OUT OF THE CHAOS: A study in the book of Zechariah
Chapter 9: Two Messiahs; One neighbourhoodTo watch this on YouTube:
The Jewish world changed because of the 2nd world war. Obviously the loss of 6 million of any people, even Chinese or Indian people in 2023 when their populations are over a billion would suffer significantly if 6 million were suddenly taken. But when our Jewish global ranks only numbered nearly 17 million in 1939, to lose 1/3 of the nation-- that’s a devastation. The remainder of the Jewish population scattered, not reckoning a return to their homelands would allow them safety, and Jewish migration continued even so far as coming to Australia. In 1901, at Federation, the population of the country here was less than 4 million people, only 15,000 of whom were Jewish. During and after the Holocaust, the Jewish escape took us as far away as possible, and in 2011, our numbers had swelled to over 100,000.[1]
But when I say the Jewish world changed, I’m not only referencing population and evacuation. I’m referencing Jewish thinking as well. To be fair, making the point that Jewish thinking is singular is both dismissive and puerile. There have always been thinkers who thought outside the proverbial box in the Jewish world. Einstein, Spinoza, even Moses Mendelssohn are primary examples. So when I say “Jewish thinking”, what I’m referencing is the general mood or majority concept that finds its way into most, certainly the plurality, of the Jewish people in an area or globally.
For instance, just now, even though there are several major denominations of Jewish people, with representative synagogues and temples, Jewish thinking today is significantly concerned with ‘tikkun olam’ even if less than half the people who are so concerned don’t know the term. The ‘repair of the world’ and ‘making the world a better place’ are global issue #1 in the philosophical mindset of our people. Internal concerns of Jews might also include Jewish maintenance (intermarriage, conversions), but the not-only-us perspective almost always includes tikkun olam.
Those of you who are messianic, that is, believers in Yeshua as Messiah, would aver that Jewish people are, or at least should be, concerned about the coming of Messiah. Certainly that was 1/13th of the thinking of Jewish people when Rambam wrote his 13 articles of faith in the 12th century in Spain.
In 1885, the Jewish world self-edited again and I think a shift away from a personal Messiah significantly began to be noticed. Combine that doctrinal movement and the Shoah and now, we, who are alive in 2023, are the result of such. Most Jewish people today do not believe in a personal Messiah, nor think of Judaism as a religion, rather as a community among all other religious communities, and our main task is to get along with, and bring social justice to, the globe. With that as an overview of our messianic amendments, I want to talk to you today from our chapter, Zechariah 9, and use a personal anecdote to showcase all we can learn from this ancient and sacred text.
The year was 1971. I was a 19-year-old hippie living again in Kansas City. I had returned to my birthplace after dropping out of university and hitchhiking around the south, that region of the US not exactly known for political openness, and certainly in those days, not known for welcome to long-hairs and guitar-toting hitchhikers. Even so, that’s where I found myself when four Southern Baptists surrounded me on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia. They harangued me and announced to me that Jesus was the messiah. I told them I was Jewish. That didn’t seem to move their thinking or their intentions. They had Bibles and biblical answers to anything and everything, even though I wasn’t asking them any questions. These men certainly had messiah on the brain.
Even though I was a Jew, and still a practising one, and even though I’d heard of messiah; if I had to take an examination on the subject, I would have answered “yes” to the question, “Do you believe in the messiah?”, I still didn’t think about it much.
Many people in our days, certainly those who survived the Shoah, have split thinking on this. Some, and dare I say most, of our people respond with thoughts like, “If there were a God, and if he really cared about our people, why didn’t he save those 6 million?” Others will say, “If a messiah were coming, he should have come long before Auschwitz!” To be fair, there are many who continue to hold onto the historical Jewish thought of Rambam that “though he (messiah) tarry, yet will I wait for him.”
Today I will tell you of an episode later in that year 1971 that forever shaped my thinking personally and maybe it will help you as well in considering this issue.
Also, I’m not the focus of the author of this chapter, Zechariah, and I want you to see the plan of God clearly as he announced, so that whoever you are, believer or not-yet-a-believer, you will draw comfort from God’s eyes across the world. Let’s dive in.
