6:1 VA ASHUV VA ES'A EYNAI VA ER'EH VE HINEH ARB'A MARKAVOT YOTS'OT MI BEYN SHENEY HE HARIM VE HE HARIM HAREY NECHOSHET
וָאָשֻׁב וָאֶשָּׂא עֵינַי וָאֶרְאֶה וְהִנֵּה אַרְבַּע מַרְכָּבוֹת יֹצְאוֹת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הֶהָרִים וְהֶהָרִים הָרֵי נְחֹשֶׁת
KJ (King James translation): And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.
BN (BibleNet translation): Then I lifted my eyes again, and looked, and, behold, four chariots came out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.
ARB'A MARKAVOT: As previously there were four CHARASHIM (Zechariah 2:3). As this continues, the chariots will fail to be rementioned, but the horses pulling them will become central - are these the same horses that we met at 1:8? They certainly come in the same colorations (see verse 2, below). And yes, verse 7 will confirm that they are.
Chariots are not common in Yisra-Eli tales - Eli-Yahu ascending to the heavens in 2 Kings 2:11 is the only one that comes immediately to mind, unless you wish to count No'ach's Ark as a kind of chariot; which it would be, in the equivalent Greek world of Phaeton and Helios, and in the equivalent Egyptian of Ra (in the Am Tuat and in The Book of Gates), where that chariot crossing the heavens is always a depiction of the journey of the sun-god - but this isn't, and there are four of them, so no point our looking in those directions for an answer.
Perhaps, given that we have already had allusions to it earlier, Zechar-Yah is thinking of Exodus 14:6, where Pharaoh prepares his chariot to pursue the Mosaic Habiru across the desert, to prevent their flight... but then, if it is that, then any military attack could be inferred, and no shortage of those in Yisra-Eli history.
I cannot comment on this vision of Zechar-Yah's without having the full text of Ezekiel 1 open in front of me, because, in truth, that chapter is all the commentary that is needed. Too long to quote in full here, click at either of the links - the one above is an English translation, the link here is Yehudit and English. As the opening verse tells us, Yechezke-El had that vision, in captivity in Bavel (Babylon), on the 5th of Tammuz, 592 BCE (the first group of exiles went with King Yeho-Yachin in 597, the destruction of the Temple was in 586 BCE). It is highly unlikely that the listeners to Zerach-Yah would have been unfamiliar with the Yechezke-El, even if they did not have it in written form.
Yechezke-El's four "horses" are really KERUVIM, mythological beasts made up of four distinct creatures. The "Four Riders of the Apocalypse" who will appear in St John's "Book of Revelations" (6:2-8) some half a millennium later will be based on these rather more normal horses, and will indeed bear the same description - "conquest, a white horse; war, a red horse; famine, a black horse; and plague, a pale horse!" - worth having that text open as well as we go through this one: click here for plain English, or in the bracket above if you want the Greek original as well as the English. One question arises from the John: his naming of the four as "conquest", "war", "famine" and "plague" is not in the Zechar-Yah, or at least not there explicitly - was John simply offering his own "vision", or had these "attributes" become "implicit" in people's understanding of the Zechar-Yah? We cannot know, but it is a useful thought to keep in mind as we try to unravel the symbolisms.
NECHOSHET: No question that the NECHOSHET belongs to YECHEZKE-EL, the "radiance like brass" of 1:4 which, by the way, is also the source of the modern Ivrit word for "electricity" - and presumably the "lightning" that Yechezke-El saw was striking the same holy mountain that Zechar-Yah is seeing now; but Yechezke-El's was itself a double allusion, because Nechushta was the name of King Yeho-Yachin's mother, and then there is Nechushtan, Mosheh's "brass serpent", carried as a banner through the wilderness, at the vanguard of the people (whence my picking up Pharaoh's chariots as a possible allusion, above).
