Zechariah 14:6 - Exposition

The light shall not be clear, nor dark. The Greek, Syriac, and Latin Versions have, "There shall not be light, but cold and ice." With the absence of light and sun shall come bitter frost, which impedes all activity, and kills life: or, taking the Septuagint rendering, there shall no longer be the interchange of seasons, but one lasting sunshine. It is plain that a time of distress and calamity is intended, and that the passage is threatening and not consolatory, at any rate, at first. There is solid ground for the rendering of the Revised Version margin, adopted by Cheyne and others, which is according to the Khetib, "There shall not be light, the bright ones shall contract themselves;" i.e. the heavenly bodies shall contract their light, or be heaped confusedly together, and cease to shine. The prediction in this case may be compared with that in Joel 3:15 ; Isaiah 13:10 ; and in Matthew 24:29 ; Revelation 6:12 , Revelation 6:13 . The Authorized Version is explained in the margin, i.e. "It shall not be clear in some places, and dark in other places of the world"—a gloss which is inadmissible.