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160 Structure and the Book ofZechariah
'(Let me go, even I). And many peoples and strong nations will
come'. It seems more in keeping with the thought of the passage,
however, to regard the phrase as an emphatic parallel to 'to seek the
favour of Yahweh' with the parallel inverted on the second occasion.
Setting this out more fully, I think that we have in vv. 20b-22 the
following structure:
a Yet there will come peoples and inhabitants of many cities
and the inhabitants of one will go to another saying
b Let us go
c to entreat the face of Yahweh
c' and to seek Yahweh of hosts
b I, even I, will go
a And many peoples and strong nations will come
c' to seek Yahweh of hosts in Jerusalem
c and to entreat the face of Yahweh
For further details see below. Figure 9 gives the table of repeated
words that may possibly be significant.
The overall movement of the chapter may be clear, but it is not easy
to state precisely where one section goes into the next. The main
problems come in connection with v. 8, which looks like a clumsy
piece of editing by the final editor (see note above), for v. 9 seems to
represent the content of the former prophets' preaching, and v. 11
gives the former response of the people of Judah, not that of
Zechariah's hearers. 1
1. Seeligmann says 'one is. .. compelled to assume that this verse is merely an
erroneous editorial addition' ('Indications of Editorial Alteration in the Massoretic
Text and the Septuagint', VT 11 (1961), p. 213). Petitjean notes that even
commentators who accept the authenticity of v. 8 can hardly explain it in this context
(Les oracles, pp. 321-22). Thus Van Hoonacker writes: 'On ne dirait certes pas que
la formule. . .serve a introduire des citations d'anciens prophetes' (Les douze
prophetes [Paris: Gabalda, 1908], p. 639. Elliger thought that vv. 8-10 were an
independent unit inserted into the oracle 7.4-7/11-14 (Das Buch der zwolfkleinen
Propheten [ATD, 25; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982], II, p. 137 n. 8).
He notes the similarity with the contents of 8.16-17. Petitjean himself (Les oracles,
p. 322) assumes that 7.8 was put in by a reviser who thought that the following
mrr "IDK ro must be the start of the new oracle. Greek manuscript 240 omits
vv. 8-9a.