1. God’s plan for some nations: The coming of the warrior (.1-.8)
Verse 1. This is extremely difficult in the Hebrew. There is no verb. The term for oracle is not always used. We don’t know the subject and the object, but otherwise, the sentence is fairly clear. Basically the section is introducing us to the complex considerations of God in relation to the nations around the Jewish people. What nations are those? It starts up north with Syria, moves south to Phoenecia (namely Tyre and Sidon) which is in Lebanon today and finally lands us in Philistia with the Gaza towns mentioned.
The translation of the verse is all over the place, but it is probably best to retain the difficult reading “eve of man” and understand it as a subjective genitive, “belong to Yahweh,” i.e. “the eyes of Gentiles and all the tribes of Israel should be on Yahweh.”
Let’s deal with the geography. Each of the three areas will experience different outcomes. First is Syria. We read, “Even as far as Hamath.” This is beyond the scope of the land of Judah and even Israel in the days of Zechariah, and certainly beyond today’s boundaries, but it indicates that in the Messianic Age the government of the Lord of the whole earth will extend way up north into Assyrian territory. Way north of Damascus. And the point is that this territory will be godly! As verse one says, “unto the Lord”
כִּ֤י לַֽיהוָה֙
The next settled territories are not so fortunate, however.
Verses 2-4: Tyre and Sidon, self-endowed and self-strengthened, are gathering stuff and their accumulation even of wisdom. Their wisdom, wealth and weaponry are not enough to prevent God’s judgment to fall on them. Verse 4 says God will dispossess her. Note the verb is singular and yet Tyre and Sidon (Tsor and Tsidon) are two, but in their dismissal of God they are as one.
The third is Gaza today, and back then Philistia.
Verses 5-8 lists 4 of the 5 cities along the coast from Ashdod south, the usual 5 towns, but one is missing. The sound of judgment actually produces something good here.
We read: “Ashkelon will see it and be afraid. Gaza too will writhe in great pain; also Ekron, for her expectation has been confounded. Moreover, the king will perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon will not be inhabited. And a mongrel (mamzer: bastard) race will dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines. And I will remove their blood from their mouth and their detestable things from between their teeth.
Then they also will be a remnant for our God, and be like a clan in Judah, and Ekron like a Jebusite.
But I will camp around My house because of an army, because of him who passes by and returns; and no oppressor will pass over them anymore, for now I have seen with My eyes.” (.5-.8)
The removal of penalty and the inclusion into the house of God is staggering. Ekron becoming a Jebusite!??? That’s Jerusalem. Verse 8: My house and God encamping there and God’s eyes are there. Wow, this stanza is making Philistia into a community that is welcomed and formerly detestable, formerly bastardized, now with pride removed and blood removed from their mouths. This is a picture of godliness. Verse 7, like a clan is in Hebrew, K’alef, like a chief. This is seriously what we might call ‘inclusion.’ For years I read this as judgment on all three geographical areas, but now I see this portion of Zechariah 9 as a hint of what is coming, that the Lord of all the earth, whose kingdom is coming, whose king is coming, has the intention of bringing in the foreginers and they will also be his.
2. Shiloh on a donkey: The coming of the king (.9-10)
Verse 9. This is where the story zooms in on a particular, on the method of bringing salvation to the territories, and dare I say, to Judah as well. I’m not sure that salvation was in the mind of our father Jacob when he prophesied (Genesis 49.11) about Judah and pre-broadcast this scene. He uses very similar language as here in verse 9, but I read the Genesis account as talking about abundance and prosperity. Remember, there we read this of Jacob’s prophecy to his 4th son: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. He ties his foal to the vine, and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine; He washes his garments in wine, and his robes in the blood of grapes.” (Gen 49.10-11)
Shiloh, later we know this to be Messiah, but for Jacob, just read this as a prediction on the first horizon. When Shiloh comes, the abundance of produce will be so great that you can tie your donkey to a grapevine, and the vine will be strong enough to function as a hitching post. Your donkey is safe; your investments will be safe. That’s how the people of Jacob’s time, his sons and larger family, would have heard the prediction.
In a few minutes I will finish the story of my encounter with a rabbi in 1971 that shaped my thinking about this passage to this day.
