Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 9:17

"For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! grain shall make the young men flourish, and new wine the virgins." — Zechariah 9:17 (ASV)

For how great is His goodness - For it is unutterable! As the Psalmist said, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your Name in all the earth! (Psalms 8:1), and Jacob, How awful is this place! (Genesis 28:17), and the Psalmist, How awful are Your doings! The goodness and the beauty are the goodness and beauty of God, whose great doings had been His theme throughout before. The sacred writers often speak of this goodness, since of this we have extreme need. And this He showed to Moses: I will cause all My goodness to pass before your face (Exodus 33:19).

Of this we know somewhat personally in this life; for besides the surpassing amazingness of it in the work of our redemption, we are surrounded by it, immersed in it, as in a fathomless, shoreless ocean of infinite love, which finds entrance into our souls whenever we do not bar it out.

Goodness is that attribute of God by which He loves to communicate all good to all who can or will receive it—yes, Himself. He is “the fullness and universality of good, Creator of all good, not in one way, not in one kind of goodness only, but absolutely, without beginning, without limit, without measure, except that by which without measurement He possesses and embraces all excellence, all perfection, all blessedness, all good.”

This Good His goodness bestows on all and each, according to the capacity of each to receive it. There is no limit to His giving, except His creature’s capacity for receiving, which is also a good gift from Him.

“From Him all things sweet derive their sweetness; all things fair, their beauty; all things bright, their splendor; all things that live, their life; all things sentient, their sense; all that move, their vigor; all intelligences, their knowledge; all things perfect, their perfection; all things in any way good, their goodness.”

The beauty of God - This belongs rather to the beatific vision. Yet David speaks of the Beauty of Christ, You are exceedingly fairer than the children of men (Psalms 45:2); and Isaiah says, Your eyes shall behold the King in His beauty (Isaiah 33:17). But the Beauty of God, eye has not seen nor ear heard nor can heart of man conceive.

Here on earth, created beauty can, at least when suddenly seen, hold the frame motionless, pierce the soul, glue the heart to it, and entrance the affections. Light from heaven kindles our dullest material substances into beauty; the soul in grace diffuses beauty over the dullest human countenance. The soul, before it has passed from the body, has been known to catch such brilliancy of light through the half-opened portals that the eye, even for some time after death, has retained a brightness beyond anything on earth.

“The earth’s form of beauty is a sort of voice of the dumb earth. Does not, on considering the beauty of this universe, its very form answer you with one voice, ‘Not I made myself, but God?’”

Poets have said:

“Old friends ... shall lovelier be,
As more of heaven in each we see.”
(Christian Year. Morning Hymn.)

Or:

“When he saw,
‘—God within him light his face.’”
(Tennyson, In Memoriam. Tennyson's original has “The God.”)

And Holy Scripture tells us that when Stephen, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, was about to speak of Jesus to the council which arraigned him, all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel (Acts 6:5, 15). It has been said that if we could see a soul in grace, its beauty would so pierce us that we should die. But the natural beauty of the soul transcends all corporeal beauty which so attracts us; the natural beauty of the last angel surpasses all natural beauty of soul.

Imagine if we could ascend from the most beautiful form the soul could conceive here on earth to the least glorious body of the beatified. Then, picture ascending further, on and on through countless thousands of glorious bodies, compared with which heaven would seem dark and the sun would lose its shining. Consider ascending even more, from the most beautiful deified soul visible here to the beauty of the disembodied soul, whose image would scarcely be recognized because, as it is said, “the bodily eyes gleamed with angelic radiancy.”

Yes, let the God-enlightened soul go on and on, through all those choirs of the heavenly hierarchies, clad with the raiment of Divinity, from choir to choir, from hierarchy to hierarchy, admiring the order, beauty, and harmony of the house of God. Yes, let it, aided by divine grace and light, ascend even higher and reach the boundary and limit of all created beauty. Yet, it must know that the divine power and wisdom could create other creatures far more perfect and beautiful than all that He has until now created.

No, let the highest of all the Seraphs sum up in one all the beauty by nature, grace, and glory of all creatures; yet it could not be satisfied with that beauty, but must, because it was not satisfied with it, conceive some higher beauty. If God were to immediately create that higher beauty at its wish, at every moment, it could still conceive something beyond; for, not being God, its beauty could not satisfy its conception.

So let the Seraph still, for a hundred thousand, hundred thousand, thousand years, with the swiftest flight of understanding, continually multiply those degrees of beauty, so that each fresh degree should ever double the preceding one. And let the divine power, with like swiftness, concur in creating that beauty, as in the beginning He said, Let there be light, and there was light. After all those millions of years, the Seraph would be again at the beginning, and there would be no comparison between that created beauty and the divine beauty of Jesus Christ, God and Man.

For it is the bliss of the finite not to reach the Infinite.

That city of the blessed which is lightened by the glory of God, and the Lamb is the light thereof, sees It, enabled by God, as created eye can see It, and is held fast to God in one jubilant ecstasy of everlasting love.

“The prophet, carried out of himself by consideration of the divine goodness, stands amazed while he contemplates the beauty and Deity of Christ: he bursts out with unaccustomed admiration! How great is His goodness, who, to guard His flock, shall come down on earth to lay down His life for the salvation of His sheep! How great His beauty, who is the brightness of the glory and the Image of the Father, and comprises in His Godhead the measure of all order and beauty!

“With what firm might He strengthens, with what joy He overwhelms the souls which gaze most frequently on His beauty, and gives largely and bountifully that corn by whose strength the youths are made strong. He supplies abundantly the wine by which the virgins, on fire with His love, are exhilarated and beautified.

“But both are necessary: that the strength of the strong should be upheld by the bread from heaven, and that sound and uncorrupt minds, melted with the sweetness of love, should be recreated with wine (that is, the sweetness of the Holy Spirit) and be borne aloft with great joy in the midst of extreme toils.

“For all who holily keep the faith of Christ may be called ‘youths’ for their unconquered strength, and ‘virgins’ for their purity and integrity of soul. For all these, that heavenly bread is prepared, that their strength may not be weakened, and the wine is poured in, that they may not only be refreshed but may live in utmost sweetness.”