Zechariah 6:11

"Yea, take of them silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the High Priest."

We shall defer the consideration of the crowns (or crown) and take up first the object of the coronation. Was it indeed Joshua, as our text flatly declares, or should we allow the speculations of critics who boldly claim that, "Zerubbabel and not Joshua, must be the subject of the address in Zechariah 6:11; for it is he who was building the Temple."[14] It is hard to imagine a more erroneous perversion of the sacred text. First of all, such a notion is founded upon a total misunderstanding of what temple Messiah would build. Indeed Zerubbabel was building a second temple; but the temple which Jesus Christ would build never had any connection whatever with the earthly temples of the Jews, which were never God's, except in an accommodative sense, and which God repeatedly destroyed from the face of the earth. In the second place, there is no textual authority at all for the substitution of the subjective imaginations of men for the written Word of God. Who are these men who boldly write Zechariah here instead of Joshua? They have no authority; they are clearly ignorant in many instances of the most basic truths of Holy Scripture; and they are gullible and pitiful Christians indeed who will allow such godless tampering with the sacred Word. Baldwin exposed this raid on the Bible thus:

It is claimed that a scribe replaced Zerubbabel's name with that of Joshua, and so made the prophecy more credible. If it could be demonstrated that scribes were in the habit of adjusting texts in this way, the argument would be more weighty, but the evidence is all in the other direction. None of the ancient versions has Zerubbabel's name in this verse. Moreover, supposing that a scribe meant to delete all references to the Davidic-prince (Zerubbabel), he did not do so in Zechariah 6:13. It is best to allow the text to stand, and to regard Joshua as the one who was crowned.[15]

Furthermore, "If a scribe removed the name of Zerubbabel here, he would have needed to remove the clear allusion to him in Zechariah 6:13."[16]

As a matter of obvious truth no scribe ever meddled with this passage; it is the modern critics who are trying to do that. Their reasons for trying to get Zerubbabel into this passage are based upon the false notion that God would re-establish the Davidic monarchy, something God never intended, nor promised, to do. The promise of "raising up one to sit upon David's throne" was a prophecy of Christ ruling upon the throne of his spiritual kingdom. That the crowning of Joshua was a symbolical action, and that there was no intention whatever of actually making him the king of Israel is clear from a number of considerations:

The fact that the High Priest Joshua who could not wear a crown, here does so, proves that the act is typical, delineating the priestly kingship of Christ according to Hebrews 7:1-5, and Psalms 110:4.[17]

The further fact of the crown not being worn by Joshua at all, but laid up in the temple as a memorial (verse 14) also emphasizes the typical nature of the action. The function of this revelation is that of combining in one symbolical person (Joshua) the two offices of priest and king in order to prophesy that the Messiah would be both high priest and king. Once this is understood, how ridiculous is the notion that Zerubbabel was the one originally meant. He was disqualified in every conceivable way. He was not a priest and could not have represented that office, no matter what might have been done to him. Also, he was the grandson of Jeconiah (Matthew 1:12); and Zerubbabel positively fell under the prophetic curse against Jeconiah to the effect that, "No man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah" (Jeremiah 22:30). The false allegation that the inspired prophet Zechariah actually installed Zerubbabel as the center of this symbolical action is a denial of his inspiration, and not only that, but a slander making him ignorant of the divine curse against the house of Jeconiah, Zerubbabel's grandfather. Zerubbabel never fitted into this passage, nor was he ever in it, except in the subjective dreamings of the critics.

"And make crowns and set them upon the head of Joshua ..." Scholars have made quite a problem out of the use of the plural here, affirming that, "It was a crown of silver and gold";[18] "The crown is singular, though the noun is plural";[19] "It signifies the two metals of which the crown was made";[20] The original indicates one splendid crown made up of several circlets, for it was intended for the head of Joshua alone."[21] We believe this latter opinion to be true. To be sure, it would take a composite crown of multiple components to represent properly the crown of the glorious Messiah, represented in prophecy as "Crowned with many crowns" (Revelation 19:12), "King of kings and Lord of Lords." It is the complexity of Messiah's crown that is represented here by the plural. As Barnes summed it up:

It is all one then, whether the word designates one single crown, so entitled for its greatness, or one united royal crown uniting many crowns, symbolizing the many kingdoms of the earth, over which our High Priest and King should rule.[22]