I’ve just finished editing some great Bible studies on Zechariah from Tim McMahon.
Anybody read Zechariah lately? It’s one of those books that seems to relate to the modern state of Israel, but when I think about it it really doesn’t.
I just wrote a short commentary on Zechariah. From what I can see, it has to be understood within the context of the Restoration era.
The 8 visions follow the annual feasts (from Lev 23) with the two visions in chapter 5 as the two atonement goats. Here they are a true ark (the scroll) and a false ark (the basket).
The centre of the book contains a food test (fasting for the right reasons) and a chapter on compromise with Greek philosophy.
The entire book also follows the feast pattern, leading up to the ministry of Christ in the first century. It also follows the history of Israel from Egypt to Canaan.
Adam in the garden of God
Sabbath
Zechariah is anointed to restore the worship
Passover
The serpent accuses Joshua but he is “covered” in the house at midnight and protected from the destroying angel (Satan) by the preincarnate Christ
Firstfruits
The new Tabernacle is completed, the Law (the scroll) is given, false worship is expelled and the High Priest is crowned. The Lord’s glory returns and the rebuilding of worship is complete
Pentecost
If God’s people fast for the right reasons, the Lord will give them the glory they desire.
The new Jerusalem is tempted to “intermarry” (compromise) with the Greek empire
Trumpets
The flock is united (Judah and Ephraim)
Atonement
The flock is divided (Christ’s ministry brings a sword) and the false king (Herod) is struck blind
Booths
Hagar is thrown out. Old Jerusalem (Sarah) dies and is buried in the Land. She is resurrected as the new bride (Keturah) who will have many sons (the Christian church)
It’s been a few years since I read Zechariah, when I led some Bible studies on the book. I think Jesus must have reflected a lot on Zechariah as He contemplated His own mission - verses about kings riding donkeys, God Himself being pierced, sheep being scattered, etc. Whatever else the book contains, its focus is the Messianic Mission.
Also helpful to see the chiastic structure of the book. That is, the 8 visions overlap in a pattern. Visions 1 and 8 overlap; Visions 2 and 7 overlap; Visions 3 and 6 overlap; and Visions 4 and 5 overlap.
Visions 4 and 5 are the pinnacle of the message. They bring together the key ideas of the High Priest and the Prince of Peace that so clearly point to Christ.
To illustrate a little further. The chariots of vision 8 parallel the horses of vision 1. They essentially represent different aspects of God’s work in history, in judgment and salvation.
The horses and chariots are described in a way that seems to me to convey the idea of completeness and filling. The colours of the horses encompass all the colours that there are for horses, and the chariots head off in all directions. They symbolise God’s forces being a full force going into all the world. They convery the diea that God knows what’s going on (the first vision) and that He is active everywhere (the final vision).
This is consistent with what I think is an important aspect of Zechariah, which is the message that the Messiah is going to usher in an activity of God for all the nations - beyond the land of Israel . God had promised Abraham that through his seed the whole world would be blessed. That’s the aspect of God’s covenant promises that Zechariah seems to emphasise. (eg see Zechariah 14:9) The horses and chariots go all over the place, and this sets the scene in chapter 6 for the reference to the one whose name is Branch (a Messianic title) who will come and combine the roles of priest and king, with people from afar coming to be part of the building of the temple.
Some scholars believe that Zechariah’s first vision was given in the evening and that this 8th vision was in the morning, reinforcing the notion that it’s a vision of new life, the dawn of a new day for God’s people. I’m attracted to that idea myself, since Zechariah is such an amazingly Messianic prophecy, containing much that Jesus drew strength and insight from in His ministry.
So, yes Gordon, I don’t think it has anythingto do with the modern state of Israel at all.
If that’s true, it’s important to realise that in Judaism (both ancient and modern), the day begins at sunset. Thus, Western (or Christian) notions that the day begins at dawn and thus Zechariah was describing a new age or whatever doesn’t gel with the context within which he was writing.
I think the visions began at sunset, which would put Joshua’s Passover cleansing at midnight. The rest of the 8 visions take us to dawn (symbolically). The entire Old Testament took place at night. It was ‘lunar.’ The New Covenant brought the rising of the sun with healing in its wings.
The visions also recapitulate the Creation pattern. The prophet sees the church (a grove of myrtles) literally in “the deep.” A new covenant is a new heavens and earth. The exodus was described this way also.
