but simply wakes the
Prophet that he may see it, and directs his attention to it by the
question, 'What seest thou?' The best way to teach is to make the
learner put his conceptions into definite words. We see things more
clearly, and they make a deeper impression, when we tell what we see.
How many lazy looks we give at things temporal as well as at things
eternal, after which we should be unable to answer the Angel's question!
It is not every one who sees what he looks at.

The passage has two parts--the vision and its interpretation, with
related promises.

The vision may be briefly disposed of. Its original is the great lamp
which stood in the tabernacle, and was replaced in the Solomonic Temple
by ten smaller ones. These had been carried away at the Captivity, and
we do not read of their restoration. But the main thing to note is the
differences between this lamp and the one in the tabernacle. The
description here confines itself to these: They are three--the 'bowl' or
reservoir above the lamp, the pipes from it to the seven lights, and the
two olive-trees which stood on either side of the lamp and replenished
from their branches the supply in the reservoir. The tabernacle lamp had
no reservoir, and consequently no pipes, but was fed with oil by the
priests. The meaning of the variations, then, is plain. They were
intended to express the fuller and more immediately divine supply of
oil. If the Revised Version's rendering of the somewhat doubtful
numerals in verse 2 be accepted, each several light had seven pipes,
thus expressing the perfection of its supplies.

Now, there can be no doubt about the symbolism of the tabernacle lamp.
It represented the true office of Israel, as it rayed out its beams into
the darkness of the desert. It meant the same thing as Christ's words,
'Ye are the light of the world,' and as the vision of the seven golden
candlesticks, in Revelation i. 12, 13, 20. The substitution of separate
lamps for one with seven lights may teach the difference between the
mere formal unity of the people of God in the Old Testament and the true
oneness, conjoined with diversity, in the New Testament Church, which is
one because Christ walks in the midst. Zechariah's lamp, then, called to
the minds of the little band of restored exiles their high vocation, and
the changed arrangements for the supply of that oil, which is the
standing emblem for divine communications fitting for service, or, to
keep to the