Zechariah 5

Zechariah 5:1

His hand - Into the hand of Ptolemy.

Zechariah 5:2

His heart shall be lifted up - He might have recovered all, but he grew proud of his victory, and returned again to his luxury.

Zechariah 5:6

But he - Antiochus, that comes against Ptolemy. The glorious land - Judea. Antiochus held all Judea, and with the provision and product of it, maintained his army.

Zechariah 5:7

He shall also set his face - He shall use all the force he can to master Egypt, and engross it to himself. Upright ones - Many of the religious Jews joined with him: the rest of his army was a profane rabble of rude Heathens. He shall give - Antiochus shall give Cleopatra his daughter to young Ptolemy, called the daughter of women, for her beauty. Corrupting her - Persuading her to betray her husband: but she stuck to her husband’s interest, and not her father’s.

Zechariah 5:8

The isles - The isles and sea - coasts of the Mediterranean and Aegean sea. But a prince - The Roman ambassador Scipio beat Antiochus at his own weapons of power and policy, and turned the reproach upon his own head.

Zechariah 5:9

Then - Then he turned his face home - ward, yet was he not in safety, but was quickly after killed.

Zechariah 5:10

A raiser of taxes - Seleucus Philopator, who peeled his subjects, and spared not to rob the temple. Within few days - For he lived not out the third part of his father’s reign. Not in battle - Not by open force, but by poison.

Zechariah 5:11

A vile person - Antiochus, called Epiphanes by his flatterers, but the people of God accounted him infamous, base, and treacherous. They - Neither peers nor people, nor was he the heir, but his nephew; but he crept in by flatteries.