om of God, represented under the figure of a restoration of
Jerusalem, which, under the Old Covenant, was its seat and centre (it
is this aspect only which Zechariah, in resuming this prophecy, has
brought forward in chap. xiv. 10); and, _secondly_, the glorification
of the Kingdom of God, which now is so strengthened and increased, that
it can undertake to attack and assail the dark kingdom of evil, and
subject it to itself, while formerly it was attacked and assailed by
it, and often could not prevent the enemy from penetrating into the
innermost heart of its territory. This thought the Prophet graphically
clothes in a perceptible form, and in such a manner that he describes
how the unholy places, by which Jerusalem, the holy city, was
surrounded on all sides, are included in its circumference, and become
holiness unto the Lord. In former times, the victory of the world over
the Kingdom of God had been embodied in the fact, that the abominations
of sin and idolatry had penetrated into the very temple; compare chap.
vii. 11: "Is then this house, which is called by the name of the Lord,
a den of robbers, saith the Lord?" Other passages will be mentioned
when we come to comment upon Dan. ix. 27. This inward victory must,
according to divine necessity, [Pg 449] be followed by the outward one.
The covenant-people which, inwardly, had submitted to the world, which,
by its own guilt, had profaned itself, was, outwardly also, given up to
the world, and was profaned in punishment. And this profanation,
inflicted upon it as a punishment, again manifested itself just at that
place, where the profanation by the guilt had chiefly manifested
itself, viz., in the holy city, and in the holy temple. It is with a
view to the former manifestation of the victory of the world over the
Kingdom of God, that here the victory of the Kingdom of God over the
world is described; and the imagery is just simple imagery. To the
outward holiness of the city and of the temple, the outward unholiness
of the places around Jerusalem is opposed. While the victory of the
world over the Kingdom of God had been manifested by the profanation of
these places, the victory of the Kingdom of God now appears under the
image of the sanctification of these formerly unholy places. By what
means that great change had been brought about; by what means the
Kingdom of God, which now lay so powerlessly prostrate, should again
obtain powers which it had never before possess