[888] Here the verse and paragraph break suddenly off in the middle of a sentence. On the passage see Smend, 343 and 345.
Among the influences of the Exile which contributed the material of Zechariah’s Visions we included a considerable development of Israel’s belief in Angels. The general subject is in itself so large, and the Angels play so many parts in the Visions, that it is necessary to devote to them a separate chapter.
From the earliest times the Hebrews had conceived their Divine King to be surrounded by a court of ministers, who besides celebrating His glory went forth from His presence to execute His will upon earth. In this latter capacity they were called Messengers, Male’akim, which the Greeks translated Angeloi, and so gave us our Angels. The origin of this conception is wrapt in obscurity. It may have been partly due to a belief, shared by all early peoples, in the existence of superhuman beings inferior to the gods,[889] but even without this it must have sprung up in the natural tendency to provide the royal deity of a people with a court, an army and servants. In the pious minds of early Israel there must have been a kind of necessity to believe and develop this—a necessity imposed _firstly_ by the belief in Jehovah’s residence as confined to one spot, Sinai or Jerusalem, from which He Himself went forth only upon great occasions to the deliverance of His people as a whole; and _secondly_ by the unwillingness to conceive of His personal appearance in missions of a menial nature, or to represent Him in the human form in which, according to primitive ideas, He could alone hold converse with men.
It can easily be understood how a religion, which was above all a religion of revelation, should accept such popular conceptions in its constant record of the appearance of God and His Word in human life. Accordingly, in the earliest documents of the Hebrews, we find angels who bring to Israel the blessings, curses and commands of Jehovah.[890] Apart from this duty and their human appearance, these beings are not conceived to be endowed either with character or, if we may judge by their namelessness,[891] with individuality. They are the Word of God personified. Acting as God’s mouthpiece, they are merged in Him, and so completely that they often speak of themselves by the Divine _I_.[892] “The _function_ of an Angel so overshadows his _personality_ that the Old Testament does not ask who or what this Angel is, but what he does. And the answer to the last question is, that he represents God to man so directly and fully that when he speaks or acts God Himself is felt to speak or act.”[893] Besides the carriage of the Divine Word, angels bring back to their Lord report of all that happens: kings are said, in popular language, to be _as wise as the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all the things that are in the earth_.[894] They are also employed in the deliverance and discipline of His people.[895] By them come the pestilence,[896] and the restraint of those who set themselves against God’s will.[897]