THE PURIFICATION OF THE CHURCH

Chapter 3

When the first caravan set out in 537 B.C. the recognised leaders of the people were Zerubbabel and Joshua (Hag. i. 1). The secular and ecclesiastical rulers are found side by side; and yet, as Ibn Ezra so aptly observes, the prince is named before the priest, the son of Shealtiel has a distinct precedence over the son of Jehozadak. It may have been the design of their agelong discipline that they should return to their own land as a religious community; but the figment of a political ideal was not easily eradicated. It possessed so powerful an attraction for the popular imagination, that while the exiles came back greatly reduced in numbers and resources, they continued to cherish the dream of a future restoration of the kingdom, and rejoiced in the thought that a scion of the house of David was still their leader and champion. But what of the prophet Zechariah? Was he, too, swayed and fascinated by this illusive will-o'-the-wisp i Wellhausen thinks that he was. "It is probable," he conjectures, "that the prophet designs to hint in a guarded way that Zerubbabel, who in all other places is mentioned along with Joshua, is on the point of ascending the throne of his ancestor David."1 The answer to this is obvious. We have the clear teaching of chap. ii. If Zechariah taught them anything by means of his third midnight vision, he taught them the necessity of revising and reversing the order of this commonly accepted estimate. Israel must learn to read not "prince and priest," but "priest and prince." For, as Wellhausen himself has pointed out in his article "Pentateuch" in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the high priest in the second temple was not only the head of the natural worship, he was * "the head of the entire national life." And the spirituality of this ideal was not to be imperilled by any unreasoned action in the present. There was the risk of possible complications with Persia, through the unguarded expression of their national hopes. There was also the danger of depreciating and discrediting their spiritual functions, because of undue prominence given to the secular. And, finally, there was the moral certainty of still further estranging their fathers' God, and the subsequent difficulty of appeasing or placating His favour. Surely all this enforced the wisdom of learning to put first things first, and of placing well in the foreground, not their political, but their religious ideal as the covenant people of Jehovah. It is in this order, at least, that the prophet proceeds now to deal with their present spiritual perplexities. Before he comes to Zerubbabel, and treats of their feebleness as a community (chap, iv.), he describes the condition of the priesthood (chap. iii.), and their admitted sinfulness as a Church.

1. Rescued as a Brand.

"And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary. And the angel of the Lord (so Kittel) said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, the Lord, that is choosing (participle) Jerusalem, rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" (verses 1-2).

In these verses we have the prophetic delineation of the covenant people themselves. For in the words of Kliefoth (as quoted by Keil), "the priesthood of Israel was concentrated in the high priest just as the character of Israel as the holy nation was concentrated in the priesthood." It is not Joshua, as such, who is impeached before the divine tribunal, but Joshua as the ecclesiastical representative of a sinful and guilt-laden people. And the people themselves felt this. In the last resort, the charges brought by Satan against the sacerdotal ruler are but the pictorial representation of Israel's own sense of sin. And psychologically the rise of this moral consciousness is not difficult to follow. It began with the soul-subduing vision of Israel's spiritual destiny. The very impressiveness of the picture, sketched by Zechariah in the previous chapter, has filled them with the guilty fear of a possible divine estrangement. The sense of demerit is always proportionate to the consciousness of blessing despised. And since they have been led for a moment to behold the heights to which they had been summoned to rise, they have been led by the same impulse to peer into the depths to which they had allowed themselves to sink. Alas, neither they nor their priests had been worthy of. the greatness of their ideal. They had violated the law and profaned the sanctuary of their God (cf. Ezek. xxii. 26); and who could wonder, if on the threshold of His restored temple, the unworthy and guilt-laden community should be rejected? This was a fear, indeed, which could not be suppressed. It forced its way upwards to the ear and bar of the Eternal; and finding there a suitable expression in the impeachment of the great accuser, it demanded with all the sophistry of a malignant imputation the total rejection of the people. Because of Israel's long-continued and ineradicable sin, let the whole nation be treated as a brand fit for the fire.

