Zechariah 6

Text

Textual witnesses

Vision of the four chariots (6:1–8)

Verse 5

• "Spirits of heaven": or "winds of heaven". The Hebrew word for "spirit" may also mean "wind" or "breath" depending on the context.

  The command to crown Joshua (6:9–15)

Verse 11

• "Silver and gold": A part of what was brought from Babylon or the contributions from the Jews in the diaspora, the kings and princes in the area.
• "Make crowns": Zechariah was to get the crowns made. The plural may here be used intensively for "a noble crown," as in ; or it may signify the two metals of which the crown was made, two or more wreaths being intertwined to form it. Here Joshua may symbolize 'a Person in whom the offices of priest and king were united', because a high priest's "mitre" is never called a crown, but what to be set on Joshua's head is a royal crown.

  Verse 12

• "Behold, the man" : This phrase is used in a speech to draw attention to someone different from the one in conversation, so Joshua here is not the Branch, but that figure is 'accessible and approaching' the scene.. Pilate spoke similar words regarding Jesus, "Behold the man".
• "Grow up out": from the Hebrew verb צָמַח, ', to "sprout out", with the same root as for the noun צֶ֤מַח, ', a "sprout", translated here as "The Branch" ; referring to a lowly figure growing in obscurity "as a tender plant and a root out of a dry ground".
• "He shall build the temple of the Lord": In the time of Zechariah, the temple was soon to be finished by Zerubbabel, to whom this had been promised, not by Joshua the High Priest, but then a new temple is to be built from the foundation, of which the builder is to be "the foundation", as said, "on this rock I will build My Church" ; and in him "all the building, fitly framed together0, groweth unto an holy temple to the Lord".

  Jewish

• Christian