Who is this humble donkey-rider? Jewish interpreters love to highlight the effectiveness of this donkey-rider. He will make things happen which sections one and three advance. Verse 10, speaking peace to the nations is obviously an admission of control and repair in the military and political troubles of the past. His dominion will be far reaching from sea to sea, or if you are an American, from sea to shining sea. And that phrase which persists in Zechariah “to the ends of the earth” (Ad afsei aretz)
עַד־אַפְסֵי־אָֽרֶץ
Is not only a description of geography, but to the nations, the peoples. Again I’m thinking of Jacob’s prophecy to Judah, that “to Shiloh, to him shall the gathering and the obedience and the tribute of the peoples be.” These are taxes and pledges of loyalty. To the ends of the earth and from the ends of the earth they will come.
Verse 9 says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
But now, the long-awaited story. The year was 1971. I was 19 and change. In May that year I was found by Messiah and came to believe that Yeshua was our Messiah. I quickly told my family (not advised) and within hours I was asked by my parents to exit their home. I booked and moved into a new apartment. It was a traumatic time, but a most significant one.
A couple of months later, and I’m not sure of the circumstances. Did he invite me? Did I invite myself to the rabbi’s study? I don’t remember. But that summer of 1971, I remember being with Rabbi MD Solomon in the office of the Kehilath Israel Synagogue on Meyer and Rockhill in Kansas City. We had a lively albeit frank and confrontational conversation about my recent change of faith, as he said, and he wanted me to return to Judaism. We traded Bibles. My King James Version for his Hebrew/English. Both hardback. We traded Bible quotes. I was way out of my league, to be sure, in this Gospel witness.
At one point, the rabbi admitted with words like these, “Look, we know that there are two pictures of messiah in Tenach. Messiah the son of Joseph and Messiah the son of David. Both in one chapter of the Scriptures. Zechariah perek tet (Chapter 9) says that he will come into Jerusalem on a donkey or he will come on the clouds. Two clear pictures. Two very different actions by the messiah. That means, he explained, we as Jews, as the prophet has been warning us for chapter after chapter, have a choice. We can welcome him on a donkey or on the clouds. What causes him to come in either of those methods? Our sinfulness.”
He went on. “If all Israel lives sinfully, messiah will come on a donkey and deliver us. If all Israel lives faithfully, if we observe the mitzvot and keep Torah as Orthodox Jews, messiah will come on the clouds.”
I processed it for only a moment, but I’ve processed it again and again for the next 52 years. What I said then, I would still say today. “Rabbi, I think you have just convinced me that Jesus is our messiah.”
My explanation was probably weak then, but it boiled down to this. Where in Tenach do we read of Israel’s faithfulness? Where in the prophets, or even Moses’ Swan Song do we hear of God bragging about our keeping Torah? Most of the time God is calling us back to faithfulness BECAUSE we have failed him. If Rabbi Solomon’s thesis is right, then messiah has to come on the donkey and save us. But listen, he’s only half right. The two pictures, the two messiahs are actually one messiah coming twice.
Yes, we lived sinfully and Messiah had to come on the donkey. (Matt. 21.7, John 12.15)
Then at the end of days, which God knows, he will send Messiah yet again, we who are the redeemed, who keep his love and commands for all people, he will come in the clouds of glory as Daniel predicted, as Zechariah says here, as John the Revelator says in chapter one of Revelation.
I’m sure we shook hands. We kept our traded books. It’s right here for me. Rabbi Solomon made Aliyah and died in Israel many years later. If he was honestly seeking God, the Lord would surely have made my words clear to the rabbi. We shall see in due course, you know?
Verse 10 says, “And He will speak peace to the nations;” Again the hint is becoming louder like Bolero’s earliest themes continuing in the rest of the orchestral piece by Ravel.
Nations will come to the Lord. Nations CAN be included in God’s economy. There is a place for Gentiles along with Jews in God’s eyes. The hint is increasing. The Lord is Lord over all the earth.
3. Summary blessings to the victorious cloud-rider: Sharing in the victory (.11-.17)
The third section of today’s class is found in verses 11 to the end. Bishop Stead broke this down into four separate outline units. Verse 11 is the release. “I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit.” Look at Isaiah 42.22 “This is a people plundered and looted, all of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons.” Or Jeremiah’s prophecy about the sin of Judah being trusting in the ‘cisterns which hold no water.” (2.13) It could also be the empty pit of Joseph, sold by his brothers to the travelling nomads that got him to Egypt and covenant blessings, even there.
Emptiness, and yet going to the well, what a waste, what a pretence. Release from falsehood, that’s how I want to define this verse. That’s so huge in our mechanical understanding and deployment of religious activity. Matthew West sang, “I don’t want to go through the motions…without your all-consuming passion inside of me …what if I had given everything instead of going through the motions?” Religion and its commensurate hypocrisy—God says he will release Judah from this prison!
