Zechariah 1

Zechariah!

There’s a lot of visions and messages in this book, and I know a lot of the stories will have a LOT of specific meanings that I couldn’t even begin to get into or describe.

Chapter 1.

Lord of Heaven’s Armies. In other translations it says Lord of Hosts. The Hebrew word for that is describing war, an army, and spiritual warfare. It can be a host of angels in the sense of war, which is what this usage is for, but it can also be hosts of sun, moon, and stars, or of entire creation. There are 486 occurrences of this word in the bible! It’s used a lot in Zechariah.

In verse 3 God says, “Return to me, and I will return to you.” The exact same sentence is used in Malachi 3:7. In Malachi the people ask, “How can we return when we have never gone away?” and God replies that people have cheated Him out of tithes.

Zechariah verse 3 says, “Therefore say to the people, ‘This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.’” In other translations it say, “Thus saith the Lord,” or “declares the Lord” and it’s actually the same phrase three times in this verse. It’s only used 2 times in NLT and NIV, but I find it interesting that it’s used 3 times in other translations because of the meanings of the words. I used biblehub commentary to look more into this and this is what it said about it (in my words, since I used more than one commentaries to look at it):  –“This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says” is closer translated “thus saith the Lord” and it denotes his power. There is a second “thus saith the Lord” – is a more threatening form than the other two – that is after “return to me” because he can punish you or reward you for returning or not. The last one is at the end, and it is more of a promise. He promises to return to His people, to bestow favor on them, to forgive them, etc.

Zechariah is relaying a message from God in verses 3-6 that says to repent and turn from your evil ways, and that their ancestors did not do that. I feel like this is for people who are straying and doing bad things… but does this apply to me in any way? Sure it’s easy to point fingers and think of other people who need to return to the Lord, but am I in any way part of this? Yes I sin, but yes I constantly repent, so I don’t feel like this part is particularly relevant to me.

That was his first message. The second one was three months later (vs 7). Zechariah had a vision at night. He saw men on different colored horses, and asked the angel what the horses meant. The angel explained that the horses patrol the earth, and they came back and reported that the earth was at peace. By peace they meant (in explaining a few verses later) that other countries were at peace, but Jerusalem and Judah were not. I find it interesting that the angel of the Lord prayed to God at that point. And then “the Lord spoke kind and comforting words to the angel who talked with me.” I love it!

The angel says to Zechariah that God is a little angry with His people, but the other nations “inflicted harm on them far beyond my intentions.” Things I noticed about this section: God spoke kind and comforting words to the angel (vs 13), His love for Jerusalem is “passionate and strong” (vs 14), God was “very angry” with the other nations for ejoying peace and security (vs 15), “only a little angry” with His people (vs 15), and soon “the Lord will again comfort Zion” (vs 17). Comforting, passionate and strong love, very angry, and a little angry. The Lord is full of emotions just like us. We are made in His image, and He has emotions that are very clear and evident in scripture. His emotions are always justified and rational, even when they are stronger than any of our emotions could ever be. Ours our often skewed and tainted with sin. His anger is righteous anger, ours isn’t usually. His love is unconditional and holy, and we try to copy it but don’t always get it quite right. He comforts and consoles, and we try to replicate that but are unable to fully do so because God is the ultimate healer and comforter.

In verse 13 where God spoke kind and comforting words, the word “kind” in Hebrew here also means “beautiful,” in the sense that “the good kind words spoken in promise.” In verse 14, “passionate and strong” is also translated to extremely jealous. It is the type of jealousy “of God for His people, especially in battle” according to the Hebrew use of the word.

The third and very short vision in chapter one is still part of his previous night vision but is only 4 verses long. There are 4 horns which represent 4 nations that scatter and destroy Israel, just like the horn of a bull would do, and then there are 4 blacksmith or workers who come to stop them.

We have all of these scholars, history, knowledge, and future fulfillment of these visions and dreams, so we are able to interpret them and study them. But I wonder what would happen if God gave people dreams and visions today and we had current day prophets. I don’t think people would believe them until something they said came true because there are so many people out there that lie for attention, fame, money, or just craziness. I also wonder how long it would take that person to realize it was a dream from God instead of just a random dream like any other night. Unless you just woke up and you just knew. I also wonder how different it would be to get the word out to people if your dream or vision was to tell other people – would you blog about it, share it on all your social media, and keep posting it for people to see? Would you hope it goes viral or would you try to reach famous people to repost it or something? And if it was from God and it came true, how would you prove or show that it came true?