Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Zechariah 8:5
And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.
Verse 5. The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls] The progeny shall be numerous, healthy, and happy. Their innocent gambols and useful exercises shall be a means of health, and a proof of happiness. To be healthy, children must have exercise. But they cannot take exercise, except in the way of play and diversion: ergo, such playfulness cannot be sinful. Let them be kept from evil words, lying, swearing, and scurrility; and all the rest may be innocent.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The streets; every street.
Shall be full of boys and girls; have many young ones healthful, strong, brisk, and lively, the present joy and future hope of all; so will I fulfil the promise of multiplying your children.
Playing in the streets: Jerusalem shall be in that peace, health, and plenty, that parents shall neither fear danger to their children abroad, nor need their labour at home. So shall that Psa 128 be fulfilled to them.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5. boys and girls playingimplyingsecurity and a numerous progeny, accounted a leading blessing amongthe Jews. Contrast Jer 6:11;Jer 9:21.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls,…. Denoting a large increase of inhabitants, in a literal sense; and may spiritually signify the large numbers of converts, of new born babes, who are regenerated by the grace and Spirit of God, and are accounted of by the Lord for a generation:
playing the streets thereof; being in health and rigour, and in great security. The Targum renders it, “singing” or “praising in the spacious places thereof”; singing the praises of God in Gospel strains; saying their Hosannas to the Son of David; rejoicing in the great salvation by Christ, and magnifying the grace of God, and setting forth the glories of it in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; see
Mt 11:16. In Jerusalem, literally taken, there were various streets, besides the street of the temple, which led to it,
Ezr 10:9 mention is made of others in Jewish writings, as of the upper street k, and of the street of the butchers, and of the street of those that dealt in wool l.
k Misn. Shekalim, c. 8. sect. 1. l Misn. Erubin, c. 10. sect. 9.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
He repeats and confirms the same thing by another representation — that boys and girls would play in the streets and on the public roads, which could not be during the troublous time of war; for when arms clatter, the sound of trumpets is heard, and assaults of enemies are dreaded, every one keeps his children at home, and in public there is sad confusion, and few are found abroad; in short there is no cheerfulness even in children when fear is hanging over them. We hence see, that what is here promised is a state of quietness to Jerusalem; for God would keep off the onsets of enemies — not that Jerusalem was ever exempt from all evils, but that God’s defense was so effectual as to render them safe amidst many and various dangers.
It is not needful here anxiously to raise the questions — Whether it is lawful to play during times of peace? for the Prophet here took his language from the common habits of men, and even from the very nature of things; for we know that men give way to cheerfulness when no fear lays hold on their minds, and that play and sport are allowed to children. The Prophet meant only this, that though the Jews might then have something to do with various enemies, they would yet be in a state of peace and safety. He afterwards adds —
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
Zec 8:5 And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.
Ver. 5. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls ] Lads and lasses (as the Hebrew seems to sound), that mind little else but play as if, with leviathan, they had been made to sport, or as those people of Tombutum, in Africa, who are said to spend their whole time in singing and dancing. But this they could not do if the times were troublesome, and the soldier at his bloody play, according to that of Abner, 2Sa 2:14 “Let the young men now arise and play before us,” that is, thrust their swords in their fellows’ sides, 2Sa 2:16 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
playing: Zec 2:4, Psa 128:3, Psa 128:4, Psa 144:12-15, Jer 30:19, Jer 30:20, Jer 31:27, Jer 33:11, Lam 2:19, Mat 11:16, Mat 11:17
Reciprocal: Jer 3:16 – when Jer 31:13 – shall Lam 1:1 – full Eze 37:26 – multiply Luk 7:32 – children
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE CITY AND THE CHILD
And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.
Zec 8:5
According to the prophets interpretation of the City of God, little children and old people are the greatest blessings of a nation, and the surest test of its government. A world without old people and little children would be an intolerable and impossible world. In their helplessness they appeal to all that is best in our nature, and the attitude to that appeal reveals both people and government. If childhood is pure, happy, and safe, and old age contented and peaceful, there is not much wrong with the nation, but if childhood is neglected, and old age despised, the curse of God is not far off.
I. The child in the wicked city.The prophets vision of the city laid waste is full of cruelty, wretchedness, and sin. Irreligion and lawlessness wrought mischief with open hand and brazen face. Justice refused to listen to the complaint of the weak, and withheld its hand from the punishment of the strong. Oppression, heartlessness, and poverty inevitably follow in the track of godlessness. The defenceless were plundered with impunity, the suffering falling most heavily upon widows and orphans, strangers and cripples. They cried in vain to those who ought to have been their helpers; therefore the Lord became their avenger. The whirlwind came, and desolation filled the land. God is not indifferent to the cry of the oppressed, and in every land wickedness, corruption, and cruelty are the forerunners of doom. But in the avenging calamity, as in the course of transgression, the helpless are the greatest sufferers. In days of distress and in times of wickedness the streets are safe only for the strong.
