Humanity is its own worst enemy. The separations among nations and their need to establish themselves over one another in attempts to rule the land, cause misery. If humanity would ever prosper, human power and division would have to be eliminated. The Lord planned to initiate just such a state of affairs in the eschaton. …
Category: Adults
Focus on Torah, not on the temple: Zechariah 7-8
As the temple was being rebuilt, the people forgot what was most important: living according to Torah. They thought the work was done when the temple was complete. The Lord, therefore, needed to remind them that the destruction and rebuilding of the temple were distractions; the Torah is the correct frame of reference. The temple…
Faithfulness requires the evils of captivity: Zechariah 5-6
These chapters established the moral character of the eschatological land. In ch. 5, the Lord judged every nook and cranny of the land and then removed the unfaithfulness of the people from the land to Shinar, Babylon. In ch. 6, the Lord commanded his spirit to rest in Babylon. His spirit animated the un-people of…
The new leadership for the eschaton: Zechariah 3-4
A new style of rule will dominate the new eschaton. The eschaton showed the priest, in his separation from the temple, to be unclean and the king to be impotent. Essentially, they cannot function. At the same time, the exile offered a unique teaching of humility towards the Lord, qualifying them for rule. The Lord…
An uncreated city for all nations: Zechariah 2
As human beings attempt to achieve, they build up themselves at the expense of others. They build cities full of corruption to protect themselves by their own power. They take land from others, imagining it to be their own. They strike at their enemies to establish their glory. The Lord can only end this cycle…
The Lord’s plan for the nations: Zecharaiah 1
Everything is tranquil in Zechariah 1, the calm before the storm. The people knew that the Lord would overthrow the nations, but were disappointed in a lack of action. Zechariah received visions, explained to him by a heavenly being, that illuminated him with the overarching scheme of history. In this chapter, the prophet learned that…
The Lord intervenes to sanctify his people: Haggai 1-2
In the eschaton, or, the last times, the Lord will gather his people, as we read in Zephaniah, and he will rebuild his temple, as we read in Haggai. Even though the humble gathered as a people, they could not make themselves holy. The Lord instituted the temple as the means for the people’s sanctification. …
The sign of the Lord’s humble people: Zephanaiah 3
Zephaniah begins the end of the Book of the XII, so the eschatological themes in Zephaniah take on greater importance. Up to this point in the Minor Prophets, we saw a cycle of destruction. Then, in the last book, Habakkuk questioned why the Lord would allow such a cycle. The Lord answered him there briefly,…
The Lord selects his people, the humble: Zephaniah 2
The Lord’s people will triumph—but who are the Lord’s people? They are those who accept the Lord’s mercy in humility. As opposed to those in 1:12-13 who believe that the Lord can neither do good nor evil, these humble ones understand that their survival proves the Lord’s mercy. They are “martyrs” or witnesses that the…
How do the people reject the Lord?: Zephaniah 1
Zephaniah, like the other prophets among the 12, asserts the Lord as the entire system of the universe. He is, as I always tell our class, the bad and the good, the storm and the shelter from the storm (from Nahum 1). The first chapter of this book presents Zephaniah as a brash insider, a…