468 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
But to return to the dramatic incident in our passage in Zechariah. Not easily put off by the vehement protesta tions of the false prophet that he is not at all likely to have performed the functions of a prophet, seeing he is only a simple peasant in fact, a slave from his youth his inter rogator proceeds : " What are these wounds between thine hands ? And he shall say (They are) those with which I was ivounded in the house of my friends"
The two clauses in this 6th verse are to be understood as " speech and reply, or question and answer." It was very probably these makkoth " wounds " which the zealous challenger of the false prophet had observed which first aroused his suspicion. He evidently regards them as self-inflicted on his person in order to arouse his prophetic frenzy, or in connection with idolatrous rites. " It must not be forgotten," to quote the words of another, " that such rites were sometimes observed even where Jehovah was acknowledged to be the highest object of adoration. In the idolatrous court of Ahab there were hundreds of false prophets who were wont to prophesy in the Name of Jehovah, 1 and yet at the same court priests and prophets of Baal cut themselves with knives and lancets until blood gushed out upon them, 2 in order to procure answers from their god." That such practices were common among Israelites in the days of apostasy is plain from the passage referred to, as well as from the prohibition of similar doings in Deut. xiv. I, in cases of mourning for the dead, which were employed in later times by the Israelites. 3
The expression " between thy hands " is an idiom which may mean on the palms of the hands, or on the arms, i or on the chest between the hands ; but the explana tion of Rashi that it means " between thy shoulders," where persons are wont to be scourged, is a very unlikely one. There is difference of opinion among commentators as to the meaning of the answer of the false prophet in the second half of the verse. It greatly depends on the mean-
1 I Kings xxii. 5, 6, 7, II, 12. - I Kings xviii. 28.
3 Jer. xvi. 6, xli. 5.