But what is the reply of the angel of the Lord? It is at once a complete refutation of the vindictive charge, and a stern silencing of the one who brought it. "The Lord Himself rebuke thee, O Satan (note the emphatic Paseq introduced by Baer after the term 'Jehovah '); yea, the Lord who is choosing (the present participle indicating the duration or continuity of the divine action) Jerusalem, rebuke thee; is not this2 a brand plucked out of the fire?" The same figure is used in Amos iv. 11, where with a distinct allusion to the terrible throes of earthquake, the grandees of Samaria are reminded that the refugees from that appalling disaster were as a firebrand plucked out of. the burning. In the present instance, it is the exile and not the earthquake which is at the basis of the prophet's description. On the plains of Babylonia the Jewish captives had been cast as into a burning fiery furnace, and there the malicious accuser of the brethren would fain have left them as they were. But Jehovah who had chosen Israel at the first, and who had again returned in mercy to the object of His choice, realised the value of the half-burnt piece of wood, and graciously snatched it out of the fire. And on the basis of this redemptive and completed act, how could anyone listen to the vindictive and reckless plea that the scorched and blackened bit of timber should again be consigned to the flames? No, "the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance." Israel, the sinful nation, had been forgiven much; and this, the first step in her full restoration, could never be revoked. If a restored people, like a renewed soul, be rescued by a miracle of grace, it shall never be left as the prey of the great accuser. Let this be written for the comfort of the Church in all ages: the rescued one is "a brand plucked out of the fire."

2. Installed as a Priest.

"And Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the angel of the Lord. And the angel said unto those that stood before him, Take the filthy garments from off him — And unto him he said (as in a gracious undertone), Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee — and clothe him with robes flowing down to the feet, and set a fair mitre upon his head (omitting the verb ‘ I said ' at the beginning of ver. 5, and translating both verbs as imperatives with the LXX). So they set a fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments; and the angel of the Lord stood by."

This is the second stage in Israel's restoration. Deliverance from destruction is now to be followed by worship and service. And yet was even the head of the priestly nation worthy to appear before Jehovah? No doubt they had been delivered from the Babylonian captivity, and brought back to their own land, and to that extent they could justly confide in the Divine mercy. But to draw near as priests within the sphere of the divine sanctity was another and very different matter! Were they fit to approach the altar of incense in the robes of glory and beauty, enumerated in Ex. xxix. 5-6, or to appear in the dress of pure white linen prescribed for the great day of atonement (Lev. xvi. 4)? Little marvel if the revived consciousness of the people faltered at the prospect, or trembled at the thought of their unfitness for the perfect exercise of their calling. They had faith, indeed, to be saved; but had they faith also for this spiritual service? Alas, for the reality. Instead of the variegated robes of Aaron and his sons, they were dressed in the filthy garments of a nation's unaccountable folly. The sordidness of their aims had raised up an impassable barrier between them and the golden altar. They were not fit to enter as priests into the holy place. Nevertheless, their hope was in Jehovah, Israel's God. In the striking parenthesis introduced into ver. 4 (accompanied, no doubt, by a dramatic change of tone), the angel of the Lord turned to Joshua, and said, "Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee"; and as a symbolical representation of its removal, he was to listen to the angel's instructions to those who were standing by. Addressing these attending ministers, he continued, "Remove the squalid garments from off him — garments which so vividly portray the nation's sense of sin; and clothe him in those robes of glory and beauty, which no less fitly symbolise his acceptance as a priest." And the attending angels did so. They clothed him with garments down to the feet, and set a fair mitre upon his head, and the angel of the Lord stood by. The guilty fears of the people were shown to be entirely groundless; and because they were, Israel must now listen to the solemn teaching which follows, that the symbolical change of raiment having been effected, the sacrament of investiture must be vindicated and crowned by the unswerving loyalty of obedience. "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, If thou wilt walk in my ways, and if thou wilt keep my charge, then thou also shalt judge my house, and shalt also keep my courts (the emphatic pronoun * thou,' and the repeated adverb 'also' being a sufficient justification for beginning the apodosis at this point), and I will give thee a place of access (R.V.) among them that stand by." Instead of being treated as an outcast, Joshua is to be admitted freely into the divine presence as the people's representative. If installation is followed by obedience, obedience, in turn, will be rewarded by communion with the divine. And in that freedom of access among those who encircled God's throne, the spiritual ideal of Israel would itself be crowned. In fine, Israel, the people of Jehovah, is graciously accepted as a reinvested kingdom of priests. The filthy garments have been laid aside for the rich apparel of the King.

