Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 14

Behold the Day of the Lord cometh - Literally, “a day comes, the Lord’s,” in which He Himself will be Judge, and no longer leave humanity to fulfill its own will and despise God’s; in which His glory and holiness and the righteousness of all His ways will be revealed.

And thy spoil shall be in the midst of thee - Jerome: “How great will the distress be, that the spoils should be divided in her midst. It often happens that what is plundered in the city by a sudden assault is divided in the field or in a solitary place, for fear that the enemy might attack them. But now there will be such a heavy weight of calamities, and so great will be the conquerors' assurance, that the spoils will be divided in the midst of the city.”

I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle – This is a feature that belongs to the end. It had been elaborated on by Joel (Joel 3:2–9, Joel 3:11); Ezekiel spoke of the “many nations” (Ezekiel 38:6, Ezekiel 38:15, Ezekiel 38:22) that should come under Gog.

John foretells a universal strife at the end, when “The spirits of devils, working miracles, go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” (Revelation 16:14); and “Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints round about, and the beloved city” (Revelation 20:7–9).

Since no creature can do anything except what God wills, and, in his frenzy against God’s people, is only His instrument—“to try them and to purge and to make white to the time of the end” (Daniel 11:35; Daniel 12:10)—and since God continuously supplies in the order of nature the strength of body or intellect that is abused against His law, God may be said to do what Satan does against Him. Satan, in his blind fury, crowns martyrs, fills the thrones of heaven, and works, against his will, the all-wise will of God.

And the houses rifled, and the women ... – The horrors of pagan war repeat themselves through people’s ever-recurring passions. What was foretold concerning Babylon is repeated in the same words concerning the Church of God. Seemingly, “all things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner” (Ecclesiastes 9:2). The outward event is the same; the hidden part is known to God alone.

“And the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.” This is unlike the fate of the earthly Jerusalem in its destruction both by Nebuchadnezzar (which was past) and by the Romans (see the commentary on Micah 3:12, pages 46-50).

Initially, “Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, carried away the rest of the people left in the city, and the fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of the multitude” (2 Kings 25:11), so that Jeremiah mourned over it: “Because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate, foxes walk” (habitually) “upon it” (Lamentations 5:18). The Romans (as noted on pages 46-47 of this commentary) “effaced the city.” Now “a remnant is not cut off,” because “for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:22); for our Lord had said that “the gates of hell should not prevail against” His Church (Matthew 16:18).

The Lord shall go forth and shall fight - Jerome: “This is to be understood like that in Habakkuk, ‘You went forth for the salvation of Your people, for salvation with Your Anointed’ (Habakkuk 3:13), and in Micah, ‘For behold, the Lord comes forth out of His place, and will come down and will tread upon the high places of the earth, and the mountains shall be melted under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft’ (Micah 1:3–4); and Isaiah also, ‘The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man; He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war; He shall cry; He shall prevail over His enemies’ (Isaiah 42:13).

“God is said to ‘go forth’ when by some wondrous deed He declares His Presence. His Deity is, as it were, held in reserve, as long as He restrains Himself and does not by any sign show His power. But He ‘goes forth,’ and bursts forth, when He exercises some judgment and works some new work which strikes terror.”

God then will “go forth out of His place” when He is compelled to break through His quietness, gentleness, and clemency for the correction of sinners. He who elsewhere speaks through the prophet, ‘I, the Lord, change not’ (Malachi 3:6), and to whom it is said, ‘Thou art the same’ (Psalms 102:28), and in the Epistle of James, ‘With whom is no change’ (James 1:17), now ‘goes forth’ and ‘fights as in the day of battle,’ when He overwhelmed Pharaoh in the Red Sea and ‘fought for Israel.’”

“The Lord shall fight for you” became the watchword of Moses (Exodus 14:14; Deuteronomy 1:30; Deuteronomy 13:22; Deuteronomy 20:4); of the warrior Joshua in his old age (Joshua 23:10; compare Joshua 10:14, Joshua 10:42; Joshua 23:3), after his life’s experience (Joshua 10:14, Joshua 10:42; Joshua 23:3); and of Nehemiah. “Be not afraid by reason of this great multitude” (Nehemiah 4:20), said Jahaziel, son of Zachariah, when the “Spirit of the Lord came upon” him; “for the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chronicles 20:15).

As He fought in the day of battle - Osorius: “All wars are so arranged by the power of God, that every victory is to be attributed to His counsel and will. But this is not seen so clearly when people, elated and confident, try to claim for themselves all or the greater part of the glory of war. Then the war may be preeminently said to be the Lord’s, when no one drew sword, as it is written, “The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:14). Of all God’s wars, in which human insolence could claim no part of the glory, none was more wondrous than that in which Pharaoh and his army were sunk in the deep. “The Lord,” said Moses (Exodus 15:3), “is a man of war: the Lord is His Name.” That day of battle was the image of one much greater.

