ReDiscover God's word verse by verse chapter by chapter this is real Bible study with teacher Tom Bradford welcome to Torah class we leave chapter 1 and begin chapter 2 of Zechariah a most unique prophet and the way that he presents the oracles that God gave to him which operates mostly in a complex symbolism because it deals so very much with the future now when I say the future I mean future to Zechariah not necessarily to us followers of Yeshua worshippers of yahovah God of Israel have waited for a long long time for the future time frame of many of the these prophecies to finally arrive in fact I I think the wait has been so long that it is too easy to just keep on living and thinking that this future will always be even more future to us this is what happened to the Jewish people concerning the arrival of their Messiah by the time he finally did come only the most zealous were still even looking for him and by then many traditional Jewish views and doctrines had formed about what the Messiah would be what he would look like how he would behave and how he would reveal himself and I think it's fair to say that their expectations were very nearly 100% incorrect not because their holy scriptures were wrong but because they didn't take them literally enough and because it is much too easy to try to fit a prophetic happening into a mold that relig religious leadership has decided upon now I have concern that that same phenomenon is happening in our time concerning the end times an toal evidence suggests that a wide array of traditions and doctrines have developed within Christianity about the end times that are based more on fictional novels than on biblical evidence some Christian denominations don't believe there is such a thing as the end times others only seem to care about the end times but within their own particular set of thoughts about what it is and what when it's going to happen nearly all of these doctrines are based on one Bible book The Book of Revelation now in reality it is the Old Testament prophets particularly the so-called Minor Prophets that set the scene for the end times and the entry into a Thousand-Year period of the kingdom of God as the ruling force over our entire planet what is even more crucial for us to notice is those prophecies concerning what would happen and what did happen to ancient Israel and Judah that would set a fulfillment pattern that would be repeated in the end times that is if we pay attention we learn that the prophetic fulfillments are typically things that happen more than once the first time the event is near to the age in which the that Prophet lived and had a fairly limited scope of who and what would be affected the next time it happened that scope widened should it happen a third time typically it is predicted to be a global event with global effects the book of Zechariah is one of the most informative about the events surrounding the end of days now in Zechariah Chapter 2 the second Vision or Oracle of this series of vision oracles is presented and we cannot make the error of reading this or understanding it in a standalone manner it is connected to chapter 1 and in fact it adds more to the oracle presented in the 14th and 15th verses of chapter 1 here's what that was in Zechariah 1:14 through6 through 15 the angel speaking with me then said to me here is what yehovah zot says I am extremely jealous on behalf of jeruselam and Zeon and to the same degree I'm extremely angry with the Nations that are so self-satisfying because I was only a little angry at uh Jerusalem and Zion but they made the suffering worse now be aware that because I read nearly always to you from the complete Jewish Bible and because the complete Jewish Bible always substitutes the term Adonai in place of God's name I will be reinserting God's name yahovah because of the way Zechariah has structured and due to the prolific use of God's name in the original Hebrew I will be doing this from this point forward until our study of Zechariah is completed now God is the protector and the judge over Israel but yet the judge decided that Unfaithful Israel had to be punished for their sins as an act of basic Justice jce yet it is also to drive them back into repentance and submission and ultimately obedience but but obedience to what see the typical response to that question is oh obedience to God well that's true but how are we to know what God's rules that we are to be obedient to are how do we even know yovi says over and over our obedience is to be the terms of the Covenant meaning the Covenant of Moses so in driving his people back to him God would take the DraStic measure of driving Israel then Judah out of the land that he had set apart for them hundreds of years earlier but with a plan to eventually bring them back to do to this yov enticed two different Gentile Empires to attack and Conquer first Israel then later Judah it was the Assyrian Empire that overcame Israel but it was the Babylonian Empire of more than a century later that invaded and overtook Judah however in doing so these nations also inured his anger because after all God is the protector of his people Israel and Judah now ironically the Persians overcame the Babylonian Empire and took it away from them the Persian kings actually freed the Jewish people to go home reconstitute their lives their Temple and their worship practices so why would yov have a bone to pick with Persia the cause of God's increased anger and wrath concerning them had to do with what the Persian Empire did as regards Jerusalem and Zion they took those places away from God's people which is the same as taking them away from God we're told that God has especially great jealousy over Jerusalem and Zion he will react harshly against those who mess with Jerusalem and Zion because these are exclusively his and when Persia refused to give Jerusalem and Zion back their independent sovereignty well this provoked him to a new and greater level of Wrath now immediately within the first few words of chapter 2 we get symbolism that can be difficult to decipher the symbols are horns and let me remind you that even though all the words are there and they are the same depending on your