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Zechariah 2 continues the prophet’s vision sequence: eight visions in one night, making up the first six chapters of the book. The prophet said, “I looked up and saw a man with a measuring line in his hand” (2:1). Looking up or being roused was Zechariah’s standard introduction for every vision except the fourth.
Third vision
Zechariah, accustomed to interacting with the characters in his visions, asked the man with the measuring line where he was going. He responded, “To measure Jerusalem and see how wide and long it is” (2:2). The man’s optimistic answer seems either naïve or noble. Yahweh had tasked the postexilic community with rebuilding their once beautiful but now ruinous city. They were low on resources and, according to Haggai, also low on enthusiasm. The young man’s response was encouraging to Zechariah. He was not only measuring the foundations of the temple, but he was also surveying Jerusalem’s old boundary lines, in anticipation of the city’s restoration.
In Zechariah’s first vision, Yahweh had assured the prophet that as he rebuilt the nation a “measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem” (1:16). Notice how the theme and message interlocks, even as Zechariah’s scenes and characters change.
The man with the measuring line was intended to represent the community once they had internalized God’s message through Haggai and ambitiously began to rebuild Jerusalem. God was complementing the man’s efforts, but he could not perceive the divine aid. The same was true with the returnees. While they were feeling discouraged that Jerusalem would never reach its former glory, Yahweh was moving in another sphere of time and space to bring about their redemption. Only Yahweh knew every link in the chain of the restoration process.
There were now two characters in the vision. Zechariah referred to the first as “the angel who spoke with me” and the second was “another angel” (2:3). Zechariah scholars often equate the angel who spoke with Zechariah as the angel on the red horse from the scene in the myrtle trees. The second angel may be the mediating angel from the previous vision. Throughout Zechariah’s dream sequence, certain angels appeared and reappeared, giving continuity to his characters.
Zechariah addressed his questions to the second angel, while the first angel ran to meet the young man with the measuring line. The scene includes a lot of hurried movements. The first angel instructed the young man to stop his work because he had good news to share: “Jerusalem shall be inhabited like unwalled villages because of the multitude of people and animals in it” (2:4).
Apparently, the man was measuring Jerusalem’s dimensions to rebuild the city’s wall. Due to the influx of returnees surpassing the city’s capacity, the angel told the man that Jerusalem couldn’t have a wall. The new Jerusalem had to be unwalled.
Ezekiel’s vision
Ezekiel, the prophet in exile, had also experienced a vision of an unlimited Jerusalem (Ezek. 40-48). In Ezekiel’s vision, the prophet was transported to a mountaintop overlooking all of Israel. An angel with a bronze-like appearance met Ezekiel on the mountaintop with a measuring reed in his hand (Ezek. 40:3). The angel gave Ezekiel a precise blueprint of the future temple with its gates, courts, recesses, and chambers. Zechariah’s vision was brief and fleeting compared to Ezekiel’s longer account, but clearly the two visions are connected. The same measurement techniques are used in both. Zechariah and Ezekiel are the only books in the Bible that use length and width to describe Jerusalem’s dimensions (Zech. 2:2; Ezek. 45:6).
Biblical scholars wonder if Zechariah’s vision intentionally alluded to the vision of his predecessor Ezekiel. There were plenty of other instances in his book in which he referenced other prophets, so another prophetic cross-reference was on brand. Either way, Zechariah’s and Ezekiel’s visions of an unlimited temple and unwalled yet secure Jerusalem have yet to materialize in Judah’s history.
God was presenting the idealistic temples in Zechariah and Ezekiel as progressive prophecies, a glimpse of the Messianic Age to come. However, their temple visions differed in several ways. For example, Ezekiel’s New Jerusalem was much larger. The prophets also had different emphases. Ezekiel’s vision was concerned with the separation of the temple’s sacred space from the profane parts of the city. His glorified sanctuary elevated the sacrificial system. Zechariah was more concerned with the sanctification of the entire city of Jerusalem, extending beyond the temple. Zechariah’s expansive Jerusalem was going to absorb the rush of returnees.
During the Persian period, Jerusalem desperately needed to be repopulated. When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, they exiled the city’s elite and impoverished those who remained. Death, exile, assimilation, and dispersion decimated the size of the Jerusalem community. Naturally, Zechariah’s audience felt insecure, as the Jewish community was smaller than ever before. The Kingdom of Israel had disappeared from history, and subsequently Babylon had threatened the Kingdom of Judah with extinction.
When the angel stopped the young man from measuring Jerusalem’s dimensions, it was not only because of Jerusalem’s population growth, it was also because Jerusalem did not need a wall for security. Yahweh declared he would provide the city’s protection personally: “I will be a wall of fire all around it, says the Lord, and I will be the glory within it” (2:5).
