CHAPTER 16

From Zechariah.

That the Almighty Lord states that He is sent by Another Almighty Lord for the Destruction of the Wicked.

[Passage quoted, Zech. ii. 8.]

IN these words the Almighty Lord Himself says that He has been sent, and teaches who it was that sent Him, saying, "And ye shall know that the Almighty Lord has sent me." Here, then, you have clearly two Persons using one Name, the Almighty Lord that sent, and Him that is sent having the same Name as the Sender. And whom else could you suppose Him that is sent to be, but Him that we have so often called God the Word, Who states that He is sent by the Father, and says clearly, "After his glory he has sent me," shewing that though pre-existing in the glory of the Father He was sent afterwards unto the nations that spoiled you? For the Word of God was sent unto the nations, who before were hostile to the people of God, and subjected them to Himself, making a spoil of them by His disciples, who belonged to the Jewish nation, which the Gentiles had long spoiled enslaving it to their own idolatry. This, then, He says that the nations will suffer, as He ordained. For as they perverted the people of God from their ancestral religion, and made them a spoil for their own daemons, so some day shall they be made spoils from their fathers' idolatry to them who of old have served them, and be brought under the yoke of the Jewish religion. And the Lord says that this will be done by Himself, as He will be sent by His Father to accomplish it. It might also be said that certain invisible spiritual powers are meant by the nations which spoiled and enslaved the souls of men, which the Word of God here says He loves as the apple of His eye. And the proof of His great love to the human race is that He did not draw back, though He was the Word of God and in the glory of the Father, but agreed to live with men and govern them.