532 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
of God should be set apart and receive a special consecra tion, have been entirely removed and wiped away. To remove this distinction, to prepare the way for the cleansing away of sin, and to sanctify once more that which sin had desecrated, was the object of the sacred institutions ap pointed by God. To this end Israel was separated from the nations of the earth ; and in order to train it up as a holy nation, and to secure the object described, a law was given to it, in which the distinction between holy and profane ran through all the relations of life. And this goal will be eventually reached by the people of God, and sin with all its consequences be cleansed away by the judgment. In the perfected Kingdom of God there will be no more sinners, but only such as are righteous and holy."!
Finally, " there shall be no more a Canaanite in the House of Jehovah of Hosts in that day! The Hebrew word S ?V^, Klienaani, means also " trader," or " merchant," because in early times the Canaanites, especially the Phoenicians, were known in the world as traders. Some therefore prefer to render the clause, " There shall no more be a trafficker in the House of the Lord," which is also the rendering of the Jewish Targum. But whether we take the term Canaanite to stand for the unclean and the godless, or understand it as meaning merchant or trafficker, the sense is practically the same. Nothing that defileth, or that maketh an abomination or a lie, or that could disturb the peace or mar the holiness, shall in anywise be permitted to enter that House, which " in that day " shall be the House of Prayer for all nations.
" For this shall be the law of the House : upon the top of the mountain the whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the House." -
1 Kcil. - Ezek. xliii. 12.
