Living water.

14:1 -11.

e

King over all the earth.

A

c

Men ... horse smitten.

14:12 -21.

b

Every one left ... that came against it.

a

Pot -- holiness.

The city Jerusalem is mentioned by Zechariah forty times, and in the

section before us (Zechariah 12 to 14) it occurs no less than twenty -one

times.  The nations are warned that Jerusalem will be both 'a cup of

trembling' and a 'burdensome stone' to all the nations round about.  While we

see in the national aspirations of Israel marked signs of the times, the key

to prophetic times is not Palestine but Jerusalem.  'Jerusalem shall be

trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled'

(Luke 21:24).  (See Jerusalem8).

Any Gentile power that 'treads down Jerusalem' is a direct successor to

Nebuchadnezzar till the time of the end.  (See The Times of the Gentiles

Begin, p. 280).

The salvation and restoration of Israel hinges upon their repentance.

At His first Coming they rejected their Messiah and were in turn rejected.

At long last 'they shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced' saith the Lord,

and a national mourning will follow with 'every family apart'.  A fountain is

to be opened for sin and uncleanness in Jerusalem, and then in its proper

moral sequence, 'living waters' shall go out from Jerusalem: half of them

toward the hinder sea.

The 'former sea' is the Eastern or the Dead Sea.  It is to this that

the prophet Ezekiel refers when he speaks of the waters that have healing

properties, reaching unto Engedi, a village on the banks of the Dead Sea

(Ezek. 47:1 -11).  The prophets Isaiah and Habakkuk use this healing river,

which flows from Jerusalem and blots out the Dead Sea, as a symbol.

'For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the

Lord, as the Waters cover the Sea' (Hab. 2:14).

Before this great blessing to the earth flows from Jerusalem, that city

will be subjected to a terrible siege and its inhabitants most cruelly

treated.  The Companion Bible, in Appendix 53, gives a list of twenty -seven

sieges which Jerusalem has already endured, and indicates that the siege of

Zechariah 14 will be the twenty -eighth and the last, and this will be raised

by the coming of Christ, when in fulfilment of the promise made to the

disciples, 'His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives' (Zech.

14:4; Acts 1:9 -12).

The prophetic statement of Zechariah 14:5, 'The Lord my God shall come,

and all the saints with Thee' is referred to in 1 Thessalonians 3:13, 'the

coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints'.  The word 'saints' to

the English reader suggests the redeemed among men, but hagios is not so

restricted.  It is used of angels (Rev. 14:10; Matt. 25:31; Luke 9:26; Acts

10:22).  Deuteronomy 33:2 says, 'The Lord came from Sinai ... He came with

ten thousands of saints'.  No one that we know of teaches that 'the Church'

came with the Lord to Mount Sinai, but the Scriptures do teach that 'angels'

were mediators at the giving of the law.