The Day of the Lord.

The LORD Comes and Reigns- Part 1

This study now arrives at its concluding chapter:  Zechariah 14.  Fully comprehending the structure and the eschatological implications of this incredibly difficult chapter is a daunting exercise.  The unvarnished message here is this:

• Verse 1-2 The final siege of Jerusalem
• Verse 3-5 God turns and fights to rescue His people.
• Verses 6-9 The New Heavens and New Earth -- the Eternal State
• Verses 10-11 The Destiny of God's People
• Verses 12-15 The Judgment of God
• Verses 16-19 All Nations Worshiping God
• Verses 20-21 Everlasting Worship in Holiness

To swim through this critically important chapter and understand it in its context and its message for us today, we need to swim slowly.  It will be against the current!  Although there are clear eschatological implications for future prophecy, we will be cautious about trying not to formulate an exact timetable. The passage will simply not allow that.  I think it goes without saying that the goal of all history is to establish the reign of Christ on earth. What seems apparent at the outset of this chapter is that the author is taking us back, in some sort of recapitulation strategy [1] to Chapter 13:8-9 where Jerusalem is an object of God's refining.  The point is that the reader should not read Zechariah 14 in a chronological, sequence of events.  The author does return to important themes, picks them up and then advances them.  

So to open our discussion, we will start with the opening phrase:  "A day of the LORD is coming, Jerusalem . . .." [2]  Daniel 9:24-27 appears to be a parallel prophecy. So we are talking about a time of the infamous Seventy Weeks of Daniel.  Although this chapter is fiercely debated it seems that a better view is to see a progression of this symbolic language from a time when Cyrus decreed the rebuilding of the Temple (6th Century B.C.) through to the coming of Christ and His death; the destruction of the Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and onward to the Second Advent of our Lord.  

"The events described in vv. 1–2 correspond to Joel 2:1–11. Jeremiah calls this period “the time of Jacob’s distress” (Jer 30:7), whereas Daniel calls it “a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation” (Dan 12:1). Each of these passages describes a period of great suffering for the nation of Israel." [3]    

McComiskey points out that the plundering of Jerusalem by all nations should not be taken too literally. "It is enough to know that Jerusalem's enemies will be numerous." [4]  Based on this more liberal reading, I would suggest that this onslaught on Jerusalem is ultimately the compilation of the siege of the city by Babylon that took a half of its population captive (Isaiah 13);  and those events relating to the desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 B.C.  And all this grotesquely culminating in the Roman invasion of A.D. 70.   It appears to me to be a panorama of all these events that decimate Jerusalem.

Thus we read: “A day of the Lord is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city.” (Zechariah 14:1–2, NIV).

Father the slaughter and the aggression that this prophecy portrays is appalling. Your severity and judgment is real and it is awful.  Words cannot describe how terrible it is. So many people don't understand the reality of Your wrath and the eternality of its horror. But You are not a God of only wrath.  You are a God of mercy and hope.  Even in this bone-chilling passage we read, "but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city."  You will always, always and always keep a remnant safe. There is a holy Seed that will never ever perish.  So within the backdrop of this horror there is hope.  There is hope for all of us who have placed our trust in You.   Encourage the weak, today Father.  Lift up the fallen.  Convince the unrepentant, I pray.   Amen!

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1. Big ideas within a biblical apocalypse often come in a series of waves. Apocalyptic literature often reveals a recapitulation of themes. Knowing this ahead of time will help us in our reading of this genre.
2. The New International Version. 2011 (Zec 14:1). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 
3. Barry, J. D., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Mangum, D., & Whitehead, M. M. (2012). Faithlife Study Bible (Zec 14:1–2). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
4. Zechariah, Thomas Edward McComiskey, The Minor Prophets, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Mich., USA, 1998, Page 1227