In our other prophetic texts, every time Yahweh referenced fire, it was used as an instrument of destruction (Amos 1:4,10). When fire was used to personify God’s power, it was usually within the context of his wrath poured out on Judah’s enemies. In Lamentations, Yahweh’s fury was the fire that destroyed the walls of Jerusalem (Lam. 2:3-4). Here, in Zechariah’s vision, was the antithesis to the fire in Lamentations. Instead of destructive fire, fire was now the personification of Yahweh’s love and protection, like the pillar of fire that guided the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years (Ex. 14:19).
Divine fire
The imagery of divine fire would have been poignant for all those vulnerable returnees in Zechariah’s audience who lived among the charred debris of the Babylonian attack. Once again, Yahweh was going to be the pillar of fire that protected his chosen at their most vulnerable time. Consistent with Zechariah’s focus on all of Jerusalem, the fire in his vision surrounded the entire city, not just the temple. God was expanding the sphere of holiness so that his glory rested on the city.
Security was a top concern for the Judahites because of their ruined walls. We know from Ezra that, at least for a brief period, Judah’s enemies had turned the Persian leaders against the returnees and had forbidden the rebuilding of their walls (Ezra 4:11-23). In Zechariah’s vision, God was not putting an eternal prohibition on building walls around the city. Instead, he was providing assurances for the returnees who risked living in an unfortified Jerusalem.
Yahweh, in Zechariah’s vision, sent out a directive to all those who remained in exile to return to Judah. He said, “Up, up! Flee from the land of the north” (2:6). In case there was any doubt that the “land of the north” was Babylon, the vision gave further clarification: “Up! Escape to Zion, you who live with daughter Babylon” (2:7). Despite the waves of exiles who left Babylon to return to their covenanted land, there were still Jews who preferred to stay in Babylon because it was a sophisticated and prosperous city.
To restore Judah, the remnant had to leave Babylon and return to Judah. Zechariah’s message would have been comforting to the remnant that had already returned. They needed the reminder that they had indeed made the right choice despite their current hardships. The Persian Empire did not persecute their Jewish minority, but the longer any portion of the community remained in exile, the higher their risk of assimilation.
Zechariah called the people “Daughter Zion,” which was the phrase Isaiah had used for all the Jewish captives taken to Babylon (Zech. 2:10; Isa. 52:2). The prophet urged the returnees and exiles to identify as one. Even if they were in different lands, their collective identity united them in Yahweh. Centuries later, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, the Jewish people found themselves in an exile that lasted two millennia, rather than 70 years. Prophetic reassurances about their unity have been the glue that has held a landless people together.
Zechariah 2 closes with a promise of vengeance on Babylon. God blamed them for having harmed the apple of his eye (2:8). “Gate of the eye” and “daughter of the eye” are alternative translations for this strange phrase. The Hebrew writer was equating the people of Zion with an organ so precious and sensitive that Yahweh’s reaction to defend his people was instinctive.
The defeat of Babylon led to a summons to rejoice throughout the land as Yahweh returned to dwell among them. Zechariah proclaimed, “many nations shall join themselves to the Lord on that day and shall be my people” (2:11). Zechariah’s vision had a universal component that both paralleled and surpassed those of earlier prophets. Micah had foreseen all the nations coming together in peace (Mic. 4:2). Zephaniah had envisioned all nations praising Yahweh with one voice (Zeph. 3:9). Haggai believed a restored temple would launch Yahweh’s universal rule (Hag. 2:22). Now Zechariah was fully incorporating Gentiles into the restoration promises of Yahweh.
When God first called Abraham, he had promised he would bless all the nations of the earth through him (Gen. 12:3). The prophets had held onto that ideal, but the timing of its fulfillment was elusive. Zechariah’s prophecy of many nations joining themselves to Judah contained the ambiguous phrase “on that day.” When prophets invoked “on that day,” they were pointing to a future fulfillment of the prophecy.
The difficulty with Zechariah’s visions, and those of the other prophets, is the uncertainty in identifying their fulfillment. We may be inclined to look at specific points in history and make a one-to-one match with known events and prophetic predictions. Yet, Bible prophecies are often two-dimensional. They somehow both transcend time and embody their own age. They connect to historical fulfillments and yet also have eschatological implications.
To me, that is the beautiful part about studying the prophets in community. When I am deep in the prophetic word, I try to plant my feet in their world, grasping the importance of the culture, politics, and events that defined their time. At the same time though, as a believer, I am also waving my hands up to the prophetic sky and trying to grasp a piece of truth from a realm far higher and more spiritual than I can normally reach. We must do the work of discovering the world beneath the prophet’s feet, but we also must aspire to experience a fragment of the heavenly revelation going on above our heads.