Bible version chapter 1 ends at verse 17 or it continues through verse 21 so some Bibles will have those verses 18 through 21 as the final verses of chapter 1 while other versions will have those same verses as the first four verses of chapter 2 it makes no difference in substance or content but it can be confusing when discussing it the complete Jewish Bible ends at chap ends chapter 1 at verse 17 and that's what I'm referencing when I mentioned chapter in verse number now let me also point out that while using this chapter in verse numbering method makes this second Vision Oracle the other chapter makes this rather the second Vision Oracle the other chapter inversion method Begins the third Oracle about a man holding a measuring cord and what these first several verses of chapter 2 are speaking about is God's increased wrath over the Gentile Nations now these are nations that are part of the Persian Empire that yov holds responsible for what he sees as unjustly harsh treatment of his people what follows that explanation is a prophetic vision of how the kingdom of God will develop and evolve over time and then finally to its most fully developed developed moment at the entry in into the millennial period just prior to the recreation of the entire universe including planet Earth nonetheless this only continues the most challenging task of properly unwinding these prophecies so that we can grasp their meaning because the terminology used is from the fifth or 6th Century BC and so we must be careful not to try to view it through our modern Western lens well let's read the entire chapter 2 open your Bibles to Zechariah Chapter two then I looked up and saw four horns I asked the angel who was speaking to me what are these and he answered these are the horns that scattered Judah Israel and Jerusalem next adoni showed me four Artisans and I asked what are these coming to do and he said those horns that scattered Judah so completely that no one could even raise his head well these men have come to terrify them to overthrow the Nations that raised their horns against the land of Judah to scatter it I looked up and saw a man with a measuring line in his hand and I asked what are you doing and he said to me to measure Jerusalem to determine its width and length here the angel who was speaking to me went forward and another Angel went out met him and said to him run and tell this young man Jerusalem will be inhabited without walls because there will be so many people and animals for says Adonai I will before for her a wall of fire surrounding her and I will be the glory within her up says Adonai move flee the land of the north for I I scattered you like the Four Winds of the sky says Adonai move Zion you are living with the daughter of Babel Escape for Adan IA o has sent me on a glorious mission to the Nations that plundered you and this is what he says anyone who injures you injures the very pupil of my eye but I will shake my hand over them and they will be plundered by those who were formerly their slaves then you will know that Adonai sa o sent me sing Daughter of Zion Rejoice for here I am coming and I will live among you says Adonai when that time comes many nations will join themselves to Adonai they will be my people and I will live among you then you will know that it was adoni saot who sent me to you Adonai will take possession of Judah as his portion in the holy land and he will make Jerusalem his choice be silent all Humanity before Adonai for he has been roused from his holy dwelling so the first symbol presented is horns and the second symbol then the second symbol is presented Smiths now while these might be challenging for us to understand obviously these were common things to the people of that era they had no difficulty grasping their sense even if the exact meaning in this prophecy was not obvious the other key to helping we moderns to understand is to not try to look for a precise comparison between the vision object and exactly what it was meant to represent as an example if the if Vision object had been an automobile it would have been fairly easy for us to grasp the sense of it even though from a Precision aspect we know there's much variation among automobiles from their size to their shape to the number of passengers they can transport even to the Ty type of local motion use diesel engine gas engine electric motors so a car represents transportation of people in a very general and Broad sense and the details about it are unimportant rather what is it that these common things the horns and the Smiths are meant to represent within the context of how they're being used Zechariah asks the interpreting Angel exactly what these horns are meant to represent as opposed to asking what's a horn the angel responds that the horns represent the powers that scattered Judah Israel and Jerusalem now what this is to mean to us that is how is this to be interpreted has never been fully agreed upon by academics and that is mainly because first indeed the interpreters are trying to find a Precision match between the symbol and its meaning and second number two the method they tend to go about interpreting it seems mostly concerned with Hebrew grammar and word atmology this is certainly a needed discipline when studying the Bible however especially when it comes to study of the Old Testament prophets I have invariably found one needs always to look first to the political theological and cultural context of the people and governments in that prophets era as a comparison it is difficult to apply similar metaphors and expressions commonly used in the Civil War to literature and conversations of the 21st century and if one were to prophesy something in the Civil War era that would occur in the 21st century what kind of symbols could possibly be used to get the message across thus the best one can do in predicting the future is to use symbols that have meaning for the era in which the author wrote and the first readers read now the horns were a very well-known symbol in that ancient era for power power power usually that meant a government that projected military power however we also have to back away and see the role of the horns in the wide