So, in fact, we can pretty much follow the Mosaic journey from Sinai to the borders of the Promised Land, through the allusions that Zechar-Yah has been elaborating verse by verse, and we can watch him paralleling the Exodus from Egypt, which reached its apogee with the building of the Solomonic Temple, with the Exodus from Babylon, which still has miles of "brass mountain" left to climb. And we can also go back to the gold and silver and lead talents of the previous chapter, because NECHASH in Chaldean, the language of the Babylonian conquerors, like "brass" today in English slang, meant "money".
6:2 BA MERCHAVAH HA RI'SHONAH SUSIM ADUMIM U VA MERKAVAH HE SHENIT SUSIM SHECHORIM
בַּמֶּרְכָּבָה הָרִאשֹׁנָה סוּסִים אֲדֻמִּים וּבַמֶּרְכָּבָה הַשֵּׁנִית סוּסִים שְׁחֹרִים
KJ: In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;
BN: The first chariot had red horses, and the second chariot black horses.
ADUMIM...SHECHORIM: There will no doubt prove to be symbolic significance to these colours; we shall have to wait and see - the rider in 1:8 was on a red horse, and the others were red, "speckled" (sorrel or probably skewbald) and white. But "red horses" is rather generalist, and rare in the breed. Equestrians today reckon that most horses are "chestnut" in colour, which is certainly a shade of red - interesting at this link that it divides the basic horse-colours into "grey, black, bay, and chestnut", which coincides precisely with both Zechar-Yah and John of Patmos.
6:3 U VA MERKAVAH HA SHELISHIT SUSIM LEVANIM U VA MERKAVAH HE REVI'IT SUSIM BERUDIM
וּבַמֶּרְכָּבָה הַשְּׁלִשִׁית סוּסִים לְבָנִים וּבַמֶּרְכָּבָה הָרְבִעִית סוּסִים בְּרֻדִּים אֲמֻצִּים
KJ: And in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses.
BN: And the third chariot had white horses, and the fourth chariot skewbald horses.
BERUDIM: I am hearing Ya'akov in this verse but need to check - Lavan's sheep were definitely white, because Lavan means "white" and that was part of the word-game running throughout that story (Le'ah means "cow" and Rachel "sheep). But were Ya'akov's "speckled sheep" BERUDIM?
To which the answer is: well, yes and no and sort of. But first: no, they were not. In Genesis 30:32 we are told that they were "NAKOD VE TALU - נָקֹד וְטָלוּא" in the case of the sheep, and "TALU VE NAKOD", in the case of the goats. Nor does the root BARAD, in any form, come up anywhere in that chapter - so we can dismiss that option. Except that we can't. Because, in 31:10, when Lavan chases Ya'akov and catches up with him, he describes what has happened to his sheep, and he calls them AKUDIM and NEKUDIM, just as Ya'akov did, but he adds VERUDIM, our word, which Ya'akov didn't. Hummm!
BARAD does indeed mean "speckled", from a root whose base meaning is "cut up" or "spread" or "sprinkled", but it is used primarily for "hail", which is likely to happen alongside the lightning when it strikes the "brass mountain", though of course it was also one of the ten plagues (cf Exodus 9:18).
BERUDIM: I am hearing Ya'akov in this verse but need to check - Lavan's sheep were definitely white, because Lavan means "white" and that was part of the word-game running throughout that story (Le'ah means "cow" and Rachel "sheep). But were Ya'akov's "speckled sheep" BERUDIM?
To which the answer is: well, yes and no and sort of. But first: no, they were not. In Genesis 30:32 we are told that they were "NAKOD VE TALU - נָקֹד וְטָלוּא" in the case of the sheep, and "TALU VE NAKOD", in the case of the goats. Nor does the root BARAD, in any form, come up anywhere in that chapter - so we can dismiss that option. Except that we can't. Because, in 31:10, when Lavan chases Ya'akov and catches up with him, he describes what has happened to his sheep, and he calls them AKUDIM and NEKUDIM, just as Ya'akov did, but he adds VERUDIM, our word, which Ya'akov didn't. Hummm!
BARAD does indeed mean "speckled", from a root whose base meaning is "cut up" or "spread" or "sprinkled", but it is used primarily for "hail", which is likely to happen alongside the lightning when it strikes the "brass mountain", though of course it was also one of the ten plagues (cf Exodus 9:18).
