Zechariah 2:6-13

A Collection of Fragments.

Zechariah 2:6 f. bids the Jews scattered through the Persian empire escape to Jerusalem, where they will be safe when the judgment comes upon Persia. The north in Jeremiah's earliest prophecies referred to the Scythians, and was subsequently applied to the Chaldeans and their successors. In Zechariah 2:6 b the LXX has, I will gather you from, etc. Possibly MT and LXX should be combined. In Zechariah 2:7 place daughter before Zion. Zechariah evidently considers that many of those who once formed the population of Zion are still in Babylonia.

Zechariah 2:8 f. Omit After glory hath he sent me, and read Thus saith the Lord of hosts with reference to the nations, etc; omit For in Zechariah 2:9.

Zechariah 2:10. The prophet does not mean a local presence of the Lord in Jerusalem. When he seems not to intervene for His people, it is as though He were absent.

Zechariah 2:11. An anticipation of the conversion of the heathen probably inserted, or at least modified by a later hand.

Zechariah 2:12. inherit: an entirely misleading translation. The Heb. word is used of receiving a portion of land for cultivation at the periodic distribution of the whole arable land belonging to the village community. Judah will be, as it were, the land which the Lord has for His own cultivation.

Zechariah 2:13 appears to be a fragment describing the Lord's coming to judge the oppressors of Israel. It is difficult to say whether it is original or a later insertion (cf. Habakkuk 2:20; Zephaniah 1:7).