Subscribe to Bible Fiber on Youtube Channel or Follow Bible Fiber wherever you listen to podcasts!
As is probably clear by now, Zechariah had an important influence on the New Testament. The New Testament quotes or alludes to Zechariah 71 times. Out of all the literary prophets, only the book of Isaiah trumps Zechariah in its total number of messianic typologies. In the previous essays, I made note of all the times the New Testament writers directly quoted from Zechariah (8:16, 9:9, 11:12-13, 12:10, 13:7). Revelation was the only exception. Revelation so frequently echoes Zechariah that I found it impossible to outline all the overlap. John of Patmos was an avid fan of Zechariah’s writings.
Despite Zechariah’s enormous influence on the New Testament, the prophet rarely gets more than a passing reference in Christian Bible studies. From the time of the historic church to modern day, Zechariah has lost popularity. The vision sequence may seem obtuse; the shepherd imagery jumps around, and the oscillation between promises and curses is dizzying. However, hopefully, this study has shown how mining Zechariah through deep study rewards the reader with precious revelations. These have included Zechariah’s historical insights, glimmering poetry, funny scenarios, messianic profiles, and apocalyptic symbols.
Remnant theology
Zechariah 14’s first scene opens with the enemy nations of Jerusalem dividing her spoils. Even worse, God was allowing Jerusalem’s defeat: “I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle” (14:2). For Zechariah’s audience, the destruction narrative sounded eerily like the Babylonian invasion. The Babylonians had humiliated the people of Jerusalem, carting off the Temple’s sacred treasures. Surely, Zechariah’s words sent shivers down their spines.
Twice in the passage Yahweh was speaking directly: once to call for Jerusalem’s destruction and once for her deliverance (14:2, 5). According to the prophecy, God would send half of the city’s inhabitants into exile, but he promised a remnant would remain (14:2). To the remnant, Zechariah devotes the rest of his oracle, promising their deliverance.
The basic premise of remnant theology is that God would punish his people, but he would never allow them to go extinct. The Assyrian and Babylonian exiles were the prime threats to the survival of God’s people in biblical times. In the 2,000 years since the close of the canon, the Jewish people have endured expulsions, pogroms, and an evil plan of mass murder. The Jewish people have survived as individuals and as a nation, and their religion has survived, as well.
The ravaging of Jerusalem by hostile armies would induce Yahweh’s coming: “Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle” (14:3). The prophets constantly justified God’s use of human agents to mete out his punishment on the people. But the nations repeatedly overstepped their boundaries, and God had no choice but to pour out his vengeance on them.
Yahweh would descend to earth and place his feet on the Mount of Olives (14:4). God’s intervention into human space would cause a seismic shift: the mountain would split in two, with one half shifting to the north and the other half shifting to the south. The result would be the formation of a fissure running east-to-west between the parted mountains, providing an escape route for God’s people to find refuge. The imagery evokes the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus.
Zechariah instructed the survivors to flee as they had “fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah” (14:5). The prophet Amos had referenced the same eighth-century BCE earthquake in his superscription (Amos 1:1). Two centuries later, the people still recalled the earthquake’s aftermath.
Mountains and valleys
The Mount of Olives sits higher than Mount Moriah on the opposite side of the Kidron Valley. To this day, every tour of Jerusalem takes a bus to the Mount of Olives at sunset to see the best possible view of the Temple Mount. While the Mount of Olives is a sensible choice for Yahweh’s lookout point, this is the only place in the Hebrew scriptures in which the site is associated with a theophany.
Zechariah’s audience was already familiar with the mountains and valleys around Jerusalem, so it seems strange that Zechariah specified that the Mount of Olives “lies before Jerusalem on the east” (14:4). Scholars think the prophet may have been alluding to the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of Yahweh’s spirit departing from Jerusalem, before the Babylonian destruction, toward the “mountain east of it” (Ezek. 11:23). Zechariah described Yahweh returning from the same direction he had departed.
Once God’s people were safe and out of the way, God would attack the enemy nations with an army of “holy ones,” his own angelic army (14:5). With Yahweh’s physical intervention into the human realm, cataclysmic events would follow. God would manifest his power over earth and sky. In the Masoretic text, “the precious ones will congeal,” which interpreters understand as the darkening of the sun and moon (14:6). The Septuagint reads differently, with the statement, “there shall not be either cold or frost.” This may also be a way of saying the sun and moon would stop functioning.
