of the Messiah, and with the reality. But against this argument Mark has already very justly objected: "Ad sacerdotium cogitandum non ducit heic corona, sed persona et munus Josua." We cannot perceive, why that should be made the subject of an additional type, which Joshua, as has been said, chap. 3, already typified himself. Besides, we find no trace of two crowns, certainly not in the duality of the metals, which might just as well be applied to one as to more. Lastly, the question still arises, whether the name crown,, can be given to the head-dress of the high priest, which, to say the least, it receives nowhere else. The choice, therefore, can be only between two views, either that but one, or that several crowns were made. The latter cannot indeed be sustained by the plural ni. For this is sufficiently explained by the supposition of one consisting of several small crowns or diadems. It occurs entirely in this sense, Job 31:36, "I will bind it around me as crowns," where only one complex crown can be spoken of, as also Apoc. 19 : 12; (καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ διαδήματα πολλὰ), where not several separate diadems, but one composed of many, is attributed to Christ, as the mark of his regal dignity. The idea of one crown is favored partly by the unsuitableness and insipidity of a plurality, partly by its being placed on the head of one, Joshua, and partly by the connexion of the sing. of the verb with the plur. лoy, v. 14; which, however, of itself would not be decisive, (comp. Ewald, p. 639.) Thus far the prophecy by matters of fact expressed by the symbolic action. Let us now inquire, how far this could be intelligible to Joshua and his enlightened contemporaries, even without the following verbal prophecy. The putting on of the crown manifestly signified the conferring of the royal dignity. Hereby, therefore, the thought was forbidden, that the prophecy by matters of fact could refer to his person as such. Never could the kingdom be taken from the house of David without a violation of the promises which God had made to him. Joshua, therefore, could not doubt that the crown was placed upon him only as the type of another. Who this was, he had the less reason to doubt, since he had just before, chap. 3, been greeted as a type of the Messiah, since, according to Ezek. 21:31, &c., the diadem and crown should be taken from the royal stock, until they should be conferred upon the Messiah, and as David, Ps. 110, had already predicted, that the priesthood of the Messiah should be like that of Melchisedech, that he should unite in himself the dignity of high -- priest and king. All possible uncertainty, however, was done away by the following verbal prophecy. This was designed to explain the foregoing symbolic action in two respects; first, what was intended by the placing of the crown upon the head of Joshua, and, secondly, why the material of this crown was taken from the deputies and representatives of brethren, who were dwelling in distant lands. V. 12, 13, relate to the former, v. 14, 15, to the latter. V. 12. "And say to him, thus saith the Lord: see there a man whose name is Branch; out of his ground shall he spring forth, and build the temple of the Lord." The prophecy is here placed after the synonymous symbolic action, as if independent of it. The particle points to the Messiah as present, and admonishes Joshua, who represents him in name and office, to direct towards him his spiritual cye. The manner in which the appellation is here employed, as a sort of proper name of the Messiah, yet, as the context shows, with a close regard to its appellative import, points back to the earlier prophecies, especially those of Jeremiah, (comp. on chap. 3,) in which the Messiah had been represented as a sprout of David to be raised up by the Lord. The phrase nyn is to be translated, desubter se germinabit. It contains the explanation of . The great subject of promise will justly bear the name branch or sprout. For he will not descend from above in full glory, but, like a plant slowly springing up from the ground beneath, raise himself by degrees from his original obscurity. According to this explanation, n stands opposed to be, just as e. g. Exod. 20: 4; “Thou shalt make to thyself no likeness of that which is in heaven above, po, and of that which is on the earth beneath, л," and Amos. 2: 9. Correctly, Drusius: "Germen vocatur, quia ex se repente succrescet, et ex radice sua in similitudinem germinis puliulabit." The explanation of others is to be rejected, who give to the verb another subject than the Mesiah, as Luther: "Under him it will grow;" Calovius: "Sub eo et ejus regno germinabunt et florebunt omnia;” Burk : “Germen est ipse, et sub illo opus quoque universum pulchre germinabit ;” Jerome : “ Et subter eum orietur multitudo credentium," Cyril, &c. It is an unsuitable image, that under the sprout, therefore, out of its roots, all, or the multitude of believers, shall grow. This growth does not appear till the shoot becomes a great tree, under which Ezekiel in the parallel prophecy, chap. 17:22-24, makes all the fowls of heaven dwell; the substitution of another subject than the noun 66 immediately preceding is unnatural; the parallel passage of Jeremiah, which the prophet had just had before his eyes, chap. 33: 15, “Behold I make a righteous sprout spring forth to David," shows, that as the Messiah is there he whom the Lord causes to spring up, so is he here the sprout itself. Another explanation, "He will sprout up out of his own place" (Alting: "e loco suo, tum quod ad gentem, ex domo Davidis, Judæ, Abrahami, quibus factæ sunt promissiones, tum quod ad patriam; " Tarnov, Reuss, &c.,) takes as it has already been ,מִקוֹמוֹ as simply synonymous with מתחתיו explained by Kimchi and Abenezra, but erroneously, since nnn in the Hebrew, as well as in all the kindred dialects, never has the meaning place, but always, if the passages are accurately examined, that of below. It deprives the explanation of py of an essential characteristic, the original obscurity of the Messiah, and introduces in its stead one foreign to the purpose. It diminishes in this manner the force of the contrast with the following member, which consists in this, that he, who at first appears in obscurity, will so build the temple of the Lord, that every former building of it shall be comparatively nothing. He builds the temple of the Lord. That the building of the outward temple cannot here be spoken