There is really no question, that when you read an Old Testament Prophet, you should begin by asking, "How he was understood at the time? And how the prophecy would have applied in his own lifetime?" But if you stop there, you may miss something very important. What a prophet like Zechariah was seeing and hearing from God, would tend to repeat in successive generations, like a standing ocean wave repeats. They come, they go, it ebbs and it flows.

There may be any number of reasons for this, but two principals need to be taken into account. Number one, "Human nature doesn't change!" Number two, "The divine nature doesn't change either!"

Therefore, history, naturally tends to repeat itself, but then another question follows closely, "What was God really aiming at in the prophecy? Was it an earlier wave of history or was the earlier used only as an example, a type of what was ultimately to come and what God was really aiming at?

What makes me wonder is the way a prophet like Zechariah will move so easily from something that can apply only in his own day, into something that obviously has limited or even no application in his own day.

Some friends and I were discussing the ideal Temple that is found in the closing Chapters of Ezekiel. That’s been a long curious section of the book of prophecy that men have looked at, talked about and scholars have discussed because the Temple you find there doesn’t fit any historical model at all. So people struggle with it.

One observed the serious difficulty, that commentators have found with this Temple, and then another one pointed out the similarities to the closing Chapters of the book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem, and the rivers of water of life, and the tree of life. What begins to emerge, only darkly at the moment, is an awareness that both prophecies are actually concerned with the same time, and the same events, and the same outcomes.

That leads to the conclusion that there is a meaning behind the vision, that is the prophecy, that transcends history. The fact of the matter is, there are some things that’s going to happen in the future of this world that people would not understand if you explained it to them. We have no frame of reference for it, so what the prophets tended to do, was in the terms of their own day, in the things people in their own time would understand, to idealize and to draw a picture, to create a painting as it were in the mind, of what God is going to do that we can deal with.

So if you keep in mind that a vision is symbolic, the reality will not look the same at all, then you can compare something like the last of Ezekiel and the last of Revelation and see, these are both aiming at something over the horizon that we can’t see yet. Now with that in mind, let’s look where we have come in Zechariah.

Now in the time that Zechariah wrote this, it didn’t just say, "LORD", it said Jehovah or Yahweh if you prefer.

Did you get that? Many people, strong nations, I don’t think anything like that has ever happened in history and yet Zechariah is looking at something out there that is to come.

What a thing to say, after all the generations of anti-Semitism, now men of all nations are ready to follow a Jew anywhere. I don’t think we have ever seen this at anytime in the history of the world. So I have to conclude that Zechariah has slipped far into the future on us, while not even so much as to giving us a hint, and it becomes even plainer as we pass into chapter 9.

Looking at the Middle East today you wouldn’t even know what he’s talking about. But at that time, Tyre was a major player on the Mediterranean and probably the Mediterranean power of her day. They had built quite a city there, during one war before the city was somewhat destroyed. They actually built the thing on a little island with a very narrow causeway coming out to the island, over time others began to come against Tyre and Tyre was finally destroyed. One invader built a huge causeway so all of his armies could go out and besiege the city. Tyre, by the way, had also been built with a seawall around it, and actually much of the city was below sea level, and the sea was being held back. Ships came and went, she traded all over the Mediterranean, and you can go out there today and you can walk out to the end of that causeway that they built and stand and look down in the water at the old ruins of Tyre.

What comes from this standing wave down through history is hard to figure exactly, except that the land of the Philistines is the land of the Palestinians and Gaza, and Ashkelon, and Ashdod, and so forth are in the area the Palestinians hold today.

Then he goes on to say, "I will take the blood from their mouths, the forbidden food from between their teeth. Those who are left will belong to our God and become leaders in Judah, and Ekron will be like the Jebusites. {8} But I will defend my house against marauding forces. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people; for I am now keeping watch," says God."

Even though this deals with history, it seems to take a long view at the same time, because we really have never seen anything quite like what has been described here. Far subsequence to this prophecy being given, Judah was overrun. and this looks down to a very, very different time in history. If anyone is in doubt, listen to what Zechariah says next.

Every Christians knows this verse. It is from Matthew 21, Jesus was coming toward Jerusalem.

Matthew Chapter 21and verse 1: Jesus sent two disciples, {2} saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. {3} If anyone says anything to you, say that "The Lord needs them," And he will send them right away." {4} This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: {5} "Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ "

Then follows what is called Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a donkey? Why not on a horse? Well, because He was not coming in war, He was coming in peace. Horses and chariots are instruments of war. It was the custom in Israel for the king not to ride a horse but to ride a mule or a donkey.

That sounds a lot like what Isaiah talks about when he says "I’ll turn their spears into pruning hooks and their swords into plowshares and they won’t learn war anymore."

Here we fall into a passage and it reads like the libretto of an oratorio, and this would make a great one. What we’re talking about here, looks like, the time God has brought peace to the earth.

Verse 11, "As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit. {12} Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you. {13} I will bend Judah as I bend my bow and fill it with Ephraim. I will rouse your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and make you like a warrior’s sword."

Strange the words here but they harken back to one in Ezekiel where God tells Ezekiel, "Take you two sticks, take one stick in your hand for the House of Judah, take another one for the House of Ephraim, the House of Israel, then join them together in your hand and they’ll become one stick."