Worth looking at my page on BERED, which is mentioned as a place near Be'er Sheva in the tale of Hagar (Genesis 16:7 and 14), but also, more importantly... see the notes, but note that they end with the statement "The equivalent word in Syriac is used for that spotted cat the leopard, whence Latin pardus, as in Shakespeare's 'bearded as the pard' in 'As You Like It'."
SUSIM: I am conscious that I wrote about this at 1:8, but need to review the matter in the light of what we have read since (I suggested then that I was only speculating, and would review). And because Zechar-Yah has now got me assuming that every word is a mot juste chosen for a symbolic purpose, I shall recheck the spelling of SUSA, the Persian capital, the place to which Zeru-Bavel and co need to make petition if they are going to get the suspension revoked and the Temple completed. And no, Susa is Shushan (שׁוּשַׁ֥ן - cf Esther 1:2), with a Sheen, so it cannot be connected... except that, wait a moment, how strange, just like the Ayin-Aleph games in the previous chapter. Sus with two samechs (סוס) is the horse that we have here, but it is also used to mean "joy" (except that Gesenius, who gives me this information, cannot provide the supporting evidence of a textual reference), from the idea that horses prance when they are feeling that way; and then there is also Sus with two Seens (שוש), and it means... "to rejoice" - cf Deuteronomy 28:63, Isaiah 35:1 and 65:19, et al... This is going to need still further review at some later stage, I suspect.
SUSIM: I am conscious that I wrote about this at 1:8, but need to review the matter in the light of what we have read since (I suggested then that I was only speculating, and would review). And because Zechar-Yah has now got me assuming that every word is a mot juste chosen for a symbolic purpose, I shall recheck the spelling of SUSA, the Persian capital, the place to which Zeru-Bavel and co need to make petition if they are going to get the suspension revoked and the Temple completed. And no, Susa is Shushan (שׁוּשַׁ֥ן - cf Esther 1:2), with a Sheen, so it cannot be connected... except that, wait a moment, how strange, just like the Ayin-Aleph games in the previous chapter. Sus with two samechs (סוס) is the horse that we have here, but it is also used to mean "joy" (except that Gesenius, who gives me this information, cannot provide the supporting evidence of a textual reference), from the idea that horses prance when they are feeling that way; and then there is also Sus with two Seens (שוש), and it means... "to rejoice" - cf Deuteronomy 28:63, Isaiah 35:1 and 65:19, et al... This is going to need still further review at some later stage, I suspect.
6:6: VA A'AN VA OMAR EL HA MAL'ACH HA DOVER BI MAH ELEH ADONI
וָאַעַן וָאֹמַר אֶל הַמַּלְאָךְ הַדֹּבֵר בִּי מָה אֵלֶּה אֲדֹנִי
KJ: Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord?
BN: Then I answered, saying to the messenger who was speaking inside me, "What are these, my Lord?".
BN: Then I answered, saying to the messenger who was speaking inside me, "What are these, my Lord?".
So many times has he used this technique already, we now expect it! Set up a piece of symbolism, and then pretend you don't know what it means either, so you can explain it; but it turns out to be full of inner and deeper symbolisms, which then require further explanation...
6:5 VA YA'AN HA MAL'ACH VA YO'MER ELAI ELEH ARB'A RUCHOT HA SHAMAYIM YOTS'OT ME HITYATSEV AL ADON KOL HA ARETS
וַיַּעַן הַמַּלְאָךְ וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָי אֵלֶּה אַרְבַּע רֻחוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם יוֹצְאוֹת מֵהִתְיַצֵּב עַל אֲדוֹן כָּל הָאָרֶץ
KJ: And the angel answered and said unto me, These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.
BN: And the messenger answered, saying to me, "These are the four winds of the heavens, which have ceased standing before the Lord of all the Earth, and have gone out...
