286 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
chaps, ix. and x. form the first section, chap. xi. the second. In that concerning Israel the first section extends from chap. xii. i to xiii. 6, and the second from chap. xiii. 7 to the end of the book." l
Chaps, ix. and x., as has just been observed, go together and form a continuous proohecy. The foreground, or more immediate future, to which it refers, is the course of the victories of Alexander the Great, " which circled round the Holy Land without hurting it," and ended in the overthrow of the Persian Empire though the foreground merges, as we shall see, into solemn events both of judgment and of mercy of a more distant future.
The prophecy begins with the word N&ip (massa), which the Authorised Version, together with all the ancient versions (with the exception of the Septuagint), have rendered " burden " ; but the majority of modern scholars translate simply " oracle," or " utterance," or " sentence."
It is not necessary to enter here into a long critical ex amination of the actual force of this word when used as a superscription to prophetic utterances ; but it is certainly true that NE>D (massa*), which is from the verb N^3 (nasa\ I " to lift," or " take up," as a man takes up a burden, " is never placed in the title," as is observed already by Jerome, " save when the vision is heavy, and full of burden and toil."
It is used by Isaiah entirely as the heading to the prophecies which contain threatenings and announce judg- msnts against the nations who have acted as oppressors of Israel, 2 and in Nahum it forms the introductory formula to the\ prophetic description of the destruction of Nineveh. In shcVt, in ordinary Hebrew " massa is unquestionably used in the sense of a burden, and the prophecies to which it is affixeVl are mainly prophecies of woe and disaster." Here, moreover (in Zech. ix. i and in chap. xii. i), massa
1 Keil. I have taken the liberty of recasting and slightly condensing his valuable remarks.
2 Isa. xiii. i, xiv. 2$, *v. I, xvii. i, xix. i, xxi. I, n, 13, xxii. i, xxiii. I. A full and able criticism, i ive pages long, on the use of the word will be found in Ilengstenberg (Christology / on Zech. ix.
