I will cut off the names of the idols - This had been a fence against idolatry. To name evil is a temptation to evil. Wrong words are the parents of wrong acts. To speak of evil awakens curiosity or passion; curiosity is one of the strongest incentives to act. All public mention of terrible crimes (it has been observed) produces imitation of the specific form of crime. Hence, it was commanded, “make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth” Exodus 23:13. And Joshua names it in his dying charge to Israel, “Be ye therefore very strong to keep and to are all that is written in the book of the law of Moses - either make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them” Joshua 23:6-7. Hence, they “changed” the “names” of cities , which bare idol names. David speaks of it, as part of fealty to God. “I will, not take their names upon my lips” Psalms 16:4.
Hosea prophesies of the times of the new covenant; “I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall be no more remembered by their name” Hosea 2:17. Isaiah, “The idols he shall utterly abolish” Isaiah 2:18. Zechariah foretells their abolition with a turn of words, formed apparently on those of Hosea ; but slightly varied, because the worship of Baal, such a plague-spot in the time of Hosea, one, which continued until the year before the captivity , was gone, He implies nothing as to his own times, whether idolatry still existed. He predicts its entire abolition in the whole compass of the enlarged Judah, that is, of Christendom.
And also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land - False prophecy sets itself to meet a craving of human nature to know something of its future. False prophets there were, even in the time of Nehemiah , and those in some number, hired to prophesy against the word of God. Our Lord warns against them. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” Matthew 7:15. “Many false prophets shall arise and shall deceive many” Matthew 24:11. Many false prophets, John says, “are gone out into the world” John 4:1. False prophets attended the decline of Judaism. Such was the author of the Jewish Sibylline book, prophesying the destruction of the Romans , and fixing the mind of his people on temporal aggrandizement : false prophets were suborned by the Jewish “tyrants” and encouraged the Jews in the resistance which ruined the devoted city: , false prophets have arisen in Christianity; but, like the Phrygian women who led Tertullian astray, they “went out,” were cast out “from it, as not being of it.”
Cyril: “After that the Only Begotten Word of God appeared to us, the dull and childish toys of idolatry perished and were utterly destroyed, and with it were taken away the strange and impious devices of the false prophets, who were full of the evil, unclean spirit, and could be readily detected as laboring under a kindred disease to the idolaters. For both had one president of impiety, Satan.” Not 50 years after the Crucifixion, a pagan wrote his work, “on the failure of oracles.” The outpouring of the Holy “Spirit of grace and supplication” Zechariah 12:10, should sweep away “the unclean spirit” , (Zechariah alone anticipates the language of the New Testament) which became “a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets” 1 Kings 22:21-23 sought to them.