In the former, Pharaoh’s army was sunk in the deep; in the latter, the power of evil, in Hell; in the former, what could in some measure be conquered by human strength was subdued; in the latter, an unconquerable tyranny; in the former, a short-lived liberty was established; the liberty brought by Christ through subdual of the enemy is eternal. As, then, the image yields to the truth, earthly goods to heavenly, perishable things to eternal, so the glory of that ancient victory sinks to nothing compared to the greatness of the latter.”

And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives – “Opposite Jerusalem to the east, where rises the Sun of Righteousness.” The Mount of Olives is the central eminence of a line of hills, a little more than a mile in length, overhanging the city, from which it is separated only by the narrow bed of the valley of the brook Cedron.

It rises 187 feet above Mount Zion, 295 feet above Mount Moriah, and 443 feet above Gethsemane. It lies between the city and the wilderness toward the Dead Sea; around its northern side, the road to Bethany and the Jordan wound.

There, David probably worshiped (2 Samuel 15:32); his son, in his decay, profaned it (1 Kings 11:7); Josiah desecrated his desecrations (2 Kings 23:13). There, upon the mountain, which is on the east side of the city, the glory of the Lord stood, when it had gone up from the midst of the city (Ezekiel 11:23). The Mount of Olives united the greatest glory of the Lord on earth, His Ascension, with His deepest sorrow, in Gethsemane.

Since the angel said, This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven (Acts 1:11), the old traditional opinion is not improbable: that our Lord will come again to judge the earth where He left the earth, near the place of His agony and crucifixion for us.

So will the Feet of God literally stand upon the Mount of Olives. Elsewhere it may be that “the Feet of the uncircumscribed and simple God are to be understood not materially, but that the loving and fixed assistance of His power is expressed by that name” (Dionysius).

Which of these is true, or whether, according to an old opinion, the last act of antichrist will be an attempt to imitate the Ascension of Christ (as the first antichrist, Simon Magus, was said to have met his death in some attempt to fly) and be destroyed by His Coming there, the event must show.

And the Mount of Olives shall cleave – (be cleft) in (from) the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west – that is, the cleft will be east and west – so as to form a very great valley through it, from Jerusalem toward the Jordan eastward; and this will be, in that half of the mountain shall remove northward, and half thereof southward.

If this is literal, it is to form an actual way of escape from Jerusalem. If figurative, it symbolizes how that which would be the greatest hindrance to escape—the mountain which was higher than the city, blocking, as it were, the way—would itself afford the way of escape.

This is as Zechariah speaks, O great mountain, before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain (Zechariah 4:7); and Isaiah, Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain (Isaiah 40:4). That is, every obstacle will be removed.

And you shall flee to the valley of the mountains - Rather, along the valley of My mountains, namely, of those mountains which God had just formed by dividing the Mount of Olives. For the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal (that is, Azel), the same word which enters into Beth-Azel of Micah, where the allusion probably is to its firm-rootedness. It is more probable that the name of a place should have been chosen with an allusive meaning, as in Micah, than that an unusual appellative should have been chosen to express a very common meaning. Cyril had heard of it as the name of a village at the extremity of the mountain.

Elsewhere it might very probably have been destroyed in the destructive Roman wars: The Roman camp in the last siege must have been very near it. The destruction of villages, after the frantic revolt under Bar-Kochba, was enormous.

Yes, you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake - An earthquake in the time of Uzziah, whose memory survived the captivity to the time of Zechariah (nearly two centuries), must have been very terrible, but no historical account remains of it. Josephus apparently described the past earthquake in the language Zechariah uses of the future (see the introduction to Amos). Such an earthquake is a more remarkable visitation in Jerusalem because it was out of the line of earthquakes. These were to the north and east of Palestine; within it, they were almost unknown (see Amos 4:11, vol. i. p. 286). Interpositions of God, even in human favor, are full of awe and terror. They are tokens of the presence of the All-Holy among the unholy.

Fear was an accompaniment of special miracles in the Gospel, not only among the poor Gadarenes (Mark 5:15; Luke 8:25) or the people, but even the Apostles; this is apart from the effect of the sight of angels on us who are in the flesh. It is, then, quite compatible that the valley so formed should be the means of deliverance and yet an occasion of terror to those delivered through it. The escape of the Christians in Jerusalem to Pella, during the break of the siege, after the withdrawal of Cestius Gallus, was a slight image of this deliverance.

And the Lord thy God shall come, and all the saints with Thee, O God - The prophet, having spoken of God as “my God,” turns suddenly to speak to Him, as present. Jerome on Zechariah 14:6-7: “This is manifestly said of the second Coming of the Savior, of which John too in his Apocalypse says, Behold, He shall come with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him (Revelation 1:7). And the Lord Himself in the Gospel declares that the Son of Man shall come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (Matthew 24:30).

“He shall come with the clouds, that is, with the angels, who are ministering spirits and are sent for different offices, and with the prophets and apostles.” Ribera: “Whenever Scripture says that the saints and angels come with Christ, it is always speaking of His second Coming, as in that, When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all His holy angels with Him (Matthew 25:31), and in the Epistle of Jude, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment (Jude 1:14–15).”