ARB'A RUCHOT: In 5:7 we were told of a KIKAR, which turned out to be a lead coin, and I explained that the root is any globe or circle (Exodus 29:23). As so often, and as per my very last note, Zechar-Yah plays with symbols within symbols, alternating them, interchanging them, throughout. In the ancient world of the Yehudim, the Cosmos was perceived as a circle, and drawn in the form of a mandala, divided into four quarters, with various other parts and aspects... but best go to the link, where this is explained much more eloquently than I can do. The point is: each of those four quarters had its own governing spirit (RU'ACH), and the Prophet Yirme-Yah famously prophesied the Exile when he said (Jeremiah 49:36) that "I will bring the four winds against Eylam from the four corners of the heavens, and I will scatter them to all these winds. There will not be a nation to which Eylam's exiles will not go." Eylam was the ancient name for Persia.
YOTS'OT ME HITYATSEV: Option a), the root, YATS'A, simply means "to go out", and has been used repeatedly in these verses in the simple, Po'al, form. But here it also appears to be being used in the Hitpa'el, reflexive, form, for which no obvious, intrinsic meaning is deducible - yes, I know I am wrong; bear with me; we are an aural audience, we moderns, we are hearing YOTS'OT and HITYATSEV, and we are drawing false assumptions; we are assuming that Zechar-Yah is doing what writers so love to do, neologising words to suit his purposes, using correct grammatical forms, in this case correct grammatical roots as well, to create what he needs to create but lacks vocabulary for.
But no, option b), there is YOTS'OT from the root YATS'A, and then there is HITYATSEV, from the completely different root YATSAV - that final Vet should have been obvious, but it could just as well have been a Vav for a 3rd person pronoun. YATSAV then, "to set", "to put", "to place", especially "to take a stand"; but here in the Hitpa'el, reflexive form, which we saw at the very start of the Mosheh story, in Exodus 2:4, Mir-Yam "standing far off" to make herself available when Pharaoh's daughter took Mosheh in his crib out of the bulrushes; and again in Exodus 19:17, when "Mosheh brought the people out of the camp to meet Ha Elohim; and they stood at the rear part of the mount"; and again in Exodus 34:5, where "YHVH descended in the cloud, and stood with him there."
So the translation remains unchanged, but the tone needs to be understood very differently:
"These four spirits have been [idling away their days], standing before the Lord of the Cosmos, [but doing nothing, when there are things that need doing], and now they have [finally got their act together and] gone out...
6:6 ASHER BAH HA SUSIM HA SHECHORIM YOTS'IM EL ERETS TSAPHON VE HA LEVANIM YATS'U EL ACHAREYHEM VE HA BERUDIM YATS'U EL ERETS HA TEYMAN
אֲשֶׁר בָּהּ הַסּוּסִים הַשְּׁחֹרִים יֹצְאִים אֶל אֶרֶץ צָפוֹן וְהַלְּבָנִים יָצְאוּ אֶל אַחֲרֵיהֶם וְהַבְּרֻדִּים יָצְאוּ אֶל אֶרֶץ הַתֵּימָן
KJ: The black horses which are therein go forth into the north country; and the white go forth after them; and the grisled go forth toward the south country.
BN: "The chariot that is being drawn by the black horses is heading for the north country; and the white ones have gone after them, and the skewbald have set out for the south country."
ASHER BAH: Grammatically continues the previous sentence, but the meaning does not. There must be a missing but inferred pronoun, but it is not the SUSIM, as KJ translates it, because they are plural where BAH is singular, and anyway it is the plural YOTS'IM which provides their verb. The singular noun is the chariot.
YOTS'IM is the present tense, YATS'U the past tense.
YOTS'IM is the present tense, YATS'U the past tense.
Do these routes in any way connect to the tribal map? Yisaschar for example is in the north and some scholars think he should be Yah Shachur, the Black Madonna, which would tie in neatly with the black horses.