Zechariah continued, “there shall be continuous day (it is known to the Lord), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light” (14:6). The 24-hour day would disappear. Morning would be dark, and the evening would be light. God was reversing creation, breaking everything down to chaos before he rebuilt the world anew.
The darkening of the skies is a recurring feature in the prophets. Jeremiah described a darkened sky and a blackened heaven as a harbinger of Jerusalem’s destruction (Jer. 4:23, 28). In Joel, the celestial bodies were darkened before the last judgment on the nations (Joel 3:15). The prophet Isaiah also predicted that on the day of the Lord, the celestial bodies would withhold their light (Isa. 13:10). Zechariah had a slightly unique twist. The sun, moon, and stars would lose their functionality, and yet Jerusalem would still have light in the evening. Revelation alludes to the Zechariah prophecy with a new interpretation. John, writing about the age to come penned, “the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev. 21:23).
Continuing the theme of God’s interjection into nature, Zechariah envisioned living water flowing out from Jerusalem, half of it to the eastern sea, which is the Dead Sea, and half of it to the western sea, which is the Mediterranean (14:8).
Jerusalem’s only living water source is the Gihon Spring. Before King Hezekiah expanded the city walls to include the spring, its location left the inhabitants vulnerable. They could not leave the city gates and retrieve water without putting themselves at risk. Because the Gihon’s flow was sporadic and insufficient, Jerusalemites had also hewed cisterns to collect seasonal rainwater. Many a prophet envisioned an ideal future for Jerusalem, describing a perennial water source for the holy city. Ezekiel went into more elaborate detail than Zechariah about a river that would stream from under the temple to nourish the whole land, and it would even transform the Dead Sea to fresh water (Ezek. 47:1-12).
The culmination of Yahweh’s intervention is the establishment of his kingdom over all the earth. When he reigns and rules from Jerusalem, all will acknowledge the oneness of God. Alluding to the Shema, Zechariah said, “on that day the Lord will be one and his name one” (14:9). In synagogues, Jewish daily services conclude with the liturgical prayer Aleinu. The prayer quotes Zechariah: “You shall know and take to heart this day that the Lord is God, in the heavens above and on earth below. There is no other” (14:9).
Despite the universal message so central to Zechariah, his apocalyptic symbolism centers on the physical aspects of an earthly Jerusalem. His earthbound language really comes through in his description of the exaltation of Jerusalem (14:10-11). Jerusalem’s spiritual influence would radiate out to the world. To uplift Jerusalem, God would flatten its neighboring lands—Giba to the north and Rimmon to the south. As the throne of Yahweh, Jerusalem would exist on a high, God-made plateau. Zechariah listed landmarks around the perimeter of the city, such as gates, a tower, and winepresses. He was describing the ideal limits of the city and verbally mapping it with historical landmarks.
Following his preview of Jerusalem’s future status in a day of peace, Zechariah returns to the battle against the nations. The defeat of Judah’s enemies, which Zechariah describes as “all the nations” (14:2), would be supernatural. Yahweh would send a plague to wipe out the hostile armies. Like a nuclear blast, the suddenness of the curse would leave their flesh, eyes, and tongue rotting while they still stood (14:12). Even the animals in the army camps would succumb to the plague (14:15). Survivors would panic and become hostile towards one another.
Letting dazed enemy armies defeat themselves is one of the Bible’s favorite war strategies. Israelites just had to march in for the cleanup job. That is how Gideon’s army beat the Midianites (Judg. 7:22), it is how Saul routed the Philistines (1 Sam. 14:20), and it is even how the Philistines returned the Ark of the Covenant after they had stolen it (1 Sam. 5:9).
Vision for the nations
When the war dust settled, the nations would stream to Jerusalem to worship the one true God. Zechariah wrote, “then all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Festival of Booths” (14:16). The prophecy does not specify whether the nations would sacrifice, convert, or follow God’s laws. They are merely called to worship. Five times, when the passage describes the nations pilgrimage, Zechariah said they were “going up” to Jerusalem. The Bible always uses the term “going up” for the spiritual ascent to Jerusalem, even if it is not a physical ascent.
