What of this verse?
Zechariah 9:11. As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit.
If there is no salvation for the dead?
This is from some of the best commentaries on this verse, where is there any reference to the afterlife?
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
"I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water. Dungeons were often pits without water, miry at the bottom, such as Jeremiah sunk in when confined (Gen_27:24; Jer_38:6). This image is employed of the misery of the Jewish exiles in Egypt, Greece, etc., under the successors of Alexander, especially under Antiochus Epiphanes, who robbed and profaned the temple, slew thousands, and enslaved more. In Zechariah's times, the time of the Persian rule, the practice was common to remove conquered peoples to distant lands, in order to prevent the liability to revolt in their own lands. Josephus ('Antiquities,' 12: 2, sec. 5) states that the Persians carried away Jews into Egypt; and Ochus (according to Syncellus) transplanted large numbers from Palestine to the East and North. God delivered them from Antiochus by the Maccabees. A type of the future deliverance from their last great persecutor (Isa_51:14; Isa_61:1 )."
Keil and Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary
"Israel's Redemption from Captivity, and Victory over the Heathen. -
Zec 9:11. "Thou also, for the sake of thy covenant blood, I release thy captives out of the pit wherein there is no water.
Zec 9:12. Return to the fortress, ye prisoners of hope. Even to-day I proclaim: Double will I repay to thee." This is addressed to the daughter Zion, i.e., to all Israel, consisting of Ephraim and Judah. We not only learn this from the context, since both of them are spoken of before (
Zec 9:10) and afterwards (
Zec 9:13); but it is also obvious from the expression
bedam berthekh, since the covenant blood belonged to all Israel of the twelve tribes (
Ex 24:8). גםאת stands at the head absolutely, on account of the emphasis lying upon the את . But as the following clause, instead of being directly attached to את , is so constructed that the pronoun את is continued with suffixes, the question arises, to what the גם is to be taken as referring, or which is the antithesis indicated by גם . The answer may easily be obtained if we only make it clear to ourselves which of the two words, with the second pers. suffix, forms the object of the assertion made in the entire clause. This is not בדםבריתך , but אסיריך : thou also (= thee) - namely, thy prisoners - I release. But the emphasis intended by the position in which גםאת is placed does not rest upon the prisoners of Israel in contrast with any other prisoners, but in contrast with the Israel in Jerusalem, the daughter Zion, to which the King is coming. Now, although גם actually belongs to אסיריך , it refers primarily to the את to which it is attached, and this only receives its more precise definition afterwards in אסיריך . And the allusion intended by גם is simply somewhat obscured by the fact, that before the statement to which it gives emphasis בדםבריתך is inserted, in order from the very first to give a firm pledge of the promise to the people, by declaring the motive which induced God to make this fresh manifestation of grace to Israel. This motive also acted as a further reason for placing the pronoun את at the head absolutely, and shows that את is to be taken as an address, as for example in
Ge 49:8. בדםבריתך : literally, being in thy covenant blood, because sprinkled therewith, the process by which Israel was expiated and received into covenant with God (
Ex 24:8). "The covenant blood, which still separates the church and the world from one another, was therefore a certain pledge to the covenant nation of deliverance out of all trouble, so long, that is to say, as it did not render the promise nugatory by wickedly violating the conditions imposed by God" (Hengstenberg). The new matter introduced by גםאת in
Zec 9:11 is therefore the following: The pardon of Israel will not merely consist in the fact that Jehovah will send the promised King to the daughter Zion; but He will also redeem such members of His nation as shall be still in captivity out of their affliction. The perfect
shillacht? is prophetic. Delivering them out of a pit without water is a figure denoting their liberation out of the bondage of exile. This is represented with an evident allusion to the history of Joseph in
Ge 37:22, as lying in a pit wherein there is no water, such as were used as prisons (cf.
Jer 38:6). Out of such a pit the captive could not escape, and would inevitably perish if he were not drawn out. The opposite of the pit is בצרון , a place cut off, i.e., fortified, not the steep height, although fortified towns were generally built upon heights. The prisoners are to return where they will be secured against their enemies; compare
Ps 40:3, where the rock is opposed to the miry pit, as being a place upon which it is possible to stand firmly. "Prisoners of hope" is an epithet applied to the Israelites, because they possess in their covenant blood a hope of redemption. גםהיום , also to-day, i.e., even to-day or still to-day, "notwithstanding all threatening circumstances" (Ewald, Hengstenberg). I repay thee double, i.e., according to
Isa 61:7, a double measure of glory in the place of the sufferings."
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible
"As for thee also - The prophet turns from the deliverance of the whole world to the former people, the sorrows which they should have in the way, and the protection which God would bestow upon them for the sake of Him, who, according to the flesh, was to be born of them. "Thou too;" he had spoken of the glories of the Church, such as her king, when He should come, should extend it, embracing earth's remotest bounds: he turns to her, Israel after the flesh, and assures her of the continued protection of God, even in her lowest estate. The deliverance under the Maccabees was, as those under the judges had been, an image of the salvation of Christ and a preparation for it. They were martyrs for the One God and for the faith in the Resurrection, and, whether by doing or by suffering, preserved the sacred line, until Christ should come.
By the blood of thy covenant - Osorius: "Not by the blood of those victims of old, but by the blood of thy covenant, wilt thou be united to the empire of Christ, and so obtain salvation. As the Lord Himself says, This is the blood of covenant, which is shed for you." "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance"
Ro 11:29. That symbolic blood, by which, fore-signifying the New Covenant, He made them His own people, "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words,"
Ex 24:8, endured still, amid all their unfaithfulness and breaches of it. By virtue of it God would send forth her imprisoned ones "out of the" deep, dry "pit," "the dungeon" wherein they could be kept securely, because life was not threatened (as in
Ge 37:24). Out of any depth of hopeless misery, in which they seemed to be shut up, God would deliver them; as David says, "He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings"
Ps 40:2; and Jeremiah, "They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. I called upon Thy Name, O Lord; out of the low dungeon Thou hast heard my voice"
La 3:53,
La 3:55-56. Augustine, de Civ. Dei. xviii. 35. 3): "The dry and barren depth of human misery, where are no streams of righteousness, but the mire of iniquity.""