THE CLEANSING OF THE LAND

Chapter 5.

In the preceding sections the prophet has dealt with the leaders of the community. He removed at once the guilty fears of the one and the political aspirations of the other, by portraying Joshua and Zerubbabel as the two sons of oil that stand by the Lord of the whole earth. Political aspirations, however, were not by any means the only weakness which he had to expose. As he betook himself, time after time, to the grove of myrtles, he was painfully conscious of being confronted by another. Throughout the entire community he could feel the benumbing influence of the mercenary spirit of the times. Probably a growing reluctance on the part of some to pay the temple dues had brought the matter to a crisis: and Zechariah had the mortification of learning that not a few who dwelt in their own "deled houses" (Hag. i. 4) were among the first to perpetrate the fraud. Here, indeed, was a recrudescence of the age-long evil depicted by Zephaniah, when through absorbing attention to secular business (i. 11) the people were sinking into religious indifference, or becoming "settled upon their lees" (ver. 12) — a moral apathy which was sure to degenerate into practical infidelity or the unbelief which says, "The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil." But what availed the higher ideals impressed upon the leaders, if the people themselves were in danger of sinking into a moral apathy like this? What if the people of Jehovah had become so engrossed in secular pursuits that they were gradually losing all interest in, and love for, the sanctuary and faith of their fathers? Would the higher aspirations of the leaders absolve or save them? No, the spirituality of the ideal must be reflected in civic justice and commercial integrity, else the doom pronounced by Amos (chap, viii.) would go forth as a swift curse, and alight upon the ungodly nation after all. This is the new aspect of the subject which appeals to Zechariah in this passage; and in the double-vision recorded in these paragraphs, we have the spirit-taught message with which he was commissioned to go to the people.

1. A Flying Roll.

‘‘Then, again, I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and behold a flying roll (LXX 'sickle'). And he said unto me, What seest thou? And 1 answered, I see a flying roll; the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof ten cubits. Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole land (R.V.); for every one that stealeth shall be purged out as many as they are (cf. vii. 3), and every one that sweareth shall be purged out as many as they are. I have (perfect) caused it to go forth, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by My name: and it shall abide in the midst of his house, and shall consume it with the timber thereof, and the stones thereof" (vers. 1-4).

As compared with the personal note in this section, some may prefer to deal with evil in the abstract. Drunkenness, vice, oppression, fraud, or any other social evil ought to be condemned in the most withering terms of invective; but who would care to approach and pillory the transgressor himself, and say "Thou art the man"? Why, the individual offender may have been the merest toy in the grip of circumstances. Heredity, environment, commercial competition, and what not, may all have entered as determining and therefore extenuating factors: and when these and similar facts have been duly weighed and discounted, the sin, it is true, may still be deserving of public scorn, but the individual delinquent, as the case may be, ought to be pitied rather than blamed. Hebrew prophecy, as might have been expected, had no such timidity or fake delicacy. The sin of theft or of perjury might be reprehensible enough, and call forth the censure of all true patriots and preachers, but they never failed to begin with the person of the wrong-doer, and to pronounce God's righteous judgment on the guilty. Notwithstanding every extenuating circumstance, man is "man and master of his fate," and ought to be judged and treated accordingly. Hence if any one went forth, like Achan, and appropriated part of the spoils which had been placed under a divine taboo, it was not enough that the captain of the army should denounce the sacrilege that had wrought such folly in Israel: he must institute also a searching inquiry for the detection and punishment of the criminal, that both he and his ill-gotten gains might be expelled from the camp. In a similar manner, when Zechariah would stigmatise the deceit that tampered with the temple dues, or characterise the judgment that was sure to tread upon its heels, he could only liken it to a flying roll or a swiftly moving curse, which would overtake both thieves and perjurers, and overwhelm them in a common doom. They might cheat and defraud the sanctuary if they dared, but the retribution pronounced upon all such duplicity would assuredly come home to roost. It would come and lodge in the house of each culpable transgressor, and, like dry-rot fastening upon the timber, it would lay the whole fabric in ruins.

