Verse 10
Who hath despised the day of small things? - The poverty, weakness, and unbefriended state of the Jews. It was said, "What do these feeble Jews?" "Will they build," etc.? No. But God will build by them, and perfect his building too.
And shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel - He is master builder under God, the grand architect.
Those seven - are the eyes of the Lord - Either referring to his particular and especial providence; or to those ministering spirits, whom he has employed in behalf of the Jews, to dispense the blessings of that providence. See [2Chr 16:9] (note); [Pro 15:3] (note); [Zac 3:9] (note).
Verse 11
What are these two olive trees - See on [Zac 4:2] (note).
Verse 12
What be these two olive branches - That is, two boughs laden with branches of olive berries.
Verse 14
These are the two anointed ones - Joshua, the high priest; and Zerubbabel the governor. These are anointed - appointed by the Lord; and stand by him, the one to minister in the ecclesiastical, the other in the civil state.
Probably we may not be able to comprehend the whole of this hieroglyphical vision; for even the interpreting angel does not choose to answer the questions relative to this, which were put to him by the prophet. See [Zac 4:4], [Zac 4:11]. But though the particulars are hard to be understood; yet the general meaning has, I hope, been given.
Verse 1
The angel - came again, and waked me - Abp. Newcome considers this vision as represented on the same night, [Zac 1:8], with the preceding ones. See the latter part of [Zac 1:10], compared with [Zac 3:9]. After some interval the prophet, overpowered with the vision which had been presented to him, was awakened from his prophetic trance as from a sleep.
Introduction
The vision of the large flying roll, with the angel's explanation, [Zac 5:1-4]. The vision of the ephah, and of the woman sitting on it, with the signification, [Zac 5:5-11].
Verse 1
Behold a flying roll - This was twenty cubits long, and ten cubits broad; the prophet saw it expanded, and flying. Itself was the catalogue of the crimes of the people, and the punishment threatened by the Lord. Some think the crimes were those of the Jews; others, those of the Chaldeans. The roll is mentioned in allusion to those large rolls on which the Jews write the Pentateuch. One now lying before me is one hundred and fifty-three feet long, by twenty-one inches wide, written on fine brown Basle goat-skin; some time since brought from Jerusalem, supposed to be four hundred years old.
Verse 3
Every one that stealeth - and every one that sweareth - It seems that the roll was written both on the front and back: stealing and swearing are supposed to be two general heads of crimes; the former, comprising sins against men; the latter, sins against God. It is supposed that the roll contained the sins and punishments of the Chaldeans.
Verse 4
Into the house of him - Babylon, the house or city of Nebuchadnezzar, who was a public plunderer, and a most glaring idolater.
Verse 6
This is an ephah that goeth forth - This, among the Jews, was the ordinary measure of grain. The woman in the ephah is supposed to represent Judea, which shall be visited for its sins; the talent of lead on the ephah, within which the woman was enclosed, the wrath of God, bending down this culprit nation, in the measure of its sins; for the angel said, "This is wickedness;" that is, the woman represents the mass of iniquity of this nation.
Verse 9
There came out two women - As the one woman represented the impiety of the Jewish nation; so these two women who were to carry the ephah, in which the woman Iniquity was shut up, under the weight of a talent of lead, may mean the desperate Unbelief of the Jews in rejecting the Messiah; and that Impiety, or universal corruption of manners, which was the consequence of their unbelief, and brought down the wrath of God upon them. The strong wings, like those of a stork, may point out the power and swiftness with which Judea was carried on to fill up the measure of her iniquity, and to meet the punishment which she deserved.
Between the earth and the heaven - Sins against God and Man, sins which heaven and earth contemplated with horror.
Or the Babylonians and Romans may be intended by the two women who carried the Jewish ephah to its final punishment. The Chaldeans ruined Judea before the advent of our Lord; the Romans, shortly after.
Verse 11
To build it a house in the land of Shinar - The land of Shinar means Babylon; and Babylon means Rome, in the Apocalypse. The building the house for the woman imprisoned in the ephah may signify, that there should be a long captivity under the Romans, as there was under that of Shinar or Babylon, by which Rome may here be represented. That house remains to the present day: the Jewish woman is still in the ephah; it is set on its own base - continues still as a distinct nation; and the talent of lead - God's displeasure - is still on the top. O Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel!
Introduction
The vision of the four chariots drawn by several sorts of horses, [Zac 6:1-8]. The other vision in thus chapter may refer in its primary sense to the establishment of the civil and religious polity of the Jews under Joshua and Zerubbabel; but relates in a fuller sense, to the Messiah, and to that spiritual kingdom of which he was to be both king and high priest. In him all these types and figures were verified; on him all the promises are yea and amen, [Zac 6:9-15].
Verse 1
There came four chariots - Four monarchies or empires. This is supposed to mean the same with the vision of the four horns, in chap. 1.
Mountains of brass - The strong barriers of God's purposes, which restrained those powers within the times and limits appointed by Jehovah.
Verse 2
In the first chariot were red horses - The empire of the Chaldeans, which overthrew the empire of the Assyrians.
The second chariot black horses - The empire of the Persians founded by Cyrus, which destroyed the empire of the Chaldeans.
Verse 3
The third chariot white horses - The empire of the Greeks, founded by Alexander the Great, which destroyed the empire of the Persians.
The fourth chariot grisled and bay horses - That is party-coloured horses, or with horses, some grisled and some bay. The empire of the Romans or of the Greeks. The Greeks divided after the death of Alexander; one part pointing out the Lagidae, who attacked and subdued Egypt; and the other, the seleucidae, who subdued Syria under Seleucus.
Verse 5
The four spirits of the heavens - Ministers of God's wrath against the sinful nations of the world.
Verse 6
The black horses - This refers to the second chariot; of the first the angel makes no mention, because the empire designed by it had ceased to exist. This had red horses, to show the cruelty of the Chaldeans towards the Jews, and the carnage they committed in the land of Judea.
The black - Cyrus, at the head of the Persians and Medes, bringing devastation and death among the Chaldeans, called the north in many parts of Scripture.