6:7 VE HA AMUTSIM YATS'U VA YEVAKSHU LALECHET LEHITHALECH BA ARETS VA YO'MER LECHU HITHALCHU VA ARETS VA TITHALACHNAH BA ARETS
וְהָאֲמֻצִּים יָצְאוּ וַיְבַקְשׁוּ לָלֶכֶת לְהִתְהַלֵּך בָּאָרֶץ וַיֹּאמֶר לְכוּ הִתְהַלְּכוּ בָאָרֶץ וַתִּתְהַלַּכְנָה בָּאָרֶץ
KJ: And the bay went forth, and sought to go that they might walk to and fro through the earth: and he said, Get you hence, walk to and fro through the earth. So they walked to and fro through the earth.
BN: Then the red set out, and sought a route that would allow them to roam to and fro across the Earth. And he said, "Go, roam across the Earth." And so they roamed across the Earth.
HA AMUTSIM: "The bay" in KJ, describing its colour, though we weren't given that colour previously - is this simply another way of saying "chestnut"? "The strong" in the Sar Shalom translation, which is much more likely the literal meaning, based on multiple usages of the word with that meaning throughout the Tanach, but which also suggests that the Prophet has just moved on from the colour of the horses to a completely different analogy - and there is no evidence of this in the text. "Strong red" seems to me the more likely intention, and therefore "bay".
LALECHET... LEHITALECH: See my note to YATSAV above - endorsement of my conviction that it was word-play there, just as it clearly is here. But now go back to 1:10, when "the man standing among the myrtle trees explained, 'They are the ones YHVH has sent to patrol the Earth"; which is clearly what they are doing here, now; confirmation here that they are the same horses described there.
6:8 VA YAZ'EK OTI VA YEDABER ELAI LE'MOR RE'EH HA YOTS'IM EL ERETS TSAPHON HENIYCHU ET RUCHI BE ERETS TSAPHON
6:8 VA YAZ'EK OTI VA YEDABER ELAI LE'MOR RE'EH HA YOTS'IM EL ERETS TSAPHON HENIYCHU ET RUCHI BE ERETS TSAPHON
וַיַּזְעֵק אֹתִי וַיְדַבֵּר אֵלַי לֵאמֹר רְאֵה הַיּוֹצְאִים אֶל אֶרֶץ צָפוֹן הֵנִיחוּ אֶת רוּחִי בְּאֶרֶץ צָפוֹן
KJ: Then cried he upon me, and spake unto me, saying, Behold, these that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country.
BN: Then he called out to me, and spoke to me, saying, "Behold, the ones that are going towards the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country."
samech break
6:9 VA YEHI DEVAR YHVH ELAI LE'MOR
וַיְהִי דְבַר יְהוָה אֵלַי לֵאמֹר
KJ: And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
BN: Then the word of YHVH came to me, saying...
Not a messenger speaking inside him this time, but direct communication.
6:10 LAKO'ACH ME ET HA GOLAH ME CHELDAI U ME ET TOVI-YAH U ME ET YED'A-YAH U VA'TA ATAH BA YOM HA HU U VA'TA BEYT YOSHI-YAH VEN TSEPHAN-YAH ASHER BA'U MI BAVEL
לָקוֹחַ מֵאֵת הַגּוֹלָה מֵחֶלְדַּי וּמֵאֵת טוֹבִיָּה וּמֵאֵת יְדַעְיָה וּבָאתָ אַתָּה בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא וּבָאתָ בֵּית יֹאשִׁיָּה בֶן צְפַנְיָה אֲשֶׁר בָּאוּ מִבָּבֶל
KJ: Take of them of the captivity, even of Heldai, of Tobijah, and of Jedaiah, which are come from Babylon, and come thou the same day, and go into the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah;
BN: "Take from those of the captivity who came from Bavel, even from Cheldai, from Tovi-Yah, and from Yed'a-Yah; and come yourself on the same day, and go into the house of Yoshi-Yah ben Tsephan-Yah...
LAKO'ACH: Unfamiliar form; the vocative in the Pu'al is KACH, but here the infinitive is being used; and in the next verse, the past tense. But take what? Nothing is specified - does he mean people from those areas of captivity, and deploy them? The following verse calls for cash donations, so some commentators assume that he wants offerings in this verse; but the goal is to make the clothing of the Kohen Gadol, so he needs tailors and jewelsmiths, not barbecued goats.