The entire house! i.e. timber and stone alike, or as one might say, mit Haut uni Haaren (Wellhausen); for the destruction of the tent or house was an old form of punishment, signifying the expulsion of the entire family from the camp or village. Nothing would escape the blighting influence of the curse. Like a flying eagle it was ready to swoop upon the prey, and the whole household of the perjured person would become its carrion. Dr. Dods has finely illustrated this aspect of the subject by the story of Glaucus in Herodotus. Having received a deposit of no money in trust, he wished to appropriate it for his own use; and came to the oracle at Delphi to enquire if he might take an oath that he had never received it. The following was the answer: —

"Best for the present it were, O Glaucus, to do at thou wishest.

Swearing an oath to prevail, and to to make prize of the money,

Swear then— death is the lot even of those who never swear falsely.

Yet hath the Oath-God a Son, nameless, footless and handless:

Mighty in strength He approaches to vengeance, and whelms in destruction

All who belong to the race, or the house of the man who is perjured."

And yet in the light of Israel's spiritual ideal what is the ultimate design of all such punishment i Not surely the mere destruction of the guilty, as if the satisfying of divine justice were the only incentive suggested by the flying roll. The end in view is something far more worthy of a divine moral government. It is the moulding and purifying of the whole community that it might be rendered fit for the perfect exercise of its calling. If Achan perished in the valley of Achor because of his trespass in the devoted thing, Israel whom he had troubled in the presence of her enemies was exonerated from the baleful influence of the ban. And if Zechariah, in turn, is assured that the same method is to be adopted in his age, he knows that the extermination of the thieves and false swearers is designed to bring the chosen people one step nearer to the greatness of their calling — disciplined into purity and inspired for a more perfect service. This surely was an ideal that was worth the discipline of obedience: and if any one was so mercenary in spirit, or unspiritual in outlook, as to refuse to acquiesce in the refining process, little wonder if, for the sake of that diviner vision, the earthly soul should be removed out of the way. The prohibition of the accursed thing was designed for Israel's good; but if disobedience to the higher teaching had changed the blessing into a ban, then he who coveted the spoils of war and hid them within his tent, had simply to be expelled. That the sin, however, no less than the sinner was duly anathematised in Israel is obvious from the section that follows: —

2. A Deported Ephah.

"Then the angel that talked with me appeared, and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see the bushel which there comes into view (so Wellhausen). And I said, What is it? And he said, This is their transgression (LXX) in the whole land: and behold a circlet of lead was lifted up, and a woman was sitting in the ephah. And he said, This is Wickedness: and he cast her down into the midst of the ephah, and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof. Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold there came forth two women, and the wind was in their wings: now they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven. Then said I... Whither do these bear the ephah? And he said unto me, To build her an house in the land of Shinar: and when it is prepared, she shall be set there in her own place" (vers. 6-n).

A deported ephah! truly a most significant symbol, whether we think of its form, its contents, or its destination. The measure, in itself, was eloquent with meaning as to the kind of evil that was threatening to secularise the people. Did they possess an ephah for the setting forth of wheat immediately after the passing of the Sabbath? So had Jehovah, Israel's God, for setting forth the character and value of their actions. And if they were tempted to make the ephah small and the shekel great, and to deal falsely with the balances of deceit (cf. Amos viii. 5) let them never forget that the Great Husbandman was fully aware of their duplicity, and was even now weighing and measuring it, and placing it to their account. It was not unlike the imagery of the bow. What though the wicked had bent their bow, and made ready the arrow upon the string, that they might shoot privily at the upright in heart (Ps. xi. 2)? There was Another who had bent His bow long before them. God is a righteous judge, yea, a God that hath indignation every day. If a man turn not, He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow and made it ready (Ps. vii. 12). And what will happen when all this divine preparation blazes into action? Ah, let those who are prepared to grow rich by violence and robbery — by dishonest trading, false weights and worthless goods — tremble at the thought that He whose punitive energy is about to burst forth, has accurately weighed all their practices and motives in His ephah.

