1874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 247 



Phul whose bargain with Menahem suits the buying and 

 selling of the flock (xi. 5), then under Pekah the quarrel 

 with Judah. Still more definite is the destroying of three 

 shepherds by the prophet i.e. in accordance with God s 

 Word in one month. Is it an accident that Shallum, 

 the murderer of Zechariah himself, fell in a month before 

 Menahem ? (2 Kings xv. 13) . And though few will agree 

 with Ewald that the Hebrew text (2 Kings xv. 10) still 

 shows the name of a third usurper, it is nothing strange 

 that a third claimant to sovereignty should have appeared 

 at the same time. Finally, the prophet s withdrawal 

 from his office seems to be in close connection with the 

 rise of the foolish shepherd, in whom it is easy to recognise 

 Pekah, the ruthless violent Gileadite. That the whole 

 narrative of the prophet s pastoral work is to be taken as 

 a narrative more or less symbolically expressed, seems 

 plain from its standing in the perfect while the predictions 

 are given in the imperfect. And such a point as the 

 immediate sequence of invasion on the breaking of the 

 staff and the acceptance of this by the believing sheep 

 as a proof of divine mission, is absolutely unintelligible 

 except on the historical interpretation. 



If, then, we had no external motive for going to a 

 time after the exile, we could find a natural historical 

 setting for our prophecy. Should we by doing so lose 

 anything of the religious meaning ? Surely not. We 

 should still retain the great Messianic passage in ch. ix., 

 we should have all through, as might easily be shown, a 

 precise analogy to prophecies of Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, 

 etc. It can only be questioned if we do not lose the 

 reference to Christ in ch. xi. Surely not. If the prophecy 

 be taken as having its first application to Christ we get 

 rather into greater difficulties. Thus the price was not 

 given to our Lord but to Judas. It was Judas that 

 threw it into the House of the Lord. Our Lord did not 

 refuse to feed the theocracy in a way just corresponding 

 to this. Again, the same person who first bears the two 