ET: Why is it ET HA GOLAH and ET TOVI-YAH and ET YED'A-YAH, but not ET CHELDAI? ET is the standard indicator of an accusative noun, so it applies in every instance.
CHELDAI: Why these people - or are they places? Some commentators assume (from the last words in the verse) that a new group has just arrived to join the returnees, and that Zechar-Yah is calling on the leadership to approach them for donations; or perhaps the king has added to their store, and so they are bringing the necessary with them. But again there is no evidence in the text for any of this. CHELDAI is not very common as a person's name, but there was one other who bore it, Cheldai the Netophati in 1 Chronicles 27:15.
TOVI-YAH: See Strong et al for details on this name. Where Cheldai could be the name of a place, Tovi-Yah is definitely the name of a person - see verse 14.
YEDA-YAH: The same applies to this name.
YOSHI-YAH BEN TSEPHAN-YAH: The Nekudot allow this to be either Yoshi-Yah or Yoshiyah, the one reflecting the name of the mother-goddess, the other not. Tsephan-Yah, by contrast, like most of the Yah names, is unquestionably in that former group. But who are these people? From the next verse they are at the very least wealthy men, and probably the next tier of leadership after Zeru-Bavel.
ASHER BA'U MI BAVEL: Adding some confusion by coming at the end of the verse in the Yehudit text; but logically it has to be placed much earlier in the sentence. The key is BA'U, which is plural; if it referred to Yoshi-Yah alone it would be BAH, in the singular. If a new group of returnees had arrived, surely there would have been a note of such an exceptional event in either Ezra's or Nechem-Yah's narrative.
6:11 VE LAKACHTA CHESEPH VE ZAHAV VE ASIYTA ATAROT VE SAMTA BE ROSH YEHOSHU'A BEN YEHO-TSADAK HA KOHEN HA GADOL
KJ: Then take silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest;
וְלָקַחְתָּ כֶסֶף וְזָהָב וְעָשִׂיתָ עֲטָרוֹת וְשַׂמְתָּ בְּרֹאשׁ יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן יְהוֹצָדָק הַכֹּהֵן הַגָּדוֹל
KJ: Then take silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest;
BN: "And take silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them on the head of Yehoshu'a ben Yeho-Tsadak, the High Priest...
ATAROT: These are not regal crowns, but the mitres of the Kohen ha Gadol and senior priests.
ATAROT: These are not regal crowns, but the mitres of the Kohen ha Gadol and senior priests.
YEHO-TSADAK: Note the continuation of the name of Tsadok in the title of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest. Before King David conquered Yeru-Shala'im, the high priest of the cult of Moloch had the name in his title - we witness it when Av-Ram comes to Shalem and meets Malki-Tsedek (Genesis 14), as well as finding it as the name as the king of Shalem at the time of Yehoshu'a's conquest (Joshua 10:1). Tsadok means "right", in the sense of "Justice", and would be recognised by most Jews through its use as Tsedakah, the giving of charity. It is from the name Tsadok - albeit a somewhat later one (see Ezekiel 40:46) - that the name Sadducees is formed, they being the "followers of Tsadok", the ones who wanted to keep Temple practice under the Kohanim and Leviyim at the centre of Yisra-Eli life, while the Hellenistic-influenced, and later Bavel-influenced Pharisees believed that the era of sacrifical worship was over and needed to be replaced by a more humanistic personal discipline, devoid of corporeal superstitions, rooted in morals and behaviours - precisely the ideology that would prevail when the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE and Talmudic Judaism established.
6:12 VE AMARTA ELAV LE'MOR KOH AMAR YHVH LE'MOR HINEH ISH TSEMACH SHEMO U MI TACHTAV YITSMACH U VANAH ET HEYCHAL YHVH
6:12 VE AMARTA ELAV LE'MOR KOH AMAR YHVH LE'MOR HINEH ISH TSEMACH SHEMO U MI TACHTAV YITSMACH U VANAH ET HEYCHAL YHVH
וְאָמַרְתָּ אֵלָיו לֵאמֹר כֹּה אָמַר יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת לֵאמֹר הִנֵּה אִישׁ צֶמַח שְׁמוֹ וּמִתַּחְתָּיו יִצְמָח וּבָנָה אֶת הֵיכַל יְהוָה
KJ: And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD:
BN: "And speak to him, saying: Thus says YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, saying: Behold the man who is called 'The Sapling'. He shall leave the place where he grew up, and he shall build the Temple of YHVH...
