THE DISHORNING OF THE NATIONS

Chapter 2:1-4 (In Hebrew)

The second vision follows in natural sequence upon the first; but this is no reason for placing it in the same chapter, as the English Bible has done, and ignoring the plain, logical arrangement of the Hebrew Text. The third vision, no less than the second, is the natural expansion of the first; and if all the three scenes are not to be collected in one, it is more appropriate to leave the first vision in a chapter by itself, and arrange the two supplementary pictures as the Hebrew Bible has done. In the vision among the myrtle-trees, the divine interposition was represented under a twofold aspect. It contained at once a threat of divine punishment against the nations, and a promise of divine blessing upon the distressed people of Jehovah. And as these two correlated aspects shape themselves into independent visions, the dishorning of the nations (ii. 1-4) and the surveying and measuring of Jerusalem (ii. 5-17) is the result.

The dishorning of the nations is rightly taken first; for, in the estimation of the Jewish community, no blessing for Israel could be expected until the promised political upheaval was a fully realised fact. Hence the seer on the banks of the Kedron must again lift up his eyes, to catch the first glimpse of the coming Weltkrisis — that dies irae which was to be the sign of Israel's Messianic deliverance. And as he gazed and waited for the divine unveiling, the Kedron valley was again illumined by the weird-like symbolism of the night.

1. The Four Horns.

"And I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns. And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah and Israel omitting "Jerusalem" with various MSS. of the Septuagint.

In these horns we have a graphic delineation of the nations' sin. As represented in the first vision, the world-powers had helped forward Israel's affliction by visiting upon the subjugated states the barbarities of ancient warfare. Well may Zechariah use the intensive form of the verb, to scatter; for they had tossed and gored the vanquished nation like so many infuriated bulls. We sometimes speak of the barbarities of modern warfare, and heaven forbid that anyone should seek to minimise its horrors. But modern warfare is kindness itself when compared with the savage cruelties of a Sennacherib or a Nebuchadnezzar. Imagine the fiendish device of Haying men alive! or the inhuman practice of putting out a captive's eyes! or dragging away a batch of exiles with a hook in their nose! The Chaldean conqueror was not content with deporting the very flower of the nation, when Jerusalem fell in 586 B.C. In pure savagery he slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, put out the eyes of Zedekiah himself, bound him in fetters and carried him to Babylon (2 Kings xxv. 7). And in the day when these Chaldean strangers entered the city gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, Edom was as one of them. Instead of helping a brother in distress, the wild Edomite chiefs rejoiced over Israel's calamity, grasped at a share in the spoil, and lay in wait to cut off the fugitives (Obad. 1 1-14). This is the meaning of the number four as applied to the horns. The world-powers who had gored Israel in their fury, were not one enemy here and another there, but enemies who had arisen in all directions, and rushed in like the four winds to crush and trample her life-blood in the dust.

As a picture of this ferocious might, the symbolism of the horn leaves nothing to be desired. Beginning in early Semitic ritual as a relic or appendage of the altar — for in the last resort the horns on the altar point back to the actual heads of the victims 1 — it became, in the development of society, a no less instructive symbol of kingly power (Ps. cxxxii. 17) or military strength, as when Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made him "horns of iron," and said, "With these shalt thou push the Syrians until they be consumed" (1 Kings xxii. 1 1). Even Bacchus, when he descended to the realm of the shades, in order to bring back his mother Semele, had nothing to fear from the triple-tongued rage of Cerberus; for he appeared before that dreaded guardian of the infernal regions adorned with a golden horn (Horace, Odes, n. 19, 29). While, to complete the cycle, the student will remember how the imagery of the horn has expanded into the fabled cornucopiæ of the classics, until, like the horn of the goat which suckled Jupiter, it has been placed among the stars as the emblem of plenty. Sacrifice, strength, and plenty! Probably the lambs of the flock, if not the children of a larger growth, will be interested and instructed by the development of this expressive symbol.

In the present instance, the horn is the emblem of a ruthless and all-conquering might. It recalls the figure of "the notable horn" in the Book of Daniel. Moved with choler against the two-horned ram of Media and Persia, the rough goat ran upon him in the fury of his power, cast him down to the ground, and trampled upon him; and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand (viii. 7, 20). So it fared with Israel in the day of her calamity. The world-powers had smitten and torn her, as the first King of Greece would yet smite Persia. Like enraged animals they had lifted up the horn against Judah and Israel, and scattered the heritage of Jehovah among the heathen.

Judah and Israel! Does this mean that the old discord between the two kingdoms has at last been forgotten in the stress of a common calamity? Is this an indication that men learn in suffering, or in battle, the value of a mutual comradeship in the attainment of a common ideal? If so, one reason at least for the hard discipline of the Exile is not hard to discover. Jehovah had cast His sinful nation into the furnace of affliction that the pure metal of God's people might be separated from the dross. He chastised in order to purify: he fought that he might teach. The Babylonian Exile was not a colossal blunder. The unifying of their national ideal was well worth the discipline involved. They had come out of the furnace purified as silver and temperd as steel. Jehovah had made even the wrath of their enemies to work out their national good.

