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168 Structure and the Book ofZechariah
many evangelical scholars have found it congenial. 1 It is therefore
worthwhile to examine carefully its method and conclusions.
Zechariah 9.1-8
This section has formidable difficulties and there is a good chance that
several corruptions have found their way into the text. Unfortunately
there is little agreement on how it should be emended and I shall not
entertain any emendation unless it has strong support from the
versions. It is possible that some important indication of structure may
have been lost through textual corruption, and that restoration of the
true text would reveal it. This study, however, is attempting to find a
firm basis from which to determine the writer's/editor's intentions
with regard to structure. We must therefore be prepared to miss some
of these, and leave them to be discovered and confirmed at a later
date. On the other hand it is possible that an accidental corruption of
the text has produced something that looks like an intentional pattern.
It is not likely that this will happen very often, and so there is probably
not much danger in sticking to the MT. We may, of course, take
additional precautions by noting readings that are especially dubious.
In Zech. 9.1-8 there are no emendations, in my opinion, that can be
considered secure enough to be adopted. The only reading of the MTthat
is seriously in doubt and significant for our purposes is DTK J'JJ in v. 1. 2
We may be sure that vv. 1-8 form a unit of some sort, and that they
contain both judgment (vv. 3-4 of Tyre; vv. 5-6 of Philistia) and
1. As well as Baldwin, we may mention R.T. France, Jesus and the Old
Testament (London: Tyndale Press, 1971).
2. It is probably precarious to accept the MT here. So I shall be careful not to
build any weighty theory on it. The most popular emendation is DTK '~ii>, translating,
'to Yahweh belong the cities of Aram', which ties in well with the mention of
Damascus, and the northern cities of Hamath, Tyre and Sidon. However there is no
textual warrant for changing 'eye' to 'cities' or 'city', and it is difficult to explain
how the easy reading DiK came to be altered to the less likely DiR. Cf. Otzen,
Studien, pp. 235-36; Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, p. 159; and also
Rudolph, Haggai, p. 168, who prefers to emend D"JR only, translating 'for to
Yahweh belongs the eye of Aram'. He notes that LXX, Syr. and Targ. have 'For
Yahweh has an eye on man', which is preferable to Elliger's 'To Yahweh is the eye
of mankind directed' (p. 76 of 'Ein Zeugnis aus der judischen Gemeinde im
Alexanderjahr 332 v Chr: Eine territorialgeschichtliche Studien zu Sach 9.1-8', ZAW
61-62, [1949-50], pp. 63-115; Zwolf kleinen Propheten, II, p. 144).