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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Zechariah 8:9 - 8:9
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After these promises the prophet admonishes the people to be of good courage, because the Lord will from henceforth bestow His blessing upon them. Zec 8:9. “Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, Let your hands be strong, ye that hear in these days these words from the mouth of the prophets, on the day that the foundation of the house of Jehovah of hosts was laid, the temple, that it may be built. Zec 8:10. For before those days there were no wages for the men, and no wages of cattle; and whoever went out and in had no peace because of the oppressor: and I drove all men, one against the other. Zec 8:11. But now I am not as in the former days to the remnant of this people, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts. Zec 8:12. But the seed of peace, the vine, shall yield its fruit, and the land shall yield its produce, and the heaven give its dew; and to the remnant of this people will I give all this for an inheritance.” Having the hands strong, is the same as taking good courage for any enterprise (thus in Jdg 7:11; 2Sa 2:7, and Eze 22:14). This phrase does not refer specially to their courageous continuation of the building of the temple, but has the more general meaning of taking courage to accomplish what the calling of each required, as Zec 8:10-13 show. The persons addressed are those who hear the words of the prophets in these days. This suggests a motive for taking courage. Because they hear these words, they are to look forward with comfort to the future, and do what their calling requires. The words of the prophets are the promises which Zechariah announced in Zec 8:2-8, and his contemporary Haggai in ch. 2. It will not do to take the plural נְבִיאִים in a general sense, as referring to Zechariah alone. For if there had been no prophet at that time beside Zechariah, he could not have spoken in general terms of prophets. By the defining phrase, who are or who rose up at the time when the foundation of the temple was laid, these prophets are distinguished from the earlier ones before the captivity (Zec 7:7, Zec 7:12; Zec 1:4), and their words are thereby limited to what Haggai and Zechariah prophesied from that time downwards. בְּיוֹם does not stand for מִיּוֹם (Hitzig), but yōm is used in the general sense of the time at which anything does occur or has occurred. As a more precise definition of יוֹם יֻסַּד the word לְהִבָּנוֹת is added, to show that the time referred to is that in which the laying of the foundation of the temple in the time of Cyrus became an eventful fact through the continuation of the building. In Zec 8:10. a reason is assigned for the admonition to work with good courage, by an exhibition of the contrast between the present and the former times. Before those days, sc. when the building of the temple was resumed and continued, a man received no wages for his work, and even the cattle received none, namely, because the labour of man and beast, i.e., agricultural pursuits, yielded no result, or at any rate a most meagre result, by no means corresponding to the labour (cf. Hag 1:9, Hag 1:9-11; Hag 2:16, Hag 2:19). The feminine suffix attached to אֵינֶנָּה refers with inexactness to the nearest word הַבְּהֵמָה, instead of the more remote שְׂכַר (cf. Ewald, §317, c). In addition to this, on going out and coming in, i.e., when pursuing their ordinary avocations, men came everywhere upon enemies or adversaries, and therefore there was an entire absence of civil peace. הַצָּר is not an abstract noun, “oppression” (lxx, Chald., Vulg.), but a concrete, “adversary,” oppressor, though not the heathen foe merely, but, as the last clause of Zec 8:10 shows, the adversaries in their own nation also. In וַאֲשַׁלַּח the ו is not a simple copula, but the ו consec. with the compensation wanting, like wa'agaareesh in Jdg 6:9 (cf. Ewald, §232, h); and שִׁלֵּחַ, to send, used of a hostile nation, is here transferred to personal attacks on the part of individuals.