Throughout his book, Zechariah nurtures a vision for the redeemed Gentiles, who would join themselves to the people of God (2:11). They also belong in the restored Jerusalem.
Three times a year, Jews were required to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to sacrifice at the temple: at Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, which is also called the Feast of Tabernacles. During the Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkot, the people commemorated the wilderness period when they were newly liberated from slavery and had to rely solely on God for their necessities. Sukkot represented the honeymoon period in their covenant relationship with Yahweh. It also marked the end of the harvest season, so pilgrims brought a portion of their harvests to the temple to pay tribute. With God extending the covenant out to the redeemed Gentiles, it is a fitting choice for them to celebrate Sukkot.
Think back to Zechariah 7 and the Bethel delegation’s visit to Jerusalem to ask if they should keep the fast days dedicated to the destroyed temple. Zechariah called out the emptiness of the ritual fasts observed in exile and called for the restored remnant to feast and celebrate with joy (8:19). Zechariah foretold a day when the nations would take hold of a Jewish person and go to Jerusalem as the place to seek the Lord’s favor (8:20-23). The book concludes with Zechariah inviting Gentiles to worship Yahweh with the remnant.
In Zechariah’s time, people yearned for a functional temple and a repopulated Jerusalem. The thought of a global pilgrimage to the Temple was almost inconceivable. However, Zechariah did not guarantee the universality of Yahweh worship. He threatened rebellious nations, who refused to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, with drought and plagues. He warned, “If any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain upon them” (14:17). Yahweh singled out Egypt to represent the recalcitrant nations, possibly because of Egypt’s historical enmity toward Judah (14:18), or perhaps Zechariah was simply being practical. Egypt was not sensitive to drought because of the Nile River, so the prophet was reminding the water-rich nation that they too were vulnerable to God’s punishments.
Elevation of the profane
Zechariah ends with what Bible scholars call a chiastic arrangement—a writing style in which the second section repeats the details or develops the ideas of the first section, but in reverse order. The message is about God imparting holiness to the entire world on that day. Everything would receive sanctification. Every category of holiness would expand outward. The oracle begins with terrestrial alterations and celestial miracles, but it ends with horse bells and cooking pots. If what God was doing in the earth’s shaking and the darkening of the skies seems too fantastic and supernatural to be relatable, the oracle brought it into the very relatable.
Zechariah declared, “On that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, ‘Holy to Yahweh’” (14:20). Horses were an unclean animal in the Bible. Zechariah was using the example of horse bells to show the transformation of even the smallest and least important object in everyday use. Zechariah shocked his audience by claiming that, in the Messianic Age, horse bells would have the same status as the vestments of the High Priest, even though horses were previously pronounced unclean. By the ritual standards of the Levitical priesthood, only the High Priest at the temple wore a turban with a gold plate, inscribed “Holy to Yahweh” (Ex. 28:36-38). For his audience, the reference to the inscription, “Holy to Yahweh” brought one image to mind: that of the High Priest, not of unclean horse bells.
Zechariah added that, with the establishment of God’s kingdom, “the cooking pots in the house of the Lord shall be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar” (14:20). Normally, the everyday work of temple sacrifice involved profane vessels and sacred vessels. The priests used common vessels to prepare sacrifices and to clean up from the messy business of sacrificial worship, but there were sacred vessels used in the most important parts of the ceremony. The priests sanctified those vessels for temple use and carefully maintained them. In the future, ordinary cooking vessels would be esteemed as highly as ceremonial vessels, according to Zechariah.
Zechariah’s conclusion brings to mind Jesus’s earthly companions. The gospels teach that Jesus preferred to associate with the poor, the sinners, the tax collectors, and the fishermen. Both in deed and in word, Jesus lived out Zechariah’s prophecy of the common rising to the ranks of the sacred. Jesus told his followers, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40). Jesus equated himself with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner. The human counterparts to horse bells and cooking pots were the ones Jesus called “the least of these.” Through his saving work, all were set free from their mundane status and now entered the realm of the eternal. Zechariah predicted a future when the distinction between holy and unholy would vanish. Jesus ushered in that day, breaking the barrier that separated humans from their creator God.