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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
1:1-8:23 Oracles and Visions. The lengthy vision sequence (1:7-6:15) dominates the first half of the book. It is punctuated by an oracle of restoration (2:6-13) after the third vision and concluded by the identification of the high priest Joshua as the pivotal agent of renewal (6:9-15). In the company of the angelic guide, the prophet (and the reader) encounters several tightly interwoven elements: the supernatural agents of God's will, natural powers as tools of the divine plan, the identification and equipping of the community's divinely appointed leaders, and the consistent plea for God's people to repent and cooperate with God's saving actions. In short, God is moving, and the whole of creation is affected. This awareness of heavenly realities now reflected in human affairs was to become the hallmark of later apocalyptic literature. Chapter 7 attends to the ethical state of the community. The trauma and triumph of Zion's restoration frame the whole (1:1-6; 8:1-23), as it also does in the second half of the book (cf. 9:9-13; 14:16-21).
1:1-6 Introduction: Return to Me and I Will Return to You. After the exile, God invites his people to renew their commitment to him.
1:1 The second year of Darius is , a time when stability was returning to the Persian Empire after a period of internal unrest. Interest in the old prophecies was stirred by the rebuilding work beginning on the temple under the preaching of Haggai, who had begun his ministry . Zechariah's name means "Yahweh remembered."
1:2-3 The Lord was very angry with their fathers (v. 2), the generations whose sins caused the exile. Yet that need not be the Lord's attitude to this generation: if they would return to the Lord, then he would return to them in favor and blessing (v. 3).
1:6 Their forefathers ignored the words of the Lord's prophets and paid the price of God's judgment. Even the prophets themselves died. Yet the Lord's words and statutes that he spoke through the prophets were effective in bringing their threatened judgment. Now they also bore fruit in the response of the new generation, who repented (lit., "returned") and confessed the justice of the Lord's judgments. This is the foundation for the following visions, which speak of the Lord's returning to his people.