of, as the Jewish interpreters dream, has been well proved by Reuss in the learned Dissert., qua orac. Zach. 6: 12, 13. expl., Opusce. t. I. p. 1-156. Nowhere is a building of the outward temple attributed to the Messiah. Our prophet had himself declared in the name of God, chap. 4: 10, that the building of the temple begun by Zerubbabel, should also be completed by him; and this same temple, according to his predecessor Haggai, chap. 2:7-9, and his successor, Mal. 3: 1, should be glorified by the presence of the Messiah. The building of the temple and the high priesthood of the Messiah must still stand in a certain relation to each other. If now the purity to be effected by the latter is not outward, but inward; if, as our prophet from his zealous study of his predecessors, (comp. Is. 53,) must have known, and according to chap. 12 and 13, actually did know, this purity was to be obtained, not by the blood of animals, but by the high priest's own blood, then surely must the prophet, when he is led by the building of the temple in his time to attribute such a work to the Messiah, be understood figuratively; and the more so, since, as we have already had frequent occasion to show, it is his constant custom to rise from the shadow of future blessings to the blessings themselves, and to repre sent the future under the image, and by the name, of the present. It is further to be observed, that it is not here asserted, that the Messiah would build a temple to the Lord, but the temple of the Lord. The temple is thus designated as perpetually existing, as constantly the same; it is, however, to be exalted by the Messiah to a glory never anticipated before. We now inquire, in what sense the building of the temple is attributed to the Messiah. The temple was the seat of the kingdom of God under the Old Testament; it is this, not the walls or any thing else of an outward nature, which constituted the essence of the idea. Thereby, however, was it suited for an image and type of the kingdom of God itself, the church, which by no means began with Christ, but, under the Old and New Testament, is one and the same. Cocceius: " Templum autem dei unum est, nempe ecclesia tov owSouέvan, inde a promissione in paradiso promulgata, usque ad finem mundi." This temple Solomon and Zerubbabel had contributed to build, so far as their outward efforts proceeded from faith, and were not directed to what was external as such, not to the shell but to the kernel, which remained when the shell had long been broken. V. 13. "And he will build the temple of the Lord, and he will bear majesty; and he sits and reigns on his throne, and is a priest on his throne and the counsel of peace shall be between them both." The repetition of, "and he will build the temple," is by no means an idle one. As these words, v. 12, in the antithesis with "he will spring out of the earth," direct the attention to the fact, that a glorification of the kingdom of God, never anticipated before, would proceed from the Messiah, notwithstanding his original obscurity, so do they here, as the repeated in both sentences shows, closely relate to the following, "and he will bear majesty." They call the attention to the circumstance, that the building of a far superior temple, an infinitely greater glorification of the Theocracy, was to be expected from the Messiah clothed with majesty, than from the poor and obscure Zerubbabel. They thus opened for those who were mourning over the feeble and small beginning of the new colony a rich fountain of consolation; they raise their view from the poor present to the splendid future. The words, "he will bear majesty," contain the explanation of the putting on of the crown in the symbolic action. The noun in stands by way of eminence for the kingly majesty, comp. 1 Chron. 29: 25; “And the Lord made Solomon great, and bestowed upon him kingly maj esty and glory, л, which no king possessed before him;" Dan. 11: 25, "They bestow not upon him the kingly majesty," min; Ps. 21: 6, 8:6, where man appears as a subordinate king appointed by God; and that in this special meaning the word is to be taken here also, appears from the reference to the symbolic action and from the context. Several translate, "He will receive. majesty," and especially has Reuss given himself much trouble to defend this interpretation. But majesty and dominion are elsewhere also often represented as something borne by rulers, upon their heads, with reference to the badge of the regal dignity, the crown, comp. e. g., besides the cited passages of Chron., Dan., and Ps., Num. 27:20; "Thou bestowedst of thy majesty, 7717, upon him ;" and this representation was here the more natural, as the prophet had before him Joshua, bearing on his head the crown, the badge of dominion. "He sits," and "he reigns," differ from each other in this, that the former signifies the possession of the regal honor and dignity, the latter the actual exercise of the regal power. The suff. in ip is referred by several, especially Vitringa, Obss. s. 1, p. 317, and Reuss ("ita in solium Jehova exaltatum iri, ut non modo divinæ illius majestatis et gloriæ particeps sit, sed actu etiam imperium ipse administret,") to Jehovah. But this interpretation plainly originated in over fondness for emphasis, which is too often manifest in the otherwise estimable treatise of Reuss. The close relation is thus overlooked, in which the first ispy stands with the second. This relation shows, that the emphasis does not rest on the suff., that the object of the prophet is rather, to render prominent the thought, that the Messiah would be both a king and high priest on one and the same throne. This truth, however, was in the highest degree consoling to the covenant people. It gave them a pledge, that their future head should possess both the power and the will to help them. As a true high priest, the Messiah should represent his people before God, and procure for them forgiveness of their sins, as the prophet had already more fully predicted, chap. 3; as a true king, of whose glory all who had preceded were only a feeble copy, he should protect the objects of his favor, and, in general, make them partakers of all the blessings designed for them by God. — In the last words there is a difference in the interpretation, first, of the phrase "between them both." Very ancient (even Jerome mentions it), and widely spread (Cocceius, Vitringa, Bengel, Reuss, &c.) is the interpretation, "inter germen et Jehovam." On the con |