And this shall be the plague
The punishment of God’s enemies
This is a figurative description of the punishment of sin.
The first element of the punishment is corruption, which is set forth by the terrible image of a living death, a fearful anomalous state, in which the mouldy rottenness of death is combined in horrible union with the vivid, conscious sensibility of life. The soul of the sinner, in its future consciousness of sin, shall feel its loathsome corruption as vividly as now it would feel the slow putrefaction of the body that rotten piecemeal to the grave. The second element is--mutual hate and contention (Zechariah 14:13). The image is that of a panic-struck army, in which man clutches and strikes in frantic fury his nearest neighbour. Hell shall be hate, in its fiercest and hatefullest forms. Sin is now the cause of all the quarrels on earth; it shall be the cause of endless quarrels in hell. The third element is--loss of the blessings previously enjoyed (Zechariah 14:14). This is represented by the image of spoil. The wealth of the nations that besieged Jerusalem shall be taken by Judah and Jerusalem, which are here combined in the triumph, as they were combined in the struggle described in chap. 12. A fourth element is--the infectious nature of sin. It defiles all that it touches. It has defiled the earth and all it contains, so that it must be burned up; and it will hereafter transform the dwelling place of its possessors into a hell, and their companions into fiends, and make it necessary that the very instruments of enjoyment they have possessed in life should be taken from them and destroyed. Learn that the most fearful punishment of sinners is simply to leave them to themselves. Sin is but hell in embryo, hell is but sin in development. (T. V. Moore, D. D.)
The elements by which the Divine government punishes sin
I. Physical diseases. “And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord shall smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem. Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.” “This description of the plague-stricken people,” says a modern author, “is shocking, but it is not more than what actually occurs.” See Defoe’s Plague of London. Kingsley says, “What so terrible as war? I will tell you what is ten times and ten thousand times more terrible than war, and that is outraged nature. Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work: she gives no warning note of preparation Man has his courtesies of war and his chivalries of war, he does not strike the unarmed man, he spares the woman and the child. But nature. .. spares neither woman or child;.. .silently she strikes the sleeping child with as little remorse as she would strike the strong man with the musket or the pick axe in his hand.” One could scarcely imagine a more revolting condition of humanity than is here presented, a living skeleton, nearly all the flesh gone, the eyes all but blotted out, the tongue withered. Physical disease has ever been one of the instruments by which God has punished men in this world, pestilences, plagues, epidemics, and so on. But it is not merely a plague amongst the people, but also amongst the cattle, as we see in Zechariah 14:15.
II. Mutual animosity. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them, and they shall lay hold everyone on the hand of his neighbour.” The idea is, perhaps, that God would permit such circumstances to spring up amongst them as would generate in their minds mutual misunderstandings, malignities, quarrellings, and battlings. “They shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour.” “Every man’s sword shall be against his brother.” Sin punishes sin, bad passions not only work misery but are in themselves miseries. Another element of punishment here is--
III. Temporal losses. “And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem.” Not against Jerusalem. “And the wealth of all the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold and silver, and apparel in abundance.” Earthly property, men in their unrenewed state have always valued as the highest good. To attain it they devote all their powers with an unquenchable enthusiasm, and to hold it they are ever on the alert, and their grasp is unrelaxable and firm. To have it snatched from them is among their greatest calamities, and how often this occurs in society! (Homilist.)