When - or For I have bent Judah for me As a mighty bow which is only drawn at full human strength, the foot being placed to steady it. It becomes a strong instrument, but only at God’s Will. God Himself bends it. It cannot bend itself. “And filled the bow with Ephraim.” The bow is filled, when the arrow is laid upon it. God would employ both in their different offices, as one. “And raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece.” Let people place this prophecy where they will, nothing in the history of the world was more contradictory to what was in human sight possible. “Greece was, until Alexander, a colonizing, not a conquering, nation. The Hebrews had no human knowledge of the site or circumstances of Greece. There was not a little cloud, like a man’s hand, when Zechariah thus absolutely foretold the conflict and its issue. Yet here we have a definite prophecy later than Daniel, fitting in with his temporal prophecy, expanding part of it, reaching on beyond the time of Antiochus, and fore-announcing the help of God in two definite ways of protection;
(1) “without war,” against the army of Alexander Zechariah 9:1-8;
(2) “in the war” of the Maccabees; and these, two of the most critical periods in their history after the captivity Zech. 9-16.
Yet, being expansions of part of the prophecy of Daniel, the period, to which they belong, becomes clearer in the event by aid of the more comprehensive prophecies. They were two points in Daniel’s larger prediction of the 3rd empire.”
And I will make thee as the sword of a mighty man - The strength is still not their own. In the whole history of Israel, they had only once met in battle an army, of one of the world-empires and defeated it, at a time, when Asa’s whole population which could bear arms were 580,000 (2 Chronicles 14:8-10 ff), and he met Zerah the Ethiopian with his million of combatants, besides his 500 chariots, and defeated him. And this, in reliance on the “Lord his God, to whom he cried, Lord, it is nothing to Thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power; help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go against this multitude” 2 Chronicles 14:11. Asa’s words found an echo in Judas Maccabaeus (1 Macc. 3:16-19), when the “small company with him asked him, How shall we be able, being so few, to fight against so great a multitude and so strong?” “It is no hard matter,” Judas answered, “for many to be shut up in the hands of a few, and with Heaven it is all one to deliver with a great multitude or a small company. For the victory of battle standeth not in the multitude of an host; but strength cometh from Heaven.” But his armies were but a handful; 3,000, on three occasions (1 Macc. 4:6; 7:40; 9:5), on one of which they are reduced by fear to 800 (1 Macc. 9:6); 10,000 on two occasions (1 Macc. 4:29; 10:74); on another, two armies of 8,000 and 3,000, with a garrison, not trusted to fight in the open field (1 Macc. 5:17-20); on one, 20,000 (1 Macc. 16:4); once only 40,000, which Tryphon treacherously persuaded Jonathan to disperse ; these were the numbers with which, always against “great hosts,” God gave the victory to the lion-hearted Judas and his brothers. But who except He, in whose hands are the hearts of people, could foresee that He, at that critical moment, would raise up that devoted family, or inspire that faith, through which they “out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens?” Hebrews 11:34.