Chapter Ten

1–2. God is the giver of blessings; hope in idols is futile and serves as a source of calamities. 3–7. A depiction of the coming restoration of the house of Judah and the house of Ephraim. 8–12. The gathering of scattered Israel from all lands and their complete turning toward God.

Zechariah 10:1. Ask of the Lord for rain in the season of spring rains; the Lord will produce lightning and give you abundant rain, vegetation for each in the field. Chapter X presents an expansion and clarification of the foregoing. Interpreters disagree only as to where to assign Zech 10:1-2: to Zech 9:17 or to Zech 10:3. Keil sees in Zech 10:1 the beginning of a new series of thoughts, though one in connection with Zech 9:17 (p. 607). The ninth chapter concludes with a promise of an abundance of earthly blessings for God’s people; the tenth, in its opening verses, points to the Lord as the sole giver of these blessings: to Him one must turn with prayer for rain at that time when it is most necessary for the successful growth of all the products of the earth—that is, in the springtime.

Zechariah 10:2. For the teraphim speak emptiness, and the diviners see falsehood and recount lies; they bring comfort with nothing; therefore they wander like sheep, suffer distress, because there is no shepherd. It would be vain to make such petitions to idols (teraphim): pronouncements in their name are mere emptiness; those who worship them—diviners and false prophets—deceive themselves and others; their consoling predictions are futile: they not only fail to come to pass but bring unavoidable calamity in their wake. Stade, in his Critical Study on Deutero-Zechariah, points to the peculiarity with which teraphim appear here: this is the only place in the Old Testament in which teraphim are represented as speaking; only here and in Ezek 21:26 (Ezek 21:21 Synodal version) do they appear at all as uttering oracles (ZAThW 1881, p. 60; cf. Nowack, p. 364). One cannot, however, draw any conclusions regarding the date of origin of the second part of the Book of Zechariah on the basis of the mention of idols in it, as critical scholars attempt to do. The question of idols had not lost its significance even after the exile: though the Jews no longer had a taste for crude idolatry, the rebellious spirit of departure from the true faith, which had always been so closely connected with idolatry, did not disappear entirely. Rougemont reasons: “At the time of Zechariah, doubtless the Jews no longer had teraphim, but the spirit of idolatry was not completely destroyed, and if the false prophets with whom Nehemiah still had to deal (Neh 6 ff.) disappear in the ages of the Maccabees and Herods, they give way to false teachers and false messiahs, in whom this same spirit lives” (p. 222; cf. ZAThW 1881, p. 61 and note).

Zechariah 10:3. Against the shepherds My anger burns, and against the goats I will bring punishment; for the Lord of hosts will visit His flock, the house of Judah, and will make them like His glorious war-horse. By the unfaithful shepherds who are subject to God’s anger, interpreters understand either the leaders and guides of the Hebrew people from among their own people (Theodoret, p. 105; Jerome, p. 116–117) or the kings and rulers of pagan nations under whose dominion the Hebrews were (Keil, p. 608). St. Cyril proposes a somewhat distinctive interpretation, understanding by the shepherds “false prophets and false diviners and teachers of error,” and finds it not contrary to truth “to add to the false prophets some of the great men of the Greeks, who, being considered very wise, led astray by their eloquence those people who followed them” (p. 137).

Zechariah 10:4. From him shall come the cornerstone, from him the tent-peg, from him the bow for war, from him shall come forth all rulers. Zechariah 10:5. And they shall be like warriors, trampling the enemy in war, like street mud, and they shall fight because the Lord is with them, and they shall put to shame those who ride on horses. The house of Judah, now humiliated and enslaved, shall again serve as a support for God’s people in civic order and military might; from Judah shall come forth rulers who will subdue the power of the nations.

Zechariah 10:8. I will signal to them and gather them, for I have redeemed them; they shall be as numerous as before; Zechariah 10:9. and I will scatter them among the nations, and in distant lands they shall remember Me and shall live with their children and return; This victorious struggle with paganism and the fulfillment of other promises must be preceded by the gathering of Israel from all lands. The Lord gives a sign by which all those whom He has decided to deliver from the calamities of dispersion are brought together as one. The Hebrews shall not cease to multiply, just as they once multiplied in Egypt amid heavy labor and long oppression. Those for whom there shall not be room in their native land due to their large numbers shall again be scattered among the nations, but they shall not forget the true God and shall proclaim His name to the pagans. According to Keil’s opinion, there is no mention here of a secondary scattering of Ephraim as a means of punishment (p. 611). Rougemont, on the contrary, interprets the first word of verse 9 precisely in the sense of scattering for sin: “He will scatter them because they will sin against Him, but they will become seed that will bear good fruit throughout all the earth” (p. 224). This disagreement does not concern the essence of this prophecy, which consists in the fact that through the scattering of the Jews throughout all lands, true knowledge of God shall be spread everywhere. By laying the foundation of families and clans in foreign lands, that is, by living there for a long time, they will not sever completely the ties with their homeland and shall return to it as far as it is possible.

Zechariah 10:11. And affliction shall pass over the sea, and strike the waves of the sea, and all the depths of the river shall dry up, and the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the scepter shall be taken from Egypt. Zechariah 10:12. I will strengthen them in the Lord, and they shall walk in His name, says the Lord. The means of Israel’s deliverance shall be so miraculous as to recall the circumstances of the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt under Moses. The Nile, the source of fertility of the land of Egypt, shall dry up; the dominion of Egypt shall come to an end; the proud conqueror Assyria shall be humiliated. And the sons of Ephraim, of whom speech is made chiefly from verse 6 onwards, the Lord shall make strong; their undertakings shall be successful because they shall walk in His name. Note. The arrangement of chapters IX–XI, according to Rougemont’s observation, does not fully correspond to the actual course of events depicted in the prophetic vision: in chapter IX “the prophet concluded the portrayal of the first prosperous epoch that he has before his eyes. He opens the second, more distant epoch (Zech 10:4-12), but he is separated from it by a period of fall and punishment. However, he does not yet want to draw the attention of his listeners to this dark night; he will return to it later (XI), but now points to it as briefly as possible (Zech 10:1-3), because he must first of all encourage and comfort his people” (p. 221). According to Keil’s interpretation, the prophecy of chapter X was fulfilled in the period of time from Zechariah to Christ; many Jews in this period returned to their land, and Galilee was again thickly populated; in the struggle of great monarchies for dominion over Palestine, the Lord showed His protection over His chosen people. In essence, however, this prophecy is spiritual in character and comes to fulfillment through the acceptance of Jews into the Kingdom of Christ (p. 613).