Extract from the Work of R. Gray, Extract from the Work of L. Smith, D.D. Zechariah was the son of Barachiah, and the grandson of Iddo, the last of whom is supposed to have been a different person from the Iddo mentioned by Nehemiah, as one of the priests that returned from Babylon under the conduct of Zerubbabel; but it is very possible that Zechariah might have been of the sacerdotal race; and when released by the decree of Cyrus from captivity, in which he probably was born, have been accompanied by his grandfather in the general restoration. No certain information can be collected concerning the time or place in which Zechariah was born Some writers relate, that he was of the tribe of Levi, and consecrated to the priestly office: and we are told that his body was found with a sacerdotal robe, at Caphar or Capher, at the extremity of the territory of Eleutheropolis; while by others we are informed that he was buried at Batharia, in the land of Noeman, about forty furlongs from Eleutheropolis; not to men. tion that according to other accounts his remains were deposited near those of Haggai, at Jerusalem, and that his pretended tomb is still shown at the foot of Mount Olivet. But little reliance can be placed on these and similar representations, D. D. In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah the son of Barachiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying: In the eighth month, called in the Hebrew both Mareschuan and Beil, and answers to part of our October and November, two months after Haggai began to encourage the Jews to build the temple; and in the second year of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, and the third Persian Monarch Came the word of the Lord: which was his warrant and divine call; the Lord communicating to him what he was to communicate to others,Unto Zechariah : His name bespeaks him a remembrancer of God; or it may speak God remembering him, and the rest of the people.The son: the Jews called descendants in the right line, sons, though they were grandsons, or great grandsons; in this sense, some say Zechariah is the son of Raruch and the sou of Iddo. This Zechariah is not he who is mentioned 2 Chron. xxiv. 20. This is too early by many years; nor is this Zechariah the father of John the Baptist, this is as much too late; but most likely it is that Zechariah whom the Jews slew between the temple and the altar, Mat. xiii. 25. This name is expressly Dr. Gray continued some, or indeed all of which, have confounded the prophet with other persons mentioned in the Scriptures. Sozomen imagined the prophet was the same person with Zechariah, the son of Jeberechia, the witness mentioned by Isaiah, and who appears to have lived in the time of Ahaz, about A. M. 3262; others, by a great anachronism, make him coeval with Joash, or Uzziah. L. Smith continued, mentioned in Matt. xiii. and his time exactly suits the time pointed at by the evangelist-The son of Iddo: One of this name you have, 2 Chron. ix. 25. But this is too old to be the same with him in the text, for there will be 450 years' distance between Iddo the seer, and the Iddo here mentioned. The contents of this thirteenth chapter have induced much of inquiry, endless have been the discrepancies of opinion put forth by commentators, and which, for the most part, have terminated in uncertainty, except where the Messiah is spoken of; and on this all-absorbing subject, every part of the writings attributed to Zechariah are of a clear and circumstantial nature: but that this chapter was written long before the Babylonian captivity, cannot, I think, be at all problematical; by whom written, I am, however, no more able to determine, than I am capable of accounting for the act of transposition which placed it among the prophecies of Zechariah. CHAP. IX. Short reflections on the agreement of arguments put forward to prove that the word " image," when used by Moses, in Genesis i., related to the personal nature of Christ and of Adam. HAVING pointed out to the reader, that when Moses by inspiration, approaches the incarnation of Christ, in verse 27 of this chapter, saying," So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them;" that the deviation from the trinity of persons in the Godhead was deliberate and intentional, and designed to exhibit the amazing prescience and determinate counsel of Jehovah, by declaring the purposed incarnation of the Word, the eternally begotten son of God: and who, with respect to the co-equal divinity of the Persons in the Godhead, should exclusively, as the seed of the woman or virgin, bruise the head of the serpent, by concentrating in his own individual person, the divine and human natures, which fact is unequivocally expressed by Jehovah himself, when declaring, that Christ, the child or son of the virgin, should be called " Immanuel," that is, God and Man, though one individual Person in the Godhead; in consequence of his particular assumption of our animal nature. Let us now compare these observations with the predictive amount of what is contained in the 13th chapter of Zechariah's prophecies, "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." This language is a denunciation of death, and the mode of expression is peculiar; it is not addressed to a mere man, because saith the psalmist, "No man can redeem his own soul." But it is a denunciation of death to the man Christ, or to the natural image of the man Christ, who, without hesitation or reserve in any shape is absolutely asserted to be the fellow or equal to the Lord God Jehovah himself, and which co-equality can alone be found to exist in their mutual spirituality. Whereas the atonement, to be made and eternally appointed for the sins of man by the seed of the woman, is here, without the least ambiguity, declared to be made in the person or manhood of the God-man Christ, so that the designs of Jehovah, alike in the law and the gospel all concentrate in Jesus Christ, out of whom there can be no salvation for those to whom that law and that gospel are freely offered. For the law in its justice ministereth to the just wrath of God, but the grace and truth of the gospel of Christ, declare his mediatorial office, and that he alone, in his duplex character of God and Man, is the end of the ceremonial law in the light of all sacrifice, and also the end of the law for righteousness, which Isaiah (liii.3.) when prophetically speaking of Christ in these and other particulars, with such amplitude of sense, and precision of future events, as nothing but the omniscience of Jehovah could foretell, thus declares in the power of the Holy Ghost: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 66 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. |