scope that is introduced to us within the first Vision Oracle and then winds its way through five more visions that deal with more narrowly focused nuances that all fit within that very Broad OD scope of the opening Vision which includes the seventh Vision further as I highlighted in Hagi now again in Zechariah at the center of it all is the temple because in general Christianity has a negative Viewpoint of a temple as a result of yeshua's Advent then most of the time the centrality of the temple to zechariah's Visions is just dismissed therefore the entire core of the purpose of these oracles is lost and something more fanciful has to be inserted in its place will not be doing that even if it injures some of our sensibilities Eric Meers makes this excellent Insight that I'd rather simply quote to you than to paraphrase he says all of the VIS s have as their ultimate concern the content of the central focal one the temple in Jerusalem as well as the high priesthood which is the subject of the prophetic visions that stand at the center of the series along with the fourth Vision what cannot by cannot be bypassed is that the core focus of all these oracles is the the temple and the priesthood and their Irreplaceable necessity in God's plan not just for Israel but eventually for all Humanity so the horns are symbolic of the great National powers that destroyed Israel scattering people to the wind and also who invaded Judah destroying the temple and much of Jerusalem sending the Jewish people as a group to Babylon and now Persia as lording over God's people and the place where God puts his name Jerusalem even Persia is doing so in a more enlightened and somewhat gentler policy of governance now one of the things that can throw interpreters off is that there were four horns maybe we can identify three of them as Earthly Powers but who's the fourth there doesn't seem to be a place within the context to understand the horns as anything but history past not involving some future power as Daniel's prophecy does on the other hand there was one more scattering of the Israelites that did occur that of the aftermath of the Roman Invasion and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of 70 AD so could this be the F the fourth horn perhaps yet another Viewpoint is that this is talking about the scattering of Israel and most historians wouldn't consider what Babylon did as a scattering and neither did Persia at least to any significant extent my take is ignore the number of horns as trying to match them with world powers instead see the number of them four as representing the entirety of the Earth that is the four Compass directions the number four is a most common symbolism to the people of that day if what I'm suggesting is the case then generally this Oracle is speaking about all the military powers that scattered Israel to places all over the known world and just as importantly that yov holds power over them just as they hold power over Israel now verse three introduces the second symbol of the second Vision Oracle different Bible versions choose to transl translate this in different ways the Hebrew word is Kash it is a general term for a variety of skilled people who can create things whether that be a a woodworker a carpenter a painter an artist maybe even a jewelry maker now several Bible Bible versions have chosen to use the the word Smiths with at least one version using the term blacksmith but when we read verse four one wonders how Artisans can do what is being suggested Zechariah 2:4 I asked what are these coming to do and these horns that scattered Judah so completely that no one could even raise his head well these men have come to terrify them to overthrow the Nations that raised their horns against the land of Judah to scatter it and as with the horns Zechariah asks the interpreting Angel what the purpose of these four skilled workers is the answer is they've come to terrify the horns but another way they have come to punish or to oppose their milit those military powers now before we pursue that a little further we have to there's something else we have to deal with this verse speaks exclusively about Judah the judeans and not at all about Israel frankly this is puzzling and if I were to try to give a reason why this has shifted to Judah only that is the former Judah it would be guessing Perhaps it is nothing more complicated than these prophecies are all about Judah returning from Babylon Judah being subject to Persia and with Israel meaning the northern kingdom of Ephraim Israel just a distant memory that is for Zechariah Judah and the judeans where his immediate context after all and me he was probably born up in Babylon nonetheless just as the horns were used by God to judge Israel in Judah Judah more recently so are the four Artisans being used by God to judge those four horns now Keel and delich confidently assert that these four Artisans symbolize the instruments of divine omnipotence by which the Imperial power in its several historical forms is overthrown maybe or maybe the horns represent little more than all the powers in history lumped together that have harmed God's people Israel and The Artisans are all the means lumped together that God has and will use to execute his Divine wrath upon these Powers I think I prefer the latter to the former or is Keel and delich also suggest as an option Perhaps it is simply designed to show to the people of God that every hostile power of the world which is risen up against it Judah or shall rise up is to be judged and destroyed by the Lord next a third Vision Oracle is presented starting with verse 5 so let's reread verse verses 5-9 open your Bibles back up to Zechariah 2 I'll start reading at verse 5 I looked up and saw a man with a measuring line in his hands and I asked where are you going and he said to me to measure yerusalem to determine its width and its length here the angel who was speaking to me went forward and another Angel went out met him and said to him run and tell this young man yerusalem will be inhabited without walls because there will be so many people and animals for says yov I will be for her a wall of fire surrounding her and I will be the glory within