requires. The words of the prophets are the promises which Zechariah announced in Zec 8:2-8, and his contemporary Haggai in ch. 2. It will not do to take the plural נביאים in a general sense, as referring to Zechariah alone. For if there had been no prophet at that time beside Zechariah, he could not have spoken in general terms of prophets. By the defining phrase, who are or who rose up at the time when the foundation of the temple was laid, these prophets are distinguished from the earlier ones before the captivity (Zec 7:7, Zec 7:12; Zec 1:4), and their words are thereby limited to what Haggai and Zechariah prophesied from that time downwards. בּיום does not stand for מיּום (Hitzig), but yōm is used in the general sense of the time at which anything does occur or has occurred. As a more precise definition of יום יסּד the word להבּנות is added, to show that the time referred to is that in which the laying of the foundation of the temple in the time of Cyrus became an eventful fact through the continuation of the building. In Zec 8:10. a reason is assigned for the admonition to work with good courage, by an exhibition of the contrast between the present and the former times. Before those days, sc. when the building of the temple was resumed and continued, a man received no wages for his work, and even the cattle received none, namely, because the labour of man and beast, i.e., agricultural pursuits, yielded no result, or at any rate a most meagre result, by no means corresponding to the labour (cf. Hag 1:9, Hag 1:9-11; Hag 2:16, Hag 2:19). The feminine suffix attached to איננּה refers with inexactness to the nearest word הבּהמה, instead of the more remote שׂכר (cf. Ewald, §317, c). In addition to this, on going out and coming in, i.e., when pursuing their ordinary avocations, men came everywhere upon enemies or adversaries, and therefore there was an entire absence of civil peace. הצּר is not an abstract noun, “oppression” (lxx, Chald., Vulg.), but a concrete, “adversary,” oppressor, though not the heathen foe merely, but, as the last clause of Zec 8:10 shows, the adversaries in their own nation also. In ואשׁלּח the ו is not a simple copula, but the ו consec. with the compensation wanting, like wa'agaareesh in Jdg 6:9 (cf. Ewald, §232, h); and שׁלּח, to send, used of a hostile nation, is here transferred to personal attacks on the part of individuals.
Verses 11-12
But now the Lord will act differently to His
