Zechariah: We have heard this before

Zechariah is one of the newest books in the Old Testament, or one of the latest, if you want to put it that way. It is a post-Exilic work. It goes hand in hand with Haggai, exhorting the Jews who'd returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon to get going on restoring Jerusalem's temple, walls, and religion.

A professor at DTS often said that to understand the New Testament, you have to understand the Old Testament. You might even refine that to, "If you have even a prayer of understanding Revelation, you'd better be familiar with the OT, particularly Zechariah."

There are all kinds of literary motifs, images, or allusions in Zechariah that pop  up again in Revelation. For example, those horses of the apocalypse are seen in Zech. 1:7-8 and again in 6:1-8. The thing about the horns? See Zech 1:18-21.

As always, when I read these passages about the Day of the Lord, I tremble, because I think it may indeed be imminent. I get really creeped out when something is weirdly specific. For example, I had just heard a story on NPR describing the effects of mustard gas--which are suspected to be in the hands of Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria, and which he is supposedly on the brink of deploying. The story said that mustard gas is a blistering agent. It is lethal because it gets in the lungs and destroys the delicate (and vital!) tissue. Zechariah 14:12 reads, "This is the plague with which the LORD will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On that day, men will be stricken by the LORD with great panic."

My two favorite passages in Zechariah are 4:6, "So he said to me, 'This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: "Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit," says the LORD Almighty.'"

And Zechariah 7:8-10: "And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah: 'This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'"

It is amazing to me how these passages about godly living repeat over and over throughout the Old Testament.

And, as it continues in Zechariah 7:11-12: "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. so the LORD Almighty was very angry."

It gets worse. And here again, O my people, take heed: "'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the LORD Almighty" (Zechariah 7:13).