her I think it's fair to say that just as the second Vision Oracle was connected to chapter 1: 14- 15 so is this third one connected to chapter 1 verse 16 going back to 116 we read therefore yov says I will return to jeruselam with merciful Deeds my house will be rebuil rebuilt there says yov zot yes a measuring line will be stretched out over yusem now the first comment I want to make about this third Vision Oracle is that some commentators believe that this is talking about a Jerusalem that's located in heaven I won't go into the several reasons why some Advocate this point of view only to say that on its face it can't be so because there is no measuring of things in heaven and I realize that this is symbolic however on the other hand the spiritual realm has no dimensions of length width or height and while the universe we all liveing consists of three physical dimensions of length width and height along with the fourth dimension of time that's not so in heaven so this measurement is meant to indicate the physical Jerusalem of Earth now unlike the measuring line used in chapter 1 this is a measuring string or chord that is used like a like an ancient ruler two Hebrew words are used together to indicate this device habel and Mida now Zechariah sees a man as holding the measuring line indeed the Hebrew is Ish then it's a human male however this is not meant to mean anything more than that the symbolic entity has the appearance of a human being a human male what is interesting is that the man with a measuring cord carries another symbolism of itself which is important to understanding this Vision it is that he is the one he is one who measures the portion of judah's inheritance from God so this works in conjunction with the thought of inheritance found in chapter 216 in 216 we read yehovah will take possession of Judah as his portion in the holy land and he will again make Jerusalem his choice thus the man with the measuring line is in judah's allotted territory measuring Jerusalem as its sacred capital and yet the man with the measuring line isn't really the point of the vision so who is this man well we'd have to classify him as an angel in fact this is a new figure now added to the scene this cannot be the interpreting angel that speaks of Zechariah because he doesn't add new elements to the scene he only explains their meaning and purpose and because the angel of Y is called just that then this man is not him either there's there's nothing unusual about the idea of yet another Angel being given a role as the one with the job of measuring Jerusalem now verse six has Zechariah addressing this new Angel and asking where are you going and it's kind of fascinating how all these Vision oracles revolve essentially around conversations questions and responses therefore like a drama series on TV there's this growing cast of characters they make appearances from time to time and what we come to realize is that the man or Angel of the measuring cord are not the symbolic Focus but rather it's the reason for this task of measuring that has to be flushed out that gives us the true picture and when we pay attention to this dialogue we also realize that this man or Angel is on the Move he's going somewhere his destination being Jerusalem but he's not there yet and this measuring task is in anticipation of a full restoration of the city of Jerusalem along with its all important Temple this idea of measuring a city with a temple is also part of ezekiel's prophetic Visions that's what we read here in zear Ariah is connected to what Ezekiel sees taking a look at Ezekiel chapter 40 starting in verse one in the 25th year of our Exile at the beginning of the year on the 10th day of the month this was the 14th year after the city of Jerusalem was struck it was on that very day that the hand of yov was on me and he took me there in Visions God brought me into the land of Israel and put me down on a very high mountain on it towards the South it seemed that a city was being built that is where he took me and there in front of me was a man whose appearance was like bronze he had a flax cord and a measuring rod in his hand and he stood in the Gateway and the man said to me human being look with your eyes hear with your ears and pay attention to all the things I'm showing you because the the reason you were brought here is so that I could show them to you tell everything you see to the house of Israel there was a wall surrounding the house the man had in his hand a measuring Rod six cubits long each Cubit being a normal Cubit plus a hand breadth he measured the Wall's width at 10 and 1/2 ft and its height at 10 half ft and from there Ezekiel goes on with very detailed measurements of the restored Temple the city the territory of the tribes of Israel and more I'm going to keep hammering home this issue of the temple because it's so critical that God's restored Jerusalem and his kingdom in general and because the historic constantinian church that so many of us grew up in has generally found this Temple issue to be anywhere from incomprehensible to offensive to antha all because Paul called Believers temples remember in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 don't you know that you people are God's Temple then God's spirit lives in you so if anyone destroys God's Temple God will destroy him for God's Temple is Holy and you yourselves are that Temple thus Christianity Christianity is has essentially taken this to mean that Believers are the replacement temples for the Holy Temple in Jerusalem much in the same way that the Gentile body of Believers of the Nations is the replacement people for the Hebrew people of Israel so to even contemplate that God is demanding his Temple be rebuilt and to then find these excruciating details details of the millennial Temple laid out in the final eight chapters of Ezekiel with nearly all Christian and Jewish Scholars agreeing that this Temple is a far future Temple where Messiah will live it's a deep source of resentment even anger this has led to all sorts of imaginative spin to try to work out some way to make what the Bible clearly says about the temple work with Christian doctrines that virtually say the