And how is this release possible? Verse 11 tells us, “the blood of the covenant” which will free us!
The next verse, 12 is a second promise of Restoration. The hint of ‘double’ blessing is clarified in this verse. That sounds like a change from the double problem of Isaiah 40 which Jeremiah 16.18 also told us. The punishment for our sin, even double there, could be countermanded by the grace of the Lord and the Word of his testimony. Blood and covenant, again applied to the people of God. Without both, we are left in pain and emptiness and suffering. But here, due to the donkey-riding messiah, we can be restored to hope. Note the phrase in .12 about prisoners of hope. Note in verses 11 and 12 the use of ‘asirei’ or prisoners. We were held in chains and now the result of the blood, the covenant, and the Word of God make us prisoners of hope.
This is not only hope for Temple restoration, but peoplehood! When we are broken, without hope, we need the Almighty to give us hope, by relating to and being in relationship with him. Note the Psalms (18.2, 46.5-7) that call us to hope in God, my refuge, my shield the horn of my salvation and my stronghold. Hope is personal and springs eternal, for those whose hope is in the living God and not in man’s solutions or treaties or self-capacity.
Verses 13-15, Bp Stead said, is about Victory itself. Who are the weapons? Judah and Efraim, the southern and northern kingdoms, now functioning as a unit. How did that happen? By the blood of the covenant. And wait, it’s not only the people of God who are weapons (arrows, bows and swords), but now God himself joins the armies. We have called him Adonai Ts’vaot throughout this prophecy, Lord of the armies, and now he takes the battlefield himself! Verse 15 has that title trumpeting ahead of the armies of Israel and Judah.
Verse 14 is the one that Rabbi Solomon cited. The Lord will appear “over them.” And go “forth like lightning.” That’s heavenly; that’s from above. The rabbis have taught us that messiah will fight for us, win the battles against our enemies, and here victory is won by God and by God’s people.
One more note on verse 15[2] showcases making noise as in a boisterous banquet.
Then finally, the fourth section of the last of chapter 9 is “Salvation.” Look at verses 16 and 17. For those who have read ahead, the shepherd of verse 16 will feature again, certainly in contrast to the false shepherds next week and the one who will suffer and be stricken later. Hold those thoughts. What is great about this final thought in chapter 9 is the tender care of a shepherd. He was a warrior a moment ago, and now he will ‘save …the flock.’ That’s tender. It’s also the result of a warrior-shepherd which makes sense in context, but don’t miss it. Yeshua, the gentle shepherd of the flock of God’s people will go to war on our behalf, for the “weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God for the tearing down of strongholds and every lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Messiah.” (2 Cor. 10:4-5)
The scenes of chapter 9 make this one of the most compelling chapters in the Bible, especially for us who know the suffering one, who rides in Triumphal Entry (ha, what a misnomer!) into Jerusalem a few days before Passover nearly 2,000 years ago. Yeshua is hailed as king, and it’s so close you can almost taste the victory. But his kingdom is a now and not yet kingdom. He’s riding on the donkey, not the clouds, to bring suffering, sinful Israel back into covenant relationship with God. How? By his shed blood. By dying for us on the cross in a few days after this event recorded in all four gospels. He rode into Jerusalem as king, not on a white horse with military trumpets and accolades, but with humility and suffering in the forecast. The people got it wrong; the Romans got it wrong; we all get it wrong until we meet the one who is the Suffering One, the donkey-rider who brings salvation in his own manner.
Don’t miss it; you who don’t yet know Messiah, today could be your day. Find salvation in the donkey-rider, the messiah Jesus. He’s your life and your hope. Without him, we are doubly in trouble; with him we are doubly blessed.
How, what do you do now? Pray a simple prayer and ask him to be your salvation and your messiah. He wants to forgive you your sins and make you born again to a living hope. Not a dead one.
Sample prayer.
Then write me and tell me what you’ve done… we’ll support you, etc. Shabbat shalom!
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Remember, you who are watching today, if you are not yet a follower of Yeshua, and see his love for you, his kindness extended, his offer of forgiveness available, right where you are, submit to him, to his lordship, to his care, and your life will take on new meaning, new substance, and you will have mates on this call, and in your neighbourhood and wherever you travel… the Kingdom is advancing under the King. Chaos is subjugated, life is available.