Interestingly, Esther’s Hebrew name means myrtle, and myrtle was added to the list of branches to be collected for the Feast of Booths by Nehemiah. The majestic cedar of the kings was superseded by a small but fragrant tree.
Myrtle in Hebrew is ‘Hadas’ (spelt with the Hebrew letters heh-dalet-samech), which is a lovely name, but not Esther (which is pronounced the same in Hebrew as it is in English, i.e. a ‘t’ sound, not a ‘th’ sound in the middle, and spelt alef-samech-tav-resh).
The name Esther is most likely from the female Persian god Ishtar (remembering the Purim story of the book of Esther took place in Persia). The commentators have pointed out, however, that Esther is very similar to the Hebrew word Hester (heh-samech-tav-resh), which means ‘hidden’ - this being significant for all sorts of reasons, including the Jewish nature of Esther being hidden until the right moment, and the fact that the book of Esther is the only book of the Hebrew Bible that the tetragrammaton - the name of God - doesn’t appear - it is ‘hidden’ from the reader.
You also wrote that the entire Old Testament took place at night, because of the lunar nature of the Jewish calendar. The Jewish religious year is a combination of the lunar year and the agricultural year - the major festivals (Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles) coincide with the various stages of the harvest, while the counting of the months are lunar.
The idea of the ‘rising sun’ and what-have-you in Christian tradition has nothing to do with a new theology that Jesus taught, but rather the bringing in of pagan traditions by church leaders in the first centuries after Christ, as they became more and more divorced from the Jewish roots of their (and our) faith.
That Jesus rose on the first day of the week just before dawn is nothing to do with a new age/theology/whatever of the sun, but because on the Sunday of the Passover week, the High Priest would go to the Kidron Valley (the valley separating Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives) before dawn and stay there until the first rays of the sun would appear. Every aspect of Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfils Jewish prophesies and practices, and has nothing to do with God replacing a lunar/’night’ Old Testament with a bright and sun-shining sun-centred New Testament. The New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old, not its replacement.
It was Esther’s Hebrew name I was referring to. I should have been specific.
“With the destruction of the Temple, the Kingdom moved into a period of outward humility, but inward glory. The myrtle tree receives notice during the post-exilic period. God had prophesied renewal in terms of the myrtle (Isaiah 55:13), and Nehemiah added it to the list of trees used for the Feast of Tabernacles (Nehemiah 8:15). Zechariah saw Israel as a myrtle grove (Zechariah 1:8-11), and it is doubtless no accident that Queen Esther’s original Hebrew name was Myrtle (Hadassah; Esther 2:7).” - James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes, p. 92.
The ‘rising sun’ theology does come from the OT: Malachi 4:2. This chapter threatens Judah with destruction, and John the Baptist referred to it because its fulfilment was near.
The NT is a fulfilment of the Old AND its replacement. In Paul’s time it was decaying like the Tabernacle of Moses and ready to pass away forever, replaced by the permanent spiritual temple of living stones of the Greater Solomon.
The book of Revelation also moves from night to day. It begins inside the dark Tabernacle of Judaism, where the only lights are now the NT churches/lampstands (first century) and ends with the destruction of the harlot, corrupt Judaism, replaced with the full coming of the New Covenant bride and the Lamb as the light of the world.
I hadn’t remembered that Esther was also called Hadassah - thanks for that.
If you look through the New Testament, you’ll find that the only Jewish practicies and/or theology that were replaced were those under the Mosaic Covenant - the covenant God made with Israel through Moses. This was the ‘Law’ - the dietary laws, the sacrificial laws, cleanliness and so on. Jesus fulfilled these requirements and thus, from a Christian perspective, they became surplus.
But that wasn’t the only covenant God made with Israel. God also made a covenant with Noah (to humanity, not just Israel), with Abraham and with David. All three of these covenants were explicitly eternal and unconditional.
What were these covenants? Noah - that God would never again destroy all humanity. Abraham - that God would make Abraham a great people, that all people would be blessed through him, and that God would give him a land as that people’s eternal inheritance. David - that God would ensure David and his line would forever be the kings of Israel. (I might add as a caveat that I’m not claiming the State of Israel has or does not have a right to ‘Greater Israel’ etc - there is a difference between the right of inheritance (which Israel has) and the right of possession. I agree with almost everything written about that issue here: http://www.acsisrael.org/007.htm)
These promises remain eternal, unconditional and unreplaced.
