foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of Hosts hath sent me unto you. 10.  For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.’—­ZECHARIAH iv. 1-10.

THE preceding vision had reference to Joshua the priest, and showed him restored to his prerogative of entrance into the sanctuary.  This one concerns his colleague Zerubbabel, the representative of civil power, as he of ecclesiastical, and promises that he shall succeed in rebuilding the Temple.  The supposition is natural that the actual work of reconstruction was mainly in the hands of the secular ruler.

Flesh is weak, and the Prophet had fallen into deep sleep, after the tension of the previous vision.  That had been shown him by Jehovah, but in this vision we have the same angel interpreter who had spoken with Zechariah before.  He does not bring the vision, 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.