How To Mangle The Old Testament

I've given up looking to the free old-timer on-line commentaries for ideas, because they are often so bad. I mean specifically the on-line commentaries of John Gill and Adam Clarke. Albert Barnes' selections are almost incoherent. Dr. John Gill was a hyper-Calvinist, which skewed his thinking tremendously. Dr. Clarke was a Methodist, so he turns immensely legalistic any time he starts talking about salvation by grace.

A big way you can count on them to always get their facts wrong is in the area of unfulfilled Old Testament prophecies, such as Zechariah 13 (which we're currently studying in Wednesday night Bible study). It's one thing to say that certain OT prophecies about the Jews find a partial fulfillment in the Christian Church. It is clear from the New Testament that is true. The promise of the Spirit in Joel 2:28-32 was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, and believing Gentiles are grafted into the saving benefits of the New Covenant (Hebrews 8). I'm no hyper-dispensationalist; I don't teach that the OT prophecies for the Jews never had a NT fulfillment.

But it is quite another thing to assume that all the unfulfilled prophecies about the Jews terminate in the Christian Church, and then mangle the OT prophecies to beat them into that mold. "Mangle" is the only word I can think of that really describes what Gill and Clarke do to Zechariah 13, and pretty much every other OT prophecy about the Jews. What they wrote about Zechariah 13 is nonsense. They have to use a "these words had a mystical hidden meaning" approach, because they're trying to force them to obey the rule that all the unfulfilled OT prophecies for the Jews terminate in Christianity.

Don't approach God's Word with preconceived notions!