Mining the Minors: Zechariah (5)

Several years back, my cantankerous next-door neighbor had her front walk redone with great, imposing slate pavers. I’m not sure they harmonized with the look of her property quite as well as the railroad ties she had in prior years, and I bet they cost a bundle, not least for the prodigious amount of labor involved in what initially looked like a fairly small project. It took three men several days to tear up what was there and replace it.

There was only one problem.

The guys who did the work for my neighbor paid no attention to her property line, and her beautiful new stairs and walkway encroached by a full eight inches on somebody else’s land. You can see the violation from clear across the street without even pulling out a tape measure. My landlady is exceedingly gracious and, rightly or wrongly, let it slide without commencing legal action. But when you own property, you don’t own an inch more than you’ve paid for.

In Old Testament Israel, when a new owner took possession, he would get out his measuring line and compare what he thought he was buying with what he actually had. The measuring line was a way of evaluating exactly what he owned. God does something similar from time to time.

I. Eight Visions and Explanations (continued)

3/ The Man With the Measuring Line

Zechariah 2:1-2 – The Vision

“And I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand! Then I said, ‘Where are you going?’ And he said to me, ‘To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length.’ ”

Given what comes next, the Jerusalem in view can only be millennial, and that’s how we’re going to approach it.

The measurements of scripture fall into broad categories. The word is used most frequently in connection with the tabernacle, Solomon’s temple, Ezekiel’s millennial division of land in Israel and the wall of Jerusalem built by Nehemiah. The measuring line is also used once or twice as a symbol of God’s judgment, but that is evidently not the sense in which it is intended in Zechariah’s vision. Rather, the man Zechariah saw was tasked with measuring Jerusalem as a man might measure the properly he had just purchased. After all, God himself is going to dwell there.

Zechariah 2:3-13 — The Explanation

“And behold, the angel who talked with me came forward, and another angel came forward to meet him and said to him, ‘Run, say to that young man, “Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.” ’

Up! Up! Flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord. For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the Lord. Up! Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon. For thus said the Lord of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nations who plundered you, for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye: ‘Behold, I will shake my hand over them, and they shall become plunder for those who served them. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me. Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord. And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. And the Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.’

Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.”

Villages Without Walls

I recently had a fellow in from an energy company using one of those little laser devices to record the measurements of all the windows on the property. All he had to do was point and click. Neat trick. When you have walls, floor and ceiling — or, really, any fixed points to measure between — there can be no question about sizes and dimensions. They are what they are, and the only potential variance is in the accuracy of the person doing the measuring.

But what do you do when you are tasked with measuring a city without walls, with a growing population living wherever they can find a spot, and their animals roaming here and there? Where does the city begin and end? The point of the vision, I believe, is that the Jerusalem of the millennium will be so bursting with life that any attempt to quantify its precise boundaries will be pointless. It will be like a village without walls in the middle of wild and unclaimed country, where the limits of the settled territory are defined only by the will of those living there to reshape the country around them to their needs. Whatever territory they have made the effort to mow, plow or dig belongs to them, and nobody will say otherwise.

The Wall of Fire

When the Lord Jesus inhabits millennial Jerusalem, there will be no prescribed limit to his influence and no need for a wall of protection. Ordinarily, I’m not sure I would associate Christ’s presence in Jerusalem with a literal wall of fire, but would probably view it as a greater deterrent to nations harboring ill will toward the Jews than any physical form of protection men could build. However, Isaiah had previously written of exactly this phenomenon in his fourth chapter, harking back to the visual manifestation of the presence of the Lord with Israel in the wilderness (a cloud by day and a shining of flaming fire by night). Christ will indeed be a wall of fire to Jerusalem.

Some commentators take this entire vision allegorically, as having to do with Christ’s presence in his church and the evangelization of the nations during the present era. In this view, the command “Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon” becomes a gospel text. This plainly does not work, since those who dwell with the daughter of Babylon are the same group the Lord has “spread abroad as the four winds of the heavens” in the previous verse, which can only refer to a literal diaspora.