TSEMACH: I am not going to apologise, before or after, but I am going to upset many persons of Christian faith, both clerics and lay-people, with this explanation. Because "The Branch" is, quite obviously, the Messiah, Jesus himself, prophecied right here. Or would be, if TSEMACH meant "branch", which alas it doesn't. A "branch" in Yehudit is usually a NETSER, which may well be the "root" of the word NOTSRI, which is "Christian" in Yehudit; though a branch could just as well be a ZEMORAH; and we can follow these distinctions through to the sources of the Zechar-Yah.
Yechezke-El uses ZEMORAH at Ezekiel 8:17 and 15:2, as does Yesha-Yahu at Isaiah 17:10, and we can also find it at Numbers 13:23 and in Nachum 2:3 (2:2 in some versions); all three of these words have the sense of something growing out of a piece of vegetation, as in a twig, a branch, a shoot, but ZEMORAH comes from the same root that gives us KLEY ZEMER, the plucked instruments of Klezmer music, so something that is pruned or plucked, and thence probably light vegetation or vines.
TSEMACH is the very element of growth itself, anything sprouting (Genesis 2:5, 41:6), even hair in Leviticus 13:37. Yesha-Yahu in Isaiah 42:9, 43:19 and 58:8 endorses my use of the word "element", the sprouting being Creation itself, at any point in time or place in Nature.
Look up the Biblical branch on the Internet, and you will likely be taken to Ezekiel 17:22, the branch as an image of the Mashiyach - but Yechezke-El uses yet a fourth word there, TSAMERET, and TSAMERET is the foliage that grows on the branches, not the branches themselves.
Yesha-Yahu is the one who uses NETSER, at 11:1 and 14:19 and again at 60:21, at least for the positive side of his Messianic vision; interestingly the broken or infertile branch is used by him far more often, as a description of what will ensue if piety is not the norm (4:2, 16:8 - yet a fifth word, SHELUCHOTEYCHA; probably "shoots" - and 18:5 - where there is yet a sixth word, NETIYSHOT, which are probably "sprigs").
As noted above, NETSER has provided the source for the Yehudit name for Christians, HA NOTSRIM, which Christians generally think has to do with his birthplace in Nazareth or his having been a Nazirite for a brief period. Nor does NETSER really mean a branch - it too suggests the foliage rather more than the twig, and even more than that the greenish colour, the verdancy, though the root has nothing to do with any of this - the root means "to watch" or "to keep" and is used for a "watchtower" in 2 Kings 17:9, and for the deity watching humankind protectively in Deuteronomy 32:10 and Psalm 31:24. Isaiah 49:6 may be the most significant here, because he speaks of the NETSUREY YISRA-EL (or possibly NETSIYREY, scholars question the Masoretic pointing here), the ones who survived, with thanks to the deity, the journey to captivity in Babylon - the very people who started our investigation of this word in the first place!
Lastly, Deuteronomy 33:9 uses it to mean "keeping the divine commandments", as does Psalm 105:45 and a famous phrase in the liturgy, citing Exodus 34:7, notes one of the Thirteen Attributes of the deity as NOTSER CHESED LA ALAPHIM - "ensuring the devotion of thousands upon thousands" - probably these latter are why the early Judeo-Christians called themselves NOTSRIM.
But the text here has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus or future Christianity. As noted previously, KJ places this in upper case, because Christianity regards it as a prophesy of Jesus as their Messiah, when the text is very clear that Zeru-Bavel, the governor who brought the exiles back from Babylon, is the intention. See, for example... the very next verse.
The point being that certain specifically named leaders of the community at that time are being picked out (the finest sprouts of the community, so to speak; branches of the great families), some to undertake the philanthropy, some to design the adornments, some to take the official roles. This is happening in the now of Zechar-Yah's prophesy, not in some imaginary future.
