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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Zechariah 3:1 - 3:1
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Zec 3:1-10. Fourth Vision. Joshua the high priest before the angel of Jehovah; accused by Satan, but justified by Jehovah through Messiah the coming Branch.
Joshua as high priest (Hag 1:1) represents “Jerusalem” (Zec 3:2), or the elect people, put on its trial, and “plucked” narrowly “out of the fire.” His attitude, “standing before the Lord,” is that of a high priest ministering before the altar erected previously to the building of the temple (Ezr 3:2, Ezr 3:3, Ezr 3:6; Psa 135:2). Yet, in this position, by reason of his own and his people’s sins, he is represented as on his and their trial (Num 35:12).
he showed me - “He” is the interpreting angel. Jerusalem’s (Joshua’s) “filthy garments” (Zec 3:3) are its sins which had hitherto brought down God’s judgments. The “change of raiment” implies its restoration to God’s favor. Satan suggested to the Jews that so consciously polluted a priesthood and people could offer no acceptable sacrifice to God, and therefore they might as well desist from the building of the temple. Zechariah encourages them by showing that their demerit does not disqualify them for the work, as they are accepted in the righteousness of another, their great High Priest, the Branch (Zec 3:8), a scion of their own royal line of David (Isa 11:1). The full accomplishment of Israel’s justification and of Satan the accuser’s being “rebuked” finally, is yet future (Rev 12:10). Compare Rev 11:8, wherein “Jerusalem,” as here, is shown to be meant primarily, though including the whole Church in general (compare Job 1:9).
Satan - the Hebrew term meaning “adversary” in a law court: as devil is the Greek term, meaning accuser. Messiah, on the other hand, is “advocate” for His people in the court of heaven’s justice (1Jo 2:1).
standing at his right hand - the usual position of a prosecutor or accuser in court, as the left hand was the position of the defendant (Psa 109:6). The “angel of the Lord” took the same position just before another high priest was about to beget the forerunner of Messiah (Luk 1:11), who supplants Satan from his place as accuser. Some hence explain Jud 1:9 as referring to this passage: “the body of Moses” being thus the Jewish Church, for which Satan contended as his by reason of its sins; just as the “body of Christ” is the Christian Church. However, Jud 1:9 plainly speaks of the literal body of Moses, the resurrection of which at the transfiguration Satan seems to have opposed on the ground of Moses’ error at Meribah; the same divine rebuke, “the Lord rebuke thee,” checked Satan in contending for judgment against Moses’ body, as checked him when demanding judgment against the Jewish Church, to which Moses’ body corresponds.