NOTES for Zec 2:10

"Let all flesh be silent before the Lord"... On the whole, comment is unnecessary. We can and should speak about God. Preaching is a wonderful thing. We can and should speak with Him. Verbal prayer is beautiful and important. But sometimes we must stop and fall silent, simply remaining wordlessly in His presence...

Continuing his account of the visions shown to him by the Angel of the Lord, the prophet Zechariah again announces Jerusalem's coming flourishing. As for the prophet Ezekiel, the image of a measuring line measuring the city is central for Zechariah. The measurement emphasises that Jerusalem's restoration will not be accomplished merely by human effort but will fulfil God's design. The Lord Himself determines the measure of the city and the Temple, and He Himself will be a wall of fire around it, protecting the city from its enemy. It is highly likely that these words of the Lord answer the view of many who had returned to Jerusalem: that they must first build the city's fortifications and restore its military and economic strength, and only then restore the Lord's Temple. The prophet will later supplement the Lord's words that He Himself will be Jerusalem's wall of fire with the words addressed to Zerubbabel about the source of the chosen people's victory (Zec 4:6).

In the second half of chapter 2, Zechariah calls all Zion's exiles to return. The Lord, who regards His people as a great treasure, the apple of His eye, bears witness to His love for them by delivering them. For the prophet, this manifestation of God's glory in the return from captivity is the action of God Himself, the manifestation of His presence among people. ‘Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Zion! For behold, I will come and dwell in your midst.’ Yet these words cannot refer only to the restoration of the Temple and the renewal of God's presence there. The coming of many nations to God, and even the very expression ‘on that day’, recall all the prophecies about the Day of the Lord, when, through the Messiah's coming, all nations will know the Lord. Thus, consciously or not entirely consciously, the prophet speaks here of the Messiah's coming as a source of joy and salvation for the whole world; this prophecy is fulfilled in the Church of the New Testament.

Yet the rejoicing to which liberated Jerusalem is called, rejoicing in the coming of God the Saviour, cannot but be filled with reverence. So Zechariah ends chapter 2 with one of his most famous sayings: ‘Let all human flesh keep silence before the face of the Lord! For He rises from His holy dwelling.’ Sung on Holy Saturday, the day when the Crucified Messiah rests in the tomb, these words speak of the mysterious greatness of God's saving action, the unfathomable manifestation of His love for people: the love for whose sake He rises from His holy dwelling and descends into the depths of the earth to lead out of hell those for whom He died.

For the prophet Zechariah, spiritual cleansing, deliverance from sin, is central to God's saving action. At the beginning of chapter 3 he describes a vision in which Joshua the high priest, clothed in stained garments, is brought before the Lord's face. The stained garments here symbolise the people's sins, laid upon the high priest. By stripping them from him, the Angel of the Lord bears witness that God Himself has cleansed His people. After this cleansing, the high priest receives symbolic access to the Lord's presence, to remain before Him. It matters that the prophet Zechariah connects cleansing with one person upon whom everyone's sins are laid and in whom their cleansing takes place.

From the actual high priest, Zechariah's contemporary, the prophet's gaze turns to the future, and he conveys God's words that the Lord is bringing His Servant, the Branch, so that, like Joshua the high priest, He may blot out everyone's sins. Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all call Christ by this word, ‘Branch’; here the prophet Zechariah continues an ancient prophetic tradition. So this is what the prophet calls people to rejoice in at the end of the preceding chapter; this is what leaves him silent in reverent awe. God's Servant, the Branch from David's root, will blot out the sin of this land, and will do so in one great Day. Like Second Isaiah, Zechariah speaks of the essence of redemption, in which the Creator's love will be revealed to the world.

Here the prophecy calls Zion not the mountain on which Jerusalem stands, but its inhabitants who are far away from it. If so, does this not imply that it speaks not only of the particular city of Jerusalem, and not even only of those inhabitants of Judea who remain faithful to the Lord during the Babylonian exile, but of all who belong to the people of God, wherever they may be? For the faithful, the Lord will become an unbreakable wall in every place. Here we remember the Heavenly Jerusalem spoken of in John’s Revelation, the city that many of the saved will enter from every corner of the earth.

The cleansing of the priest’s garments means that the cleansing of the whole people and their return to God begins with the cleansing of the priests and their return to the path of unstained ministry. But the return only begins there, for not only priests but all of us are called, each in our own way, to serve the Lord and fulfill His will.