Zechariah 8:23 Commentary and Bible Study

This last mysterious verse completes the figure. There are of course very many more than ten languages. What do the figures mean? Is the ten a literal figure? Well, we read the whole verse, and then explain it. ‘Ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.’ The number ten stands for a large number. It represents the complete figure. We would say a vast company. Here is a converted Jew in New Testament times. This never happened to Jews in Old Testament times. People thought them peculiar. But now they are seen as an authentic church. If we look forward to the perfect fulfilment in the New Testament church, of course all the first teachers in the New Testament church were Jews; the first Christians were Jews; the word of the Lord was first in Jerusalem, and indeed it was an apostolic principle, to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile. This is the fulfilment. The ratio – and this is not a literal figure mathematically – in this new order, this new church, of Jews to Gentiles will be something like one Jew to ten Gentiles. The idea is that ten men from the nations other than Israel shall take hold of the skirts of a Jew. In other words, the harvest among the Gentiles will be enormous, viewed figuratively ten times greater than the harvest among the Jews – vastly bigger. It will be through Jews at first; they will hold the flame of the gospel. The Gentile converts will recognise that God has spoken to the Jewish nation – the Scriptures have emerged from them; the promises and the Messiah – and they will go with them. So the Jewish church then merges into the Jewish Gentile Church of Christ where there will be far more Gentiles than Jews, because it is now international. You note it is by hearing. ‘Ten men shall take hold … for we have heard.’ They will hear; they will also observe: it is a matter of testimony. The Jews that are converted at the beginning of the church age will show that they have a true hold upon God. It is a message that goes out from Jerusalem, and what is powerful is that God is among them.