I. The Symbolical Vision (vs. 1-5).—­The scene of the vision is left undetermined, and the absence of any designation of locality gives the picture the sublimity of indefiniteness.  Three figures, seen he knows not where, stand clear before the Prophet’s inward eye.  They were shown him by an unnamed person, who is evidently Jehovah Himself.  The real and the ideal are marvellously mingled in the conception of Joshua the high priest—­the man whom the people saw every day going about Jerusalem—­standing at the bar of God, with Satan as his accuser.  The trial is in process when the Prophet is permitted to see.  We do not hear the pleadings on either side, but the sentence is solemnly recorded.  The accusations are dismissed, their bringer rebuked, and in token of acquittal, the filthy garments which the accused had worn are changed for the full festal attire of the high priest.

What, then, is the meaning of this grand symbolism?  The first point to keep well in view is the representative character of the high priest.  He appears as laden not with individual but national sins.  In him Israel is, as it were, concentrated, and what befalls him is the image of what befalls the nation.  His dirty dress is the familiar symbol of sin; and he wears it, just as he wore his sacerdotal dress, in his official capacity, as the embodied nation.  He stands before the judgment seat, bearing not his own but the people’s sins.

Two great truths are thereby taught, which are as true to-day as ever.  The first is that representation is essential to priesthood.  It was so in shadowy and external fashion in Israel; it is so in deepest and most blessed reality in Christ’s priesthood.  He stands before God as our representative—­’And the Lord hath made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all.’  If by faith we unite ourselves with Him, there ensues a wondrous transference of characteristics, so that our sin becomes His, and His righteousness becomes ours; and that in no mere artificial or forensic sense, but in inmost reality.  Theologians talk of a communicatio idiomatum as between the human and the divine elements in Christ.  There is an analogous passage of the attributes of either to the other, in the relation of the believer to his Saviour.

The second thought in this symbolic appearance of Joshua before the angel of the Lord is that the sins of God’s people are even now present before His perfect judgment, as reasons for withdrawing from them His favour.  That is a solemn truth, which should never be forgotten.  A Christian man’s sins do accuse him at the bar of God.  They are all visible there; and so far as their tendency goes, they are like wedges driven in to rend him from God.