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CHAPTER XXIV

Sechariah. Malachi.

AFFIRMATION CONCERNING HIS PRIESTLY TITLE; OBSCURITY OF HIS STYLE; PROPHECY RESPECTING CHRIST. GLORIOUS PREDICTIONS OF MALA

CHI, LAST OF THE JEWISH PROPHETS.

ECHARIAH, the eleventh of the twelve minor prophets, was son of Berechiah, and grandson of Iddo.

He returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel, and began to prophesy in the second year of the reign of Darius, son of Hystaspes, in the year of the world. 3484; before Christ 516; before the vulgar era, 520; in the eighth month of the holy year; and two months after Haggai had begun to prophesy.

These two prophets, with united zeal, encouraged at the same time the people to go on with the work of the temple, which had been discontinued for some years.

The time and place of the birth of Zechariah are unknown. Some will have him to have been born at Babylon,, during the captivity; others think he was born at Jerusalem before the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were carried away. Some maintain that he was a priest; but others affirm that he was no priest. Many say that he was the immediate son of Iddo; others believe, with much more reason, that he was son of Berechiah, and grandson of Iddo.

He has been confounded with one Zechariah, son of Barachiah, who lived in the time of Isaiah, and with Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist; which opinion is plainly incongruous. Lastly, he has been thought to be the one whom the Saviour mentions as being killed between the temple and the altar; though no such thing is any where said of our prophet.

A tomb is shown to this day at the foot of the Mount

of Olives, which, it is pretended, belongs to this prophet. Another writer maintains that he was buried in a place called Bethariah, one hundred and fifty furlongs from Jerusalem.

Thus obscure and uncertain is the history of Zechariah. We have, however, his "sure word of prophecy," and that is to be relied upon.

He is the longest and most obscure in his writings of all the minor prophets. His style is interrupted and without connection. His promises concerning the Messiah are more particular and express than those of the others.

He comforts the Jews in re-building the temple, by the assurance of its final completion under the gracious superintendence of Providence; that the all-seeing eye of God would constantly guard his church; and that by his atonement he would procure for it peace and pardon.

He foretells the death of the Messiah, and the subsequent persecution of his disciples.

He gives a very pathetic and affecting account of the deep sorrow of the people, when brought to a sense of their sin in crucifying the Messiah, comparing it to the sorrow of a parent for his first-born and only son: a deep and retired sorrow, which will render the mourners for a season insensible to all the comforts and enjoyments of the most endearing society.

He closes with the promises of a bright day, when “Holiness to the Lord" shall be impressed upon all the works and ways of man.

We come now to Malachi, who is undoubtedly the last of the Jewish prophets. He lived after Zechariah and Haggai; for we find that the temple, which was begun in their time, was standing complete in his.

Some have thought he was contemporary with Nehemiah; indeed several have supposed that Malachi is no other than Ezra under the feigned name of angel of the Lord, or my angel.

According to Archbishop Usher he flourished B. C. 416; but

the authorized version, shows it to have been nineteen years later.

In allusion to the custom of sending pioneers to prepare the way for the march of an eastern monarch, he describes the coming of Christ's forerunner, and then of Christ himself.

With a solemnity becoming the last of the prophets, he closes the sacred canon with enjoining the strict observance of the law till the forerunner already promised should appear, in the spirit of Elijah, to introduce the Messiah, and begin the new and everlasting dispensation, even that of the blessed Gospel.

There are three remarkable predictions in the last chapter of Malachi. 1. The advent of John the Baptist, in the spirit and authority of Elijah. 2. The manifestation of Christ in the flesh, under the emblem of Sun of Righteousness. 3. The final destruction of Jerusalem, represented under the emblem of a burning oven, consuming every thing cast into it. These three prophecies, relating to the most important facts that have ever taken place in the history of the world, announced here nearly four hundred years before their occurrence, have been most circumstantially fulfilled.

From this time till the time of Christ, there seems to have been no more prophetic revelations, John the Baptist furnishing the connecting link between the two-Malachi and Christ

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PART II.

Christ and the Apostles

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