And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
But because he forgot God’s command and fulfilled the will of the serpent, the devil took hold of his hand and made it to reach out to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to pluck things that were forbidden. In him, judgment was passed beforehand on all people, and the adversary began to stand by the right hand of every person. From this, there also came that model of the curse against Judas, “And may the devil stand at his right hand.” If that curse is severe, that blessing, whereby the bonds of the harsh curse are undone, is very momentous. For that reason the Lord Jesus, who had taken up humanity’s cause and condition, set the devil at his right hand, just as we read in the book of Zechariah. .
Also in Zechariah: “And the Lord showed me Jesus, that great priest, standing before the face of the angel of the Lord, and the devil was standing at his right hand to oppose him. And Jesus was clothed in filthy garments, and he stood before the face of the angel himself; and he answered them and said to them who were standing before his face, saying, ‘Take away his filthy garments from him.’ And he said to him, ‘Behold, I have taken away your iniquities.’ And put upon him a priestly garment, and set a fair miter upon his head.” Also Paul to the Philippians: “Who being established in the form of God, thought it not robbery that he was equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore also God exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of th...
Jesus, or Josue, the son of Jose Dec, the high priest of that time. (Challoner)
To him this literally refers. (Worthington)
As high priest, he represented the nation, whom several calumniated to Darius, 1 Esdras iv. God represses the adversary and adorns his people. It seems something has been done amiss, ver. 4. (Calmet)
The high priest, (St. Jerome) or rather his sons, have married strangers. (Chaldean) (1 Esdras x. 18.) Many Fathers take Jesus for a figure of the Messias, covered with the sins of mankind. (Calmet)
But the Orient (ver. 8) would not thus be promised unto him, (St. Jerome) unless we consider him also as high priest.
Satan. Septuagint, "the devil "the accuser and calumniator, Apocalypse xii. 10.
For in that passage too, in giving the name of high priest to him who made with his own blood the priestly propitiation for our sins, he does not by the word made declare the first existence of the Onlybegotten. But he says “made” with the intention of representing that grace which is commonly spoken of in connection with the appointment of priests. For Jesus, the great high priest (as Zechariah says), who offered up his own lamb, that is, his own body, for the sin of the world; who, by reason of the children who are partakers of flesh and blood, himself also in like manner took part with them in blood. ([This is] not in that he was in the beginning, being the Word and God, and being in the form of God, and equal with God, but in that he emptied himself in the form of a servant, and offered an oblation and sacrifice for us). He, I say, became a high priest many generations later, after the order of Melchizedek.