6:13 "VE HU YIVNEH ET HEYCHAL YHVH VE HU YIS'A HOD VA YASHAV U MASHAL AL KIS'O VE HAYAH CHOHEN AL KIS'O VA ATSAT SHALOM TIHEYEH BEYN SHENEYHEM
וְהוּא יִבְנֶה אֶת הֵיכַל יְהוָה וְהוּא יִשָּׂא הוֹד וְיָשַׁב וּמָשַׁל עַל כִּסְאוֹ וְהָיָה כֹהֵן עַל כִּסְאוֹ וַעֲצַת שָׁלוֹם תִּהְיֶה בֵּין שְׁנֵיהֶם
KJ: Even he shall build the temple of the LORD; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.
BN: "He it is who will build the Temple of YHVH, and he who will earn the glory of sitting, of ruling from that throne. And a priest will also serve that throne, and the counsel of peace shall rest on both their shoulders...
CHOHEN: It is not that Zeru-Bavel will himself have priestly duties; rather, like Shemu-El (Samuel) with Sha'ul, like Merlin with Arthur, like the Archbishop of Canterbury with the British monarch, the two will function side-by-side, one heading the secular-political realm, the other the spiritual. The Kohen in question here self-evidently the Kohen Gadol himself.
6:14 VE HA ATAROT TIHEYEH LE CHELEM U LE TOVI-YAH VE LIYD'A-YAH U LE CHEN BEN TSEPHAN-YAH LE ZIKARON BE HEYCHAL YHVH
וְהָעֲטָרֹת תִּהְיֶה לְחֵלֶם וּלְטוֹבִיָּה וְלִידַעְיָה וּלְחֵן בֶּן צְפַנְיָה לְזִכָּרוֹן בְּהֵיכַל יְהוָה
KJ: And the crowns shall be to Helem, and to Tobijah, and to Jedaiah, and to Hen the son of Zephaniah, for a memorial in the temple of the LORD.
BN: "And the crowns shall be for Chelem, and for Tovi-Yah, and for Yed'a-Yah, and for Chen ben Tsephan-Yah, for a memorial in the temple of YHVH.
ATAROT: Crowns?
CHELEM: Verse 10 had different a name. (Given one's personal experience of Jewish philanthropy, can we assume that this part of the vision was presented a week or two later, after one or two of the named donors failed to come up with their pledges?) Most translators assume that Chelem is simply an error for Cheldai, but there is no logic to this; and again the evidence lies in Jewish philanthropy: either dad gives the donation, but his son gets the honour of the call-up, or dad may have already died, and the son is giving the donation in his honour. Given that the context is a "memorial" in the Temple, which probably just means a plaque to acknowledge the donation, this is the more likely explanation.
CHEN: As with Chelem, the name in verse 10 was Yoshi-Yah ben Tsephan-Yah, and the difference gets the same explanation.
ZIKARON: I presume the intention here is to put up an Honour Roll board, with the names of the donors in gold lettering, just as they do in Jewish schools and shuls today.
As per my final note to verse 12, the coming of Jesus coincided (give or take forty years) with the destruction of the Temple, not its construction.
6:15 U RECHOKIM YAVO'U U VANU BE HEYCHAL YHVH VIYDA'TEM KI YHVH TSEVA'OT SHELACHANI ALEYCHEM VE HAYAH IM SHAMO'A TISHME'UN BE KOL YHVH ELOHEYCHEM
וּרְחוֹקִים יָבֹאוּ וּבָנוּ בְּהֵיכַל יְהוָה וִידַעְתֶּם כִּי יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם וְהָיָה אִם שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּן בְּקוֹל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
KJ: And they that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the LORD, and ye shall know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me unto you. And this shall come to pass, if ye will diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God.
BN: "'And they who live far away shall come and assist in the building of the Temple of YHVH, and you shall know that YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, has sent me to you. And this shall come to pass, if you will obey the voice of YHVH your god with diligence."
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