of the breaking up of the brotherhood. (, brotherhood, is only met with here the form is Aramaic, see Fürst). From the period of the division of the kingdoms to the dissolution of the kingdom of the ten tribes, the brotherhood between Judah and Israel was never restored. The first indispensable condition was communia sacra. That the breaking up of the brotherhood extended to the time of Isaiah is evident from Is. vii. 17. But the brotherhood between Judah and Israel is referred to here, in terms which show that at least the first step must have been taken towards its restoration.

3 Calvin says on this verse, "the prophet teaches here, that even when God had relinquished the care of the people, a certain show of government would still be maintained, but one from which it could easily be gathered that God was no longer acting the part of a shepherd. God had already laid down his office of shepherd, but he afterwards placed wolves, and thieves and robbers over the nation in the place of shepherds, when he was about to execute his fearful judgment upon the Jews.'

4 According to Ewald the foolish shepherd is "Pekah, the wild king who was ruling at the time." Maurer thinks Hosea is intended, Hitzig, Menahem.

body of bad rulers, who brought about the destruction of the nation after the rejection of the good shepherd. We must not refer the expression to foreign rulers, however, but to the governors at home. Such threats of divine punishment, as we find in ver. 17, could only be directed against the latter, since they were both instruments and sharers in the punishment, as well as the apostasy. Of the apostasy in fact they were the leading instigators. The former, on the other hand, are represented in ver. 5 as entirely free from sin. We have already seen, that in the verse just referred to, the native governors are called shepherds, and as such are opposed to the foreign rulers, who are described as buyers and sellers. The foolish shepherd is not identical with the wicked shepherds in ver. 8, as Schmieder supposes. The appearance of the shepherd is expressly described as future in ver. 16, and we naturally understand this as meaning future in relation to the ideal present; which, as we have already seen, was the time of the appearance of the good shepherd. "The good shepherd has withdrawn from the flock, the bad shepherd takes his place" (Hitzig). The reason why the actual plurality of the bad rulers is exhibited in the form of an ideal unity, is to be found in this antithesis to the one good shepherd. The term applied to the shepherd, "foolish," not wicked, directs attention to the fact, that the rulers of the nation are so blinded by the judicial punishment inflicted by God, as to be unable to see that, whilst their fury is directed against the nation, they are undermining their own good. This aspect of wickedness,-viz., the folly associated with it, is frequently referred to. Compare, for example, Jer. iv. 22, “For my people is foolish they know me not; foolish children are they and without understanding; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge." By the instruments of a foolish shepherd we may understand merely the shepherd's staff, if we regard the expression simply as in antithesis to what precedes, or the other instruments employed by a shepherd as

Such guessing as this is a sufficient proof that the principle of interpretation is false.

1 Abendana (in the Spicilegium to Sal. Ben Melech's Miclal Jophi) had the right idea; but his explanation is too limited: "per pastores nihili intelliguntur principes latronum, Jochanan, Simeon et Eliezer."