Would you like that? Pray with me just now. (Prayer Sample)
Shabbat shalom!
Resource on video
To see a fun video overview of the book of Zechariah see this from Bible Project:
https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/zechariah/
Bibliography:
Ryken, Leland (and others), Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1998.
Smith, Ralph, Micah to Malachi: Word Biblical Commentary (Volume 32), Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 1984.
Stead, Michael, Zechariah: The Lord Returns, Aquila Press, Sydney, 2015.
Webb, Barry, The Message of Zechariah: Your Kingdom Come, Intervarsity Press, Nottingham, 2003.
Wiersbe, Warren, Be Heroic: Demonstrating Bravery by your Walk, David C. Cook Press, Colorado Springs, 1997.
ACTUAL TEXT
Zech. 9:1 The burden of the word of the LORD is against the land of Hadrach, with Damascus as its resting place (for the eyes of men, especially of all the tribes of Israel, are toward the LORD),2 and Hamath also, which borders on it; Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise. 3 For Tyre built herself a fortress and piled up silver like dust, and gold like the mire of the streets. 4 Behold, the Lord will dispossess her and cast her wealth into the sea; and she will be consumed with fire. 5 Ashkelon will see it and be afraid. Gaza too will writhe in great pain; also Ekron, for her expectation has been confounded. Moreover, the king will perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon will not be inhabited. 6 And a mongrel race will dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines. 7 And I will remove their blood from their mouth and their detestable things from between their teeth. Then they also will be a remnant for our God, and be like a clan in Judah, and Ekron like a Jebusite. 8 But I will camp around My house because of an army, because of him who passes by and returns; and no oppressor will pass over them anymore, for now I have seen with My eyes.
9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the horse from Jerusalem; and the bow of war will be cut off. And He will speak peace to the nations; and His dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.
11 As for you also, because of the blood of My covenant with you, I have set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. 12 Return to the stronghold, O prisoners who have the hope; this very day I am declaring that I will restore double to you. 13 For I will bend Judah as My bow, I will fill the bow with Ephraim. And I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece; and I will make you like a warrior’s sword. 14 Then the LORD will appear over them, and His arrow will go forth like lightning; and the Lord GOD will blow the trumpet, and will march in the storm winds of the south. 15 The LORD of hosts will defend them. And they will devour and trample on the sling stones; and they will drink and be boisterous as with wine; and they will be filled like a sacrificial basin, drenched like the corners of the altar.
16 And the LORD their God will save them in that day as the flock of His people; for they are as the stones of a crown, sparkling in His land. 17 For what comeliness and beauty will be theirs! Grain will make the young men flourish, and new wine the virgins.
[1] By 1920, intermarriage, mainly on the part of Jewish men, was leading some observers to question the long-term viability of the Jewish community in Australia. But the mass arrival of Jews from Eastern Europe from the 1920s onwards, combined with refugees from Central Europe, ensured a vibrant future. Over 5000 "thirty-niners" arrived as refugees just before or at the outbreak of World War II. Between 1946 and 1954, 17,000 Jews, mostly Holocaust survivors, arrived from Europe and Shanghai. A significant number came after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a further 10,000 arrived by 1961. The Suez Crisis of that same year precipitated an exodus of Jews from Nasser's Egypt. Jews from Middle Eastern countries, even Sephardim of comparatively light complexion, were effectively barred by the White Australia policy, enshrined in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 and not repealed until 1972, but an easing of this barrier following representations to government facilitated the entry of several hundred refugees from Egypt. Australian Jewry doubled in size from 23,000 in 1933 to 60,000 in 1966. With the arrival of substantial numbers of Jews from South Africa and the former Soviet Union, there were about 84,000 Jews according to the 2001 Census, with communal leaders believing the actual number to be around 110,000. The Census of 2011 indicated about 112,000 Jews in Australia. (From Suzanne Rutland, Australia: 1788 to the Present
by Suzanne Rutland, updated by Hilary L. Rubinstein
Last updated June 23, 2021
[2] Literally it reads “and they shall drink and make noise like wine.” Some scholars follow LXX and read דמם “their blood” for המוּ “they make noise.” It is better to maintain the MT text and consider המוּ a 3rd com pl qal pf המה “to make noise.” The idea of a boisterous banquet is being presented.
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