Reading: Zechariah 5-8, Psalm 61
So you are walking through Jerusalem minding your own business, when you see a humongous scroll fly into a house and somehow eat it up. Then, satisfied with itself, it flies across town seeking out another house to consume. Zechariah appears to have had some pretty serious nightmares.
As odd a vision as it is, I think the appearance of the flying scroll is actually one of the simpler visions in the book of Zechariah. The scroll pretty clearly signifies the Hebrew Scriptures, probably the books of Moses in particular, and that it is flying around destroying evildoers tallies with the role of the Mosaic law in their culture, as well as the theological understanding of what the law was supposed to do. In Zechariah’s day, Israel is an bare remnant of a people, struggling for survival in a world dominated by huge empires. Adherence to the books of Moses is the one thing that makes them who they are.
Next we get a woman in a basket, who has the unfortunate named “Wickedness,” who is carried by stork-winged ladies odd to Babylon, where she is set up on a pillar and worshiped as an idol. Super weird. But not that strange when you consider what Zechariah is trying to communicate. Well, okay, maybe it is still super strange, but whatever. With the scroll that eats up houses of evildoers and the exile of wickedness to the land of Babylon, Zechariah is making a point about holiness. Recall that the people of Israel were to separate the common from the holy. He begins his book with a call to not be like their ancestors, who failed to do so. Zechariah is both predicting and pleading for the separation of wickedness from the people of Israel. When they do not do it themselves, God does it for them, through judgment and exile. It is a picture of the outcomes of the human problem.
Next there is a another scene with the horsemen, but instead of doing reconnaissance, this time they are riding out in judgment and delivering a message of destruction. The message about the consequences of wickedness spreads beyond Jerusalem out to the whole world. Judgment will come first to God’s chosen people, but it will not stop there.
Zechariah’s visions are all about holiness. About following the laws that the people of Israel claimed defined them. It was only the books of Moses that kept them together, but if they do not follow their own book, what are they? As Haggai challenged the assumption that merely having the book and the bloodline from Abraham was enough, so Zechariah continues. It is not enough to be God’s chosen people, they must actively engage in living differently that the peoples around them if they are to be what they are supposed to be.
The visions close and we get a fun scene about crowning the high priest. This is a bit of theater, because there was no rebellion against the ruler Persians at the time, and everyone knew that the office of king, were it to be reestablished, belonged to Zerubbabel. This is not a usurping of David’s line, but a symbol of the unification of the priesthood with the kingship. The gold and silver which comes from Babylon is used to make the crown. It is set on the head of Joshua the High Priest, he is declared to be the Branch of David- the character from the book of Isaiah. And then the scene ends. Nothing further. Talk about anticlimax.
The people apparently agree. Since nothing is happening, they begin to question whether they should follow the laws of Moses after all. Should we continue to fast, continue to hold the festivals, continue to follow the Mosaic law? Zechariah has nothing good to say about this question. Who was your fasting for? He blasts the people asking these questions for their intentions. If they are following the books of Moses just to get something out of them, then they may as well not keep any of it. They are supposed to follow the books because they want to be in the presence of God, to return to Eden, to restore the image of God in humanity. These deeper motivations have given way to selfishness. Zechariah turns to how they treat one another as evidence of their weak commitment. If they want to follow the laws of the God of Israel, they must treat one another fairly, give justice to all, hold the festivals and feasts for their intended purpose, and set aside their ambition. Then God will do what he purposes to do in their generation, and the whole world would come to Jerusalem to learn from them. If they will not do it, God will still accomplish his purpose, but through judgment and purification again and again until there is an obedient one who is everything that he is supposed to be.