Happily our own land knows nothing of famine and war. Such terrible scenes as the prophet witnessed are unknown in our favoured land, but the cry of the children and the moan of the aged are not unheard in the land. A large proportion of our old people are paupers, lacking all that old age needs of comfort and freedom from care. The children of our streets are overcrowded and underfed. They are exposed to perils greater than those of hunger. Who can tell the lot of a child born in a city slum and thrust into the streets to fend for itself? The intemperance, the gambling, the lust, the squalor, the vice thrust upon the child familiarise the mind with the sordid and brutal, and fit it for a life of crime. When childhood is neglected the nation is lost.
II. The return of the LordThe return of the Lord changed the character of the city and the condition of its people. Mark the order: I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth; and the mountain of the Lord of Hosts the Holy Mountain. The return of the Lord restores truth, and truth establishes holiness. The character of the people is changed, and immediately their condition begins to improve. Prosperity returns. Religion solves the problem of the unemployed. The curse of the land has disappeared with the poverty and misery of the people. They hunger no more, neither is the voice of repining heard in the streets. Is this ancient history? Does not righteousness in every age secure the peace and prosperity of a people? And is not the fruit of goodness first seen in the life of childhood and old age? When Pastor Hsi was converted he brought his heathen mother-in-law under his own roof that he might see to her comfort; and in Rossendale, when a drunken quarryman gave his heart to God, and the family got a decent dinner, the children danced on the pavement, shouting, Daddies converted, and weve sheeps head for dinner. The true remedy for bad trade is a return to righteousness, and the best cure for poverty is a revival of religion. When the Lord returns the land smiles, and the people sing.
III. The city of God.No city can realise the Divine intention that does not make provision for progress and defence. The young man with the surveyors measuring line is rebuked and stopped. Jerusalem shall be inhabited without walls. There must be room to expand. Crowded populations foster disease and breed corruption. Cities are no longer to be fortresses, but places of peace and toil. There must be freedom to come and go. The straitened life within city walls, with its narrow streets and unhealthy areas, must give place to a larger, fuller, and diviner life. What a vision of fields and gardens, peace and contentment, happiness and beauty is presented in the city without walls and gates, guns and slums! Cities, not compounds or labour colonies, but an aggregation of homes where strong men work, and old folks sit with folded hands and smiling faces, while the young ones make merry in its streets; the whole population secure and happy in the defence of the Holy Presence, which is as a wall of fire round about.
IV. The child in the city of God.There is nothing in the city so important as the child. An impoverished childhood means an emaciated nation, and an imperilled childhood a degraded nation. As the child is, the State will be. The prophet says they shall play in the streetsnot work in them. Play, not work is the prerogative of the child. Whose heart has not been touched on a winters night to see pinched and tired children hard at work when they ought to have been in bed? Such things ought not to be. Childhood is the time to dwell in lands peopled with fairies, and in homes without fear. The streets ought to be fit for them to play in. They must be free from physical danger to the helpless, and without moral peril to the innocent. When the streets of the city are safe for the children they will be good enough for everybody else.
What about our cities? Are we making them fit for the children, and places of contentment for the aged? Or are old age and childhood counters in a political game? Are we caring for the child or wrangling over him? Are we making straight paths for innocent feet, or are we allowing traps to be laid in the streets for their destruction? The child is the standard of judgment. By the safety and happiness of the innocent shall all things be judged. Whosoever despises the child shall surely be cursed. In the salvation of the child the nation will be saved. God cares for every little child. It is not His will that one of them should perish. The first duty of the State is to care for the child, and the first duty of the Church is the salvation of the child.
Illustration
The life of a city, whatever may be its temptations, can never be lacking in interest. The Jerusalem of which the prophet Zechariah wrote would be a city of endless interest and variety. A letter had appeared in the papers, in which the writer said that for twelve years he had lived in London next door to a man whom he never saw. There were no neighbourly relations between them, but, at last, after these many years, his little boy broke a pane of glass in the neighbours house, and he called to apologise and pay for the damage. To his astonishment he discovered that the man was his first cousin. The prophet tells us that the heavenly Jerusalem shall be as a town without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein. There shall be no walls barring neighbours from each other.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Zec 8:5, There are at least two points of significance in this verse. One is the assurance of a numerous young population, which was something much desired by the Jews. Another is that Jerusalem will be so secure after its recovery from the effects of the invasion that came before the captivity that, the children will be safe while playing in the streets and open places of the city.