2. The Four Smiths.

"And the Lord shewed me four smiths. Then said I, What come these to do f And he spake, saying, These are the horns which scattered Judah and have broken Israel (LXX), so that no man did lift up his head: but these are come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations, which lifted up their horn against the land of Jehovah (LXX) to scatter it."

The symbolism of the nations' sin is here followed by the delineation of their punishment. Their personality is not emphasised. It is the character of their work, and not the nature of their persons, that absorbs the interest of the prophet. What come these to do? is the inquiry that, springs to his lips; for, unlike the mounted scouts of Jehovah who appealed to him as angelic beings, the four smiths might be nothing more than human instruments, inaugurating and developing their plans along the line of history. The question of their identity is not pressed. We may think of them as four world-powers, like Nebuchadnezzar, who shattered the tyranny of Assyria, Cyrus, who broke down the pride of Babylon, Cambysis, who finally subdued the power of Egypt, and Alexander the Great, who in turn levelled the might of Media and Persia. Or we may limit the figure to the leaders of the people in Jerusalem — to Zerubbabel and Joshua, Ezra and Nehemiah, who carried on the work of consolidation and restoration in spite of the half-caste people of the land, who by intrigue and open resistance sought to hinder and interrupt the work. Or, in view of the fact that the four horns were referred, not to any special class of opponents, but to all the enemies of Israel without exception, the four smiths also may be interpreted in the same general way. We may think of them as the provision made by Israel's God for bringing to nought the world-wide oppression of His people, and for cowing and casting down all the adversaries and persecutors of His Church. In this wider view of the prophet's imagery, the identity of the agents may be allowed to pass into the background, and the whole attention of Zechariah and his hearers be concentrated on the character of the work.

The work, as already indicated, was the dishorning of the nations. This was Pressel's idea, as cited by C. H. H. Wright. A farmer suggested to him the true reason why smiths were specially alluded to. "When cattle," said the farmer, "are driven out to pasture, the points of the oxen's horns are often cut off, in order that they may be no longer dangerous, and as one is obliged for this purpose to use a particularly sharp instrument, he has generally recourse to a smith." In other language, the intention of Jehovah was chastisement, not destruction. Even in the case of the great worldpowers, he would humble, not annihilate, their pride. He would cast down the horn of their resentment, or withdraw the fangs of their envenomed opposition, that finding their place as innocuous and serviceable members of the community, they might realise the greatness of their national ideals in the common life of humanity.

Alas, that the wisdom and mercy of the divine intention should have been so frequently frustrated by human obduracy! Was it not so in the tragic fate of the heathen nations? Not only did they exceed their commission in the matter of helping forward the affliction of Israel, but even now, when they were to be included in a course of divine discipline — a discipline which was designed to secure their highest national welfare, they refused to yield themselves to the hand of the divine Potter, and instead of rising to their true destiny in the approved comity of nations, they went down to future generations as a heap of shapeless mounds. And what of Israel? Did she bemoan the frustration of the divine ideal? Did she bewail the fact that instead of dishorning, destruction was to be the fate of the world-powers? Alas, for the answer! Stung by the memory of her age-long oppression, she was only too ready to catch up the strains of her much-maligned imprecatory paslms, and sing —

O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed:

Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee

As thou hast served us.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones

Against the rock. — Ps. cxxxvii. 8-9.

On the other hand, this is not to be regarded as the Judaism that hates humanity. It is only the natural reaction from the inhuman oppression to which they had been too often subjected. We think of that long tale of horror which the world-conquerors had meted out to the vanished nation, and we do not marvel if the tossed and mangled community came to desire, not the dishorning of the oppressors, but the utter destruction of the bulls.

Still, the mere fact that the nations had exceeded the divine intention in the chastisement of Israel was no good reason why Israel, in turn, should go beyond the same divine plan in the subduing and humbling of the nations. The infinite mercy of Jehovah was sufficient for both. However imperfectly they realised it, it was true then, and it is true now, that

There's a wideness in God's mercy

Like the wideness of the sea;

There's a kindness in His justice

Which is more than liberty.

 

But we make His love too narrow

By false limits of our own;

And we magnify His strictness

With a zeal He will not own.

His design, both for Israel and the nations, was altogether different. He was painting on the shifting screen of the future a golden age when all the ends of the earth would be one. He was working for the time, when not only one ancient discord would be left behind, but all discords; when not only Judah and Israel would dwell together in amity, but when, in the glowing idealism of Isaiah, Israel herself would be " a third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth" (Isa. xix. 24). But how was this ideal to be reached? Only in one way — not by destruction, but by dishorning; not by vindictive hate, but by reforming and forgiving love. Israel and all the nations must yield themselves as clay to the hand of the Master Potter, that He might fashion, beautify, and keep them, as vessels meet for His use.

Sad result! if through any intractability in the clay, the vessel should be marred in the Potter's hand. It was so by the rivers of Babylon, and among the ruins of Jerusalem. Shall it be so with us?

1 See the author's Mosaic Tabernacle, p. 69.