At the end of this group of visions is a bit of history of high interest. A crown was made of gold and silver brought by some representatives of the Babylonian Jews, and set by the prophet on the head of Zerubbabel, who was saluted as "the Scion," i.e., the Messiah (Jer. xxiii. 5), with the prediction that he should rebuild the temple, assume majesty, and sit and rule upon his throne. The coronation, it need hardly be said, was in the secrecy of a private house, and is to be regarded as a symbolical act; the Babylonian envoys kept the crown as a memento. But its significance is unmistakable. The prediction was not fulfilled. Whatever became of Zerubbabel--he disappears with this scene--he never wore a real crown nor sat upon the throne of his fathers. This has led to more than one change in the text, which, however, as in many other cases, were not sufficiently thorough-going to pass unnoticed. First, the crown is once made plural, "crowns," as though the intention was to crown both the prince and the priest; when it comes to the coronation, however, only Joshua, the high priest, receives the honour (vi. 11). But vss. 12, 13^a, which are left untouched, can refer only to Zerubbabel. Verse 13^b originally read, "and [Joshua] shall be priest _at his right hand_ (so the Greek Bible, instead of "on his throne"), and there shall be harmony between the two." In vs. 14 there is only one crown. In Zech. 7 the question is asked of the prophet by some pilgrims from Bethel, whether, now that the temple was rebuilding, they should continue to keep the fast for the burning of the temple in the fifth month; his response, that what God wants of them is not fasting but justice, charity, compassion, that none should oppress his neighbour nor devise evil against him, is quite in the spirit of the earlier prophets to whom he appeals. He goes on, in c. 8, to picture the coming golden age, when the fasts shall all be turned into cheerful feasts, a prophecy which is one of the finest of its kind in the Old Testament and a fitting crown to the book. The prophecies of Zechariah (cc. 1-8) are definitely dated; they spring out of a definite historical and religious situation which is everywhere apparent and consistent. Not so the chapters which follow (cc. 9-14). The titles (ix. 1; xii. 1) have a different form ("Burdens"), the situations which give their background to the oracles are wholly unlike that which stands out so clearly in Haggai and Zechariah; the character of the prophecies, with their affected obscurity, easily penetrable, doubtless, to contemporaries, but impenetrable to us who have not the historical key, and their apocalyptic eschatology, are in strong contrast to the manner of Zechariah; the evidence of diction confirms that of situation and content.