opposite ladies and gentlemen Paul is in no way saying that Christians ever replaced the Jerusalem Temple like with a few other things he says such as Believers being priests he is tending to mean like temples or like priests people of his era well understood that it's Gentile Believers outside of cult culture that have misconstrued this meaning and had stuck with it for centuries these statements of Paul are similes intended to bring across a message that the holy spirit of God now lives in us and this is because the belief was that the holy spirit of God lived in the temple although that's not exactly true either thus if we are vessels with the Holy Spirit in us we are like walking talking temples and so we need to treat these bodies as though they were holy and set apart for God just as is the temple in Jerusalem well now in verse 7 yet another new cast member is added when another Angel appears the interpreting Angel goes out to meet this new angel tells this new Angel too run and tell this young man Jerusalem will be inhabited without walls because there will be so many people and animals now for this Angel be told to run to tell this man with the measuring tool to go measure Jerusalem it is to add the sense of urgency and that because this message comes from God then it is the duty of the messenger to hurry up and deliver it however the complete Jewish Bible translation of this verse as does many English Bible translations it leaves out an important word for some reason that if included would give better depth to the passage the following literal translation although it's awkward sounding gives a fuller sense of it in Zechariah 2:4 and he saith unto them unto him run speak unto this young man saying unwalled Villages inhabit doth Jerusalem from the abundance of man and beast in her midst notice that the word Villages is missing in most English translations the Hebrew word that is skipped over is perah meaning towns or Villages and the word walls doesn't exactly even appear here in the ancient times a village or a town was defined as a sort of country Hamlet that inherently did not have walls if it did have defensive walls a large and expensive project then its status was upgraded to a city so saying a village Without Walls is like saying a house without a door Villages automatically don't have walls houses automatically must have doors so there's no point adding to those additional words the idea being presented then is this at a future time Jerusalem will look more like a large open area of country Villages as opposed to a large city enclosed by formidable defensive walls this means that Jerusalem is going to be much more extensive in size than ever before and will have no need for walls because God will be their protection this extended size also means more people and more livestock will be present now clearly this is an in times Jerusalem when all opposition to God's kingdom is defeated and all risk of attack is gone Safety and Security are no longer an issue at the time of Zechariah and Ezekiel as it would be for several hundred more years a walled City in the surrounding Villages were a necessary Civic unit the city is where the villagers would come to buy and sell at the marketplace and when an invasion of some kind was imminent the vill ERS would run to the city to be protected inside of its walls now because the city was bounded by walls that it can only accommodate a finite and limited number of homes thus Villages surrounding it were necessary to provide sufficient shelter for the population now verse 9 explains how the forgoing of no longer needing walls is possible an explanation that people in zechariah's Era would certainly need to hear so in Zechariah 2:9 four says Adonai or actually Four says yov I will be for her a wall surround of fire surrounding her and I will be the glory within her now I spoke and left the term ad andai in here because virtually all English versions use the term the Lord even though God's name yehovah is once again present so it is the father that is making this promise and statement about personally being the equivalent to a wall of fire and as with Paul likening Believers to Temples so here God is not going to be literal fire no one could pass through a fire and live so this is an expression speaking of 100% protection the end of this verse brings us to another occasion of something I've spoken about before when God says that he will be the glory within her meaning within Jerusalem this does not mean glory in the sense of Splendor the glory needs to be capitalized because it is the name of one of God's several revealed manifestations God in the form of the glory will inhabit Jerusalem or as I think we'll learn at a later point the glory that inhabits the temple that is inside of Jerusalem as the object that makes Jerusalem unique from all other places what this means is that instead of of um only the temple being the holy place of God on Earth the entire city of Jerusalem with its large surroundings of many villages that will be God's Earthly domain now I want to end today's lesson with this thought while the typical mode of Prophecy is to provide a prediction that will be fulfilled in step beginning from a limited scope and then happening against again at a broader scope then perhaps even again at its final Universal scope we are finding zechariah's Vision oracles do the opposite in his vision oracles the first fulfillment is presented is the widest Universal scope then Zechariah takes us in steps to a small smaller and smaller scopes of the effects of the prophecies this third Vision has now brought the reduction of scope down to only the city of Jerusalem and its outlying Villages what will happen next in that progression is that the scope will be further reduced down to only the temple and as we have discussed thoroughly it is the temple that is the ultimate focus of zechariah's prophecies so beginning in verse 10 is an expansion on the first three Vision oracles and that's what we'll open up with next time okay for more teachings of real Bible study and to ReDiscover God's word with Tom Bradford visit Torah class today on the web streaming TV or download the Torah class mobile app