Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Zechariah 3:9
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
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Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
For behold the stone, that I hare laid before Joshua - This must be an expansion of what he had said, or the ground of it, being introduced by, for. It must be something future, to be done by God Himself, since God says, “I will grave the graving thereof;” something connected with the remission of sins, which follows upon that graying. The stone, then, cannot be the stone of foundation of the material temple (Rashi). For this had long before been laid. The head-cornerstone, the completion of the building , had nothing remarkable, why God should be said to grave it. The plumbline was not a part even of the material temple. “The stone is one stone.” But to interpret it by other prophecy, one stone there is, of which God says, “Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation, he that believeth shall not make haste” Isaiah 28:16; that stone, of which our Lord reminded the Jews, “the stone which the builders refused is become the head-stone of the corner” ; “Jesus Christ Himself, the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” Ephesians 2:20-21. On this stone had Joshua, with all those typical priests, to look, in whom alone they and all have forgiveness, whose Sacrifice their sacrifices pictured and pleaded. “It,” says an old mystical Jewish book , a “is the stone of foundation, on which the earth is founded, which God Himself laid, that the world might receive blessing from it” . “The Shechinah is called the stone, through which the world subsisteth; of which it is said, ‘A stone of seven eyes, and, the stone which the builders refused.’” This “stone,” God says, I have laid or set before Joshua, that is, for him to consider; as He speaks to Solomon and his children, of “My commandments which I have set before you” 1 Kings 9:6. Rup.: “That the stone is the Lord Jesus Christ, the head cornerstone, elect, laid as a foundation; and that the seven eyes on the one stone are the sevenfold Spirit of God which rested upon Him, is or ought to be unknown to no one. For to Him “God giveth not the Spirit by measure” John 3:34, and “in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” Colossians 2:9. This stone was rejected by people, but chosen and honored by God.” Osorius: “This stone then, on which the house of God and our whole salvation resteth, is placed by God before that high priest. That is, the most holy Name of Jesus, the virtue piety and largeness of Jesus is, by the Divine Spirit, showed to the priest, that he might understand the End of the law and holiness, to whom all the actions of life and the offices of the priesthood were to be referred. In which stone was foreshown to the divine man, not the invisible strength only, but also the manifold light of the Divine Intelligence. For it follows;” Upon this one stone are seven eyes - Whether they are the eyes of God, resting in loving care upon it, or whether, as the wheels in Ezekiel’s vision were “full of eyes round about” Ezekiel 1:18; Ezekiel 10:12, the eyes are pictured as on the stone itself, marking that it symbolized a being with manifold intelligence. Zechariah speaks of the eyes of “the Lord which run to and fro on the earth” Zechariah 4:10, and John, of the “Lamb, as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God, seat forth into all…
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