He seems to be talking about a time when Ephraim, as one political entity, leading the ten northern tribes of Israel, will be reunited with Judah, the House of Judah, another political entity centered in Jerusalem.

Now, he seems to have backed up in time, to a time when the people are scattered for lack of a shepherd when actually you have false diviners and false prophets wandering the landscape and then he says.

Interesting, that God is angry with some leaders and he raises up new men out of Judah to fight them and to overthrow them.

This kind of looks forward also in Revelation to where you have false prophets that come out in one of the seals of the big scroll with the seven seals. False prophets and false Christs come along the line and then as we work our way through time we come to the return of Christ, and the overthrow of people like that.

Then he says in verse 7, "The Ephraimites will become like mighty men, and their hearts will be glad as with wine. Their children will see it and be joyful; their hearts will rejoice in the LORD."

It’s a time of complete restoration, it’s a strange idea though, Ephraim had gone off into captivity long before Judah went to Babylon. They were carried away by the Assyrians, and to all intent and purposes they had disappeared as a people. You can go around looking for a political entity to put your finger on; that's Ephraim, there is nobody carrying that name.

And yet Ezekiel had this prophecy of the two sticks, he foretold a time when the stick of Ephraim and the stick of Judah would once again become one in God’s hand. You look for a time when all of Israel would be gathered back into the land and there would once again be one Israel. It’s in the prophets, it’s there, it is an end time fulfillment. Well, we’ll just have to wait to see.

Verse 11, "They will pass through the sea of trouble; the surging sea will be subdued and all the depths of the Nile will dry up. Assyria’s pride will be brought down and Egypt’s scepter will pass away. {12} I will strengthen them in the LORD and in his name they will walk," declares the LORD."

Sometimes, rather than try to interpret every prophecy, I think we might do better to simply sit back and enjoy the beauty. We may not be able to determine every nuance of the prophecy until it comes to pass and it’s really interesting how often this turns out to be true. You actually do not see God’s hand in things, sometimes, until after the fact and you look back and you see God has done it. In the meantime, our job, is to know the prophecy, to internalize it, so we will remember it when the time comes and be able to make the association that it requires.

It’s helpful as you read through these chapters again realizing they may even have been performance art, they may have been like an oratorio. It’s helpful as you read it to remember the image of standing waves with peaks and valleys as you go because it’s almost as though you look ahead to the time of God’s intervention for our good, and at times when He’s not been so happy with what we’ve been doing.

Kind of vague, exactly as to what he’s talking about here, but it’s pretty clear that he’s talking about a time, a circumstance, where the leaders, the shepherds, the ones who should be looking out for the welfare of the people, are just using them, selling them off, making themselves rich at the hands of others.

Who are they? I have no idea.

Well it’s not hard to figure where we have suddenly found ourselves is it? The whole image of Judas and his thirty pieces silver comes right into play, at a time when people are refusing to serve God. At a time when the shepherds are selling off the flock and destroying them, now it’s hard to know what to make of it, but it’s sitting there for us.

Verse 14: "Then I broke my second staff called Union, breaking the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. {15} Then the LORD said to me, "Take again the equipment of a foolish shepherd. {16} For I am going to raise up a shepherd over the land who will not care for the lost, or seek the young, or heal the injured, or feed the healthy, but will eat the meat of the choice sheep, tearing off their hooves. {17} "Woe to the worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock! May the sword strike his arm and his right eye! May his arm be completely withered, his right eye totally blinded! An oracle."

What do you make of that? It certainly sounds like that you’re going back to a time when the brotherhood between Judah and Israel was broken? But that was long before Zechariah was ever born when that breach took place. That took place shortly after the death of Solomon when Jeroboam the first, took Israel and the ten tribes of Israel away from the House of Judah and established a kingdom in the north. They were actually at war with each other from time to time, the Jews in the south, Israel in the north, led by Ephraim. But during this period of time and of course one foolish shepherd in that time certainly was Jeroboam the first.

The image is of a cup of wine, and when you drink it, it makes you drunk.

OK, all the nations of the earth are gathered against Jerusalem. That sort of makes you think of Revelation, when all these armies assemble in the valley of Megiddo, in the day of Armageddon. They’re ready to make war against Israel and start rolling down through the valleys to Jerusalem.

He said, "in that day, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves."

I’m not going to try to place this in time, because God in history does this sort of thing again and again. I fear, I see in some of the prophets, yet another holocaust, but I also see clearly enough that if I were an Arab nations around Israel, I would tread very carefully after reading this prophecy. Why?

Verse 4, "On that day I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness," says the LORD. "I will keep a watchful eye over the house of Judah, and I will blind all the horses of the nations."

Verse 7, "The LORD will save the dwellings of Judah first, so that the honor of the house of David and of Jerusalem’s inhabitants may not be greater than that of Judah. {8} On that day the LORD will shield those who live in Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the Angel of the LORD going before them".

When I read through this, I can’t help myself, I see these days ahead of us and perhaps not that far.

Until next time.

This article was transcribed with minor editing from a

Born to Win Radio Program given by: Ronald L. Dart

titled: Minor Prophets 29 (Zechariah 5of 6)

Transcribed by: tl 4/28/13 - Edited by: bb 12/18/16

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