For the contents of this divine symbol are even more arresting than its form. It is filled (symbolically) with the accumulated mass of the nation's sin. "This is their transgression in the whole land." It is the sum of all their theft and perjury, fraud and impiety, which would defy, desecrate and destroy both tables of the law. Is it represented as a woman — "full-grown, seductive, plotting, prolific" (Dods); and therefore ready to sweep out and infect and poison the whole land? All the more need that it should be thrust back into the midst of the ephah, and that the heavy weight of lead, which had been raised for a moment, should again be pressed firmly upon its mouth. This was wickedness — restless, defiant, insidious — a moral miasma capable of poisoning the entire national life; and therefore fit only to be expelled from the country, lifted up between heaven and earth, and deported into another land.

This raised the question of its destination. On outstretched wings, as if they were the wings of a stork (at the time of its migration), two celestial genii soared aloft on the breeze, and bore the sin-bushel between them. And when the prophet inquired, "Whither do they bear the ephah?" he was informed that, like the scapegoat led away into the wilderness, and carrying Israel's sin to the desert-demon Azazel (Lev. xvi. 10), so the deported ephah would find a home in the marshlands of the Euphrates where the boom of the bittern and the multiplied cry of the raven would bid it welcome. Away in that land of primeval impiety (Gen. xi. 4) and dishonoured commerce (Ezek. xvii. 4) the peculiarly heinous sins of. arrogance, injustice and fraud would find a congenial home, and would no longer defile or plague the heritage of Jehovah. In fine, like another King Arthur, the broad-winged genii had successfully accomplished their task. Both by flying roll and deported ephah, they had

"Cleared the dark places and let in the law,

And broke the bandit's holds, and cleansed the land."

And they had done so, chiefly, in the light of Israel's ideal. This is the final norm or test of all prophetic teaching. Commerce, no less than politics, and social reform, no less than worship, must be lifted out of the arena of self-interest altogether, and brought within the sweep of Israel's spiritual destiny. Prince or peasant, layman or priest, merchant or builder, shepherd or metal-worker, must all live and work,

"As ever in the great Task-master's eye,"

else the Kingdom of God, as a kingdom of righteousness and peace, will never be seen in the earth. Is this not the teaching of all the generations? "I, standing at the brink of the grave, cannot keep silent," writes Tolstoy, in the Fortnightly Review for March 1909; and the picture he has drawn of the ever-increasing wretchedness of the world is simply appalling. "The majority of working people, deprived of land, and therefore the possibility of enjoying the products of their labour, hate the landowners and capitalists who enslave them. The landowners and capitalists, aware of the attitude of the working classes toward them, fear and hate them, and by the aid of force, organised by government, keep them enslaved. And steadily and increasingly the position of the workers grows worse, their dependence on the rich increases; and equally steadily and unceasingly the wealth of the rich and their power over the workers increase, together with their fear and hatred." It is a dark picture; and what, according to this modern Zechariah, is the one remedy for this state of wretchedness? Loyalty to the ideal. "The means of escape... lies in the inhabitants of the Christian world adopting the highest understanding of life... which is the Christian teaching in its real meaning." "The Christian teaching in its full and true meaning is that the essential thing in human life, and the highest law that can guide it, is love" "And acknowledging the law of love to be supreme, and its application in life to be exempt from any exceptions, it cannot but reject all violence, and consequently the world's whole organisation which is founded on violence."

Zechariah in the ancient world, and now one like Tolstoy in the modern, has no other message save this. He can only put the trumpet to his lips, and summon the whole Christian world to the glory of forgotten ideals. The land or the Church, society or the individual life, can be cleansed in no other way. Each man must be loyal to the supremacy of Christian love, and walk in the paths of righteousness. Either this or an ignominy too awful to contemplate. He who will not help to deport the sin-ephah must face the flying roll!