Moreover, Zechariah does not say that people from many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, as is occurring during the Church Age, but that the nations themselves shall be joined to the Lord in a similar sense to the covenant relationship Israel has with God. That would be a strange thought if we did not have Isaiah saying almost exactly the same thing. He speaks of a future day in which the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians, and both will worship with Israel. These two former enemies of Israel will be called “my people” and “the work of my hands”, signaling not just individual repentance and salvation, but entire nations corporately aligning themselves with the rule of Christ.

Flee from the Land of the North

Certain commentators also take the command to flee from the land of the north as applying to the time of Zechariah, though we have no record of any exodus of Jews from Babylon during that period approaching the scale of the return under Zerubbabel and Joshua described in Ezra. We should remember that Babylon had already fallen to the Persians decades previously, so there was no need for Jews to flee Babylon for safety. Diaspora Jews would live in safety both in Babylon and throughout the Persian Empire until the reign of Artaxerxes, which was still decades away, and then again afterwards.

No, once again I think we are looking at a call for the exodus of Jews from the north during the early days of the millennial reign of Christ, a return to Zion foretold by many other prophets. Bear in mind that it is not an appeal to leave the literal city of Babylon, but to those who “dwell with the daughter of Babylon”. It’s a command to Jews living in the sphere of, and under the authority of, the literal or spiritual descendants of Babylon, wherever they might currently reside.

The Apple of God’s Eye

There are any number of strange interpretations of this verse. Some say the church is the apple of God’s eye. That might be a fair statement, but it’s not what this verse is talking about. Some teach that national Israel in its current unrepentant state is the apple of God’s eye, which is also not the case. In Hosea, Israel are “not my people”. How much more is that statement true today in the era of Israel’s rejection of Messiah? One day, not just saved Jews but the entire nation of Israel will be God’s people once again, but that day is not today. I’m not even sure the pronoun “his” refers to God. It’s also possible Zechariah is saying that any ruler or nation who sets itself against millennial Israel will be performing an action comparable to poking itself in the eye, engaging in pointless self-injury. If the pronoun does indeed refer to God, then the “you” in “he who touches you” is surely millennial Israel.

These nations who have plundered Israel during the great tribulation will become plunder for those they plundered. This is an act of judgment elsewhere ascribed to the Lord Jesus himself at his coming and thereafter, and he adds, “Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me.” The sign of God’s favor toward Israel will be his Son’s return to earth to take up their cause and fight on their behalf.

The Lord Will Inherit Judah

Any attempt to apply the words “I come and I will dwell in your midst” to the Lord’s first advent falls flat when we get to verse 12 and read “And the Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.”

While the three years of Jesus’ ministry might rightly be called “the year of the Lord’s favor”, Daniel writes that after the sixty-two weeks, Messiah “shall be cut off and have nothing”. (“Nothing”, that is to say, with respect to national Israel, which is what the prophecy concerns. Obviously, Messiah’s “cutting off” was actually a rich blessing for the church, and in being cut off he brought “many sons to glory”, but with respect to restoring national Israel to its place of blessing, the Anointed One had “nothing”.) Sir Robert Anderson, among others, interprets this as the rejection of Christ by those to whom he came, culminating in his crucifixion.

Obviously, it is impossible for Messiah to be “cut off and have nothing” and, simultaneously, to “inherit Judah as his portion”. So then, Zechariah’s vision relates to the Lord’s second advent and the blessings for the nation of Israel associated with his millennial reign when he “will again choose Jerusalem”.

Be Silent, All Flesh

The fact that Zechariah finishes with the words “Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling” makes it very difficult to interpret the vision as either literally fulfilled in the intertestamental period, as some claim, or else figuratively fulfilled in the church age, as others do. This is not merely the historical return of an insignificant people from exile or even the taking out of a “little flock” to inherit a spiritual kingdom in the present day. No, this is the moment when “all flesh” — the entire earth — will fall silent before the Lord Jesus. The Anointed One will rise from his seat at the right hand of God, and come to earth to act on behalf of his people. This is the aftermath of that great and glorious moment when “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him”.

In that moment, the command to be silent will be entirely appropriate.