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25 June. Zechariah chapters 8-14.
In the first couple of chapters of this section, Zechariah’s prophecy follows the now familiar pattern of promising to restore Israel’s fortunes with Jerusalem as its capital, and judgement on their enemies. It is within the latter – the triumph of the Jews over the surrounding nations – that there come perhaps the most-quoted verses of this book of the Old Testament: “your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey … he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (9:9-10). That is because Jesus was seen to fulfil them, probably quite deliberately, when he entered the city the week before he was crucified. Those who thought of the whole context of Zechariah’s message may have been encouraged to think in terms of military strength, but these verses are actually about God’s ultimate purpose of achieving peace on earth.
Earlier, we read the following: “Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of their great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets” (8:4-5). Again, this is a vision of a peaceful city, one in which its most vulnerable citizens (the old and the young) can live without fear. Even in our societies today we are far from achieving that. It is more common for the old to live in “sheltered” accommodation as much for their safety as for the nursing care they may need, and for children to be kept indoors for fear of assault or abduction, than for them to be able to sit or play unsupervised in the street.
So was the prophecy a false one? No, but it has always been the understanding of the Christian church that only when Jesus comes a second time in glory will true peace be established. Zechariah seems to have foreseen that too, for in the last chapter his prophecy becomes ever more apocalyptic (telling of the last days), when the mountains near Jerusalem would split in two to allow the citizens to escape from a coming disaster, after which “the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him … And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.” (14:5,9).