NOTES for Zec 2:10

What makes the people of God the people of God? Special qualities? Hardly: in this respect the Jewish people are like all the others. Of course, it has its own national face, always and everywhere easily recognizable; but what people does not? Then perhaps a special destiny? In a certain sense, yes: not every people can boast of such sharp turns in its history.

But this is still a human matter: history can produce all kinds of twists when four millennia are involved. But the presence of God among His people is God's matter; it does not depend on people or on history. Although, of course, this independence is relative, for preserving and safeguarding God's presence is precisely the human task laid upon the people of God, who were called to bear witness to God abiding among them. But then it is also true that the people of God remains such only as long as there is a place for God among it.

It is no accident that both the Torah and the prophets speak not of the people's owning the land God gave them, but rather of using it, and this use is limited by the conditions of the union-covenant concluded with God. If the union is broken, a situation may well arise in which the people lose both their land and the Temple. But this can become possible only in one case: if God leaves, if He abandons the land, the city, and the Temple that He once blessed and sanctified by His presence.

After that, the destruction of the city and the Temple and the desolation of the land become only the outward expression of this new spiritual state, a kind of anti-witness, proof that at least at this historical stage the people did not cope with their spiritual task. But the return of the people to the land of their fathers and the restoration of the city and the Temple mean precisely that, after repentance and a new turning, the people are again ready for the mission God has laid upon them. And therefore a new stage begins in their historical destiny, a stage leading them straight to the threshold of the New Covenant.