Paul made clear in Romans that the church had not replaced Israel, or that Israel (both the people and the land) had not become redundant because of Jesus, but rather that the church was grafted into Israel and the promises God made with it (and warned that the church should not be arrogant in its position...)
As to your interpretation of Revelations; we’re all free to interpret it how we think is correct. I’m certainly no expert. But I thought the harlot was Babylon. Babylon was the country that destroyed the Temple and exiled the Jews. Thus, it was absolutely the enemy of Israel. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that the harlot of Revelations is Israel (either the people, the land, the religion or the country). I would suggest the harlot will be a new enemy of Israel.
As I understand it, neither Greek nor Hebrew have a word for “eternal.” These Covenants were age enduring. My view is that all the covenants are part of the Greater Covenant. The mediatorial function of Noah failed with Nimrod, and the world was divided in two with the calling of Abraham. Israel functioned as a mediator between heaven and earth, making sacrifices for the Gentiles. The NT has superseded all previous Covenants, not annulling them, but fulfilling them, including the Abrahamic covenant. They have all been both fulfilled and replaced. God now commands all men everywhere to repent.
I believe Romans 9-11 are misunderstood by both sides of that debate. Paul was talking about events that would be completed in the first century. the Gentiles provoked the Jews to jealousy, many were grafted back in, and the rest were destroyed, trapped in Jerusalem at a huge Passover. The end.
After AD70, in God’s eyes, there is no longer Jew nor Gentile. The divided world was reunited between Pentecost and AD70 in Christ. (In Rev 11 Christ stands on the Jewish Land and the Gentile Sea). The sign of tongues was a repeat of God’s warning regarding Babylon, but also a sign that the Babelic division was over. The only division now is between those inside and outside the New Jerusalem. There is a great article here:
The harlot in the OT was always Israel. In the NT, Judah became Jezebel, imported idolatry and broken Jubilee (land-grabbing). Ezekiel was name-calling when he spoke about the Prince of Tyre (king of Judah), the King of Tyre (the high priest covered in gemstones) and Queen Sidon (Judah’s idolatry). That’s why Covenant curses are called down upon them. They would lie with the uncircumcised. The sarcasm in Revelation is merely updated to ‘Babylon.’ The Herods disregarded the words of Christ and kept glorifying the rejected temple. Its completion in AD64 was taken to mean that Christ was a false prophet after all. Corrupt Judaism was the harlot, drunk with the blood of the prophets and saints (read Numbers 5) and according to OT law, as a daughter of a priest, she would be burned with fire. Jerusalem/Judah was the harlot, with Edomite Herods riding the authority of the Roman beast. The beast finally turned on her.
As in Ezekiel’s day, the only way to recover Israel was through death and resurrection. In the first century, she was resurrected as the Christian church. The church is Israel, functioning as visible mediator in the world the same way that Ezra’s Israel functioned as mediator in the time of empires. Revelation 1-19 is about the end of the Restoration Covenant. When the NT writers refer to “the last days”, it is the last days of that Covenant. They could “see the day approaching.”
I’ll read the suggested pdf files (when I’ve time), but I have to say that I fundamentally disagree with your analysis. For one, that God would make ‘eternal’ covenants with someone, but then change his mind a few centuries later doesn’t provide me with much faith in God. What’s to stop him changing his mind in the future, to replace the current ‘eternal’ covenant with another? I would go as far to say that my faith and my religion depend utterly on God being faithful to the promises He has made.
Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree and move on.
I’ll go back to my Hebrew Bible tonight to see which term God uses with Abraham and the others regarding the length of His promises. The Hebrew term for ‘forever’ is ‘l’olam v’ed’ - which literally means ‘to/until the olam and until.’ Olam in Hebrew has numerous meaning, the most temporal being ‘world,’ though it also means universe, cosmos or creation. ‘Until the cosmos and until’ comes across as a pretty strong case of ‘forever.’
There are two words for eternal. One is ‘ein-sophi,’ which literally means ‘without end.’ That’s modern Hebrew. The other is ‘נצחי,’ or natzchi, which my dictionary says means ‘eternal, perpetual, everlasting, immortal, ageless, enduring, interminable, lasting, timeless, undying, aeonian, deathless.’
I’m not sure which term is used by God regarding the covenants, but am interested to find out.
I think the clincher for me was: if the Abrahamic Covenant has been “postponed” or put on hold for now, rather than passing through death and resurrection, along with Israel, the Law, and the world, then it has been on hold longer than it was actually in force.
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