3. Honoured as a Type.

"Hear now, O Joshua, the high priest, thou and thy colleagues that sit before thee (i.e. the priestly conclaves); for they are men which are a sign; for behold I will bring forth my servant the Branch" (ver. 8). Baffled by the failures of the past, and grieved by the sordidness of the present, does the prophet suggest in these concluding verses that for a complete reaffirming of Israel's faith, the leaders must have recourse to the shifting screen of the future f If so, he never possessed a more suitable startingpoint for his Messianic vaticination than in the spiritual functions, but also the confessed limitations of Israel's reinstated priests. If they failed in realising fully the greatness of their spiritual calling, they could at least point forward to One who in the glory of Israel's golden age would give a perfect realisation to that transcendent hope. Hence the greatest thing that could be said of Joshua and his priestly colleagues was that they were a type or portent of the coming Messianic fulfilment. They were not merely a wonderful illustration of Jehovah's saving grace (A.V.), or men who could interpret marvels, like the soothsayers of ancient times (LXX); they were also types or symbols of the long-promised Messianic ideal; and therefore a definite ground of assurance for Israel's undying hope.

The hope itself is vividly depicted in verses 8b - 9. It is at once a living shoot that springs up out of obscurity into wides-preading luxuriance; and an equally significant stone, which, brought out and adorned by the Master Builder, will yet ensure the erection and ultimate completion of the temple. The figure of the "Branch," which appears as a proper name in Zech. vi. 12, is already familiar from passages like Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, Isa. iv. 2, xi. 1; and even the profoundly solemn oracle in Deutero-Isaiah, where the ideal Servant of Jehovah is represented as "a root out of a dry ground," with no form nor comeliness, and no beauty that we should desire him (Isa. liii. 2). Thus humbly and obscurely would the coming Messiah appear as a branch; but, unlike the charred brand fit only for the fire, He would grow and flourish like the goodly cedar, until its benign shadow would fill the land. The services of Joshua and his colleagues might be restricted in various ways — both by the earthliness of their aims and by the local character of their sanctuary — but who could set any bounds to the priesthood of God's servant the Branch? He would appear in the power of an endless life, and sacrifice and intercede for all. Here, indeed, was a hope that might well fill the people of Jehovah with a fully assured faith. In the greatness and glory of the Messianic fulfilment their profound spiritual ideal would be verified.

But what of the urgency of their present national distress? This suggested the companion picture of a "stone," which having been set before Joshua, the high priest, was to ensure the ultimate completion and adequate adornment of the Jewish temple. "Behold the stone that I have set before Joshua; upon that one stone shall be directed seven eyes — the seven eyes which symbolise the universal providence and care of Jehovah (cf. iv. 10) — and behold whatever decoration be necessary in order to fit the stone for its place at the comer or capital, I myself will engrave the engraving thereof; until when it is finally placed in position, and the Messianic temple has become a completed fact, I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day." In a word, the ideal temple, like the ideal Jerusalem, will be a house of prayer for all nations; and the luxuriance of my Servant the Branch will throw its welcome shadow over the whole. Then, indeed, the ultimate goal of Old Testament pedagogy will be reached; each man will sit under his vine and under his fig-tree, and invite his neighbour to come and share in the blessings of an enduring peace.

1 Biblica, col. 5392.

2 Wickes regards the double Mer'kha on this word as "an irregular and unmeaning accentuation," but see the author's remarks on Hab. i. 3 in Sermons in Accents, p. 55.