Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 8

Dionysius: “After the Lord had, in the preceding chapter, rebuked the Jewish people in many ways, He now comforts them with renewed promises, like a good physician who, after a bitter medicine, uses sweet and soothing remedies; just as that most loving Samaritan poured in wine and oil.”

The chapter is divided into two portions, each marked by the words The Word of the Lord of hosts came or came to me. The first portion (Zechariah 8:1–17) declares the reversal of the former judgments and the complete, though conditional, restoration of God’s favor. The second portion (Zechariah 8:18–23) contains the answer to the original question regarding those fasts, in the declaration of the joy and the spread of the Gospel.

The first main portion, again, has a sevenfold subordinate division, and the second has a threefold one, each marked by the opening phrase, Thus says the Lord of hosts.

Thus saith the Lord of hosts - Jerome: “At each word and sentence in which good things, for their greatness, almost incredible are promised, the prophet prefaces it with, ‘Thus saith the Lord of hosts,’ as if he would say, ‘Do not think that what I pledge to you is my own, and do not refuse me belief as a man. What I unfold are the promises of God.’”

I was jealous - Literally, “I have been and am jealous for.” He repeats in words slightly varied, but in the same rhythm, the declaration of its tender love with which He opened the series of visions, thereby assuring beforehand that this was, like that, an answer of peace.

The form of words shows that this was a jealousy for, not with her; yet it was one and the same strong, even infinite love, by which God, as He says, “clave unto their fathers to love them and chose their seed after them out of all nations” (Deuteronomy 10:15). His jealousy of their sins was part of that love, by which, (Dionysius), “without disturbance of passion or of tranquillity, He inflicted rigorous punishment, as a man fearfully reproves a wife who sins.” They are two different forms of love according to two needs.

Rup.: “The jealousy (Zelus) of God is good, to love people and hate the sins of people. Conversely, the jealousy of the devil is evil, to hate people and love the sins of people.”

Osorius: “Since God’s anger had its origin in the vehemence of His love (for this sort of jealousy arises from the greatness of love), there was hope that the anger might readily be appeased toward her.”

I am returned - Dionysius states: “Without change in Myself, I am turned to that people from the effect of justice to the sweetness of mercy, and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, in the temple and the people, indwelling the hearts of the good by charity and grace. Christ also, Very God and Very Man, visibly conversed and was seen in Zion.” Osorius adds: “When He says, ‘I am turned,’ He shows that she was turned too. He had said, Turn to Me and I will turn to you; otherwise she would not have been received into favor by Him. As the fruit of this conversion, He promises her His presence, the ornaments of truth, the hope of security, and adorns her with glorious titles.”

God had symbolized to Ezekiel the departure of His special presence, in that the glory of the God of Israel which was over the temple, at the very place where they placed the image of jealousy, went up from the Cherub (Ezekiel 8:4–5), after which it was to the threshold of the house (Ezekiel 9:3); then stood over the Cherubim (Ezekiel 10:4, 18); and then went up from the midst of the city and stood upon the mountain, which is on the east side of the city (Ezekiel 11:23), so removing from them.

He had prophesied its return in the vision of the symbolic temple, how the glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate looking toward the East, and the Spirit took me up and brought me into the inner court, and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house (Ezekiel 43:4). This renewed dwelling in the midst of them, Zechariah too prophesies, in the same terms as in his third vision , I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem (Zechariah 2:10; which is Zechariah 2:14 in the Hebrew text).

And Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth - being what she is called, since God would not call her falsely. So Isaiah says, afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city (Isaiah 1:26), and they shall call you the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. So Zephaniah had prophesied, The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies (Zephaniah 3:13).

Truth embraces everything opposite to falsehood: faithfulness, as opposed to faithlessness; sincerity, as opposed to pretense; veracity, as opposed to falsehood; honesty, as opposed to dishonesty in action; truth of religion or faith, as opposed to false doctrine. Dionysius states: “It shall be called the city of truth, that is, of the True God or of truth of life, doctrine, and justice.”

It is chiefly verified by the Coming of Christ, who often preached in Jerusalem, in whom the city afterward believed.

And the mountain of the Lord of hosts - Mount Zion, on which the temple shall be built, shall be called and be the mountain of holiness. This had been the favorite title of the Psalmists and Isaiah (Isaiah 11:9; Isaiah 56:7; Isaiah 57:13; Isaiah 65:11, 25; Isaiah 66:20; Joel 3:17; Obadiah 1:16; Zephaniah 3:11; Daniel 9:16, 20).

Obadiah had foretold, upon Mount Zion there shall be holiness (Obadiah 1:17); and Jeremiah, As yet they shall use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities of them, when I shall bring again their captivity; The Lord shall bless you, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness (Jeremiah 31:23).

It should be called and be; it should fulfill the significance of its titles. For example, in the Apostles’ Creed we profess our belief in “the holy Catholic Church,” and holiness is one of its characteristics.

There shall yet dwell old men and old women – Dionysius: “Men and women shall not be slain now, as before in the time of the Babylonian destruction, but shall fulfill their natural course.” It shall not be, as when He gave His people over unto the sword; the fire consumed their young men and their maidens were not given to marriage; the priests were slain by the sword and their widows made no lamentation (Psalms 78:63–64); apart from the horrible atrocities of pagan war, when the unborn children were destroyed in their mothers’ womb (2 Kings 15:16; Hosea 13:16; Amos 1:13), with their mothers. Yet , once more as in the days of old, and as conditionally promised in the law (Deuteronomy 4:10; Deuteronomy 5:16, 33; Deuteronomy 6:2; Deuteronomy 11:9; Deuteronomy 17:20; Deuteronomy 22:7; Deuteronomy 32:47; Ezekiel 20:17).

As death is the punishment of sin, so prolongation of life to the time which God has now made its natural term seems all the more a token of His goodness. This promise Isaiah had renewed: There shall no more be an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days (Isaiah 65:20). In those fierce wars, neither young nor very old were spared. It implied then a long peace, that people should live to that utmost verge of human life.

The man, whose staff is in his hand for the multitude of days – The two opposite pictures—the old men (Dionysius says: “so aged that they support with a staff their failing and trembling limbs”) and the young in the glad buoyancy of recent life, fresh from their Creator’s hands—attest alike the goodness of the Creator, who protects both: the children in their yet undeveloped strength, and the very old whom He has brought through “all the changes and chances of this mortal life,” in their yet sustained weakness. The tottering limbs of the very old and the elastic, perpetual motion of childhood are like far-distant chords of the diapason of the Creator’s love. It must have been one of the most piteous sights in that first imminent destruction of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 6:11; Jeremiah 9:21), how the children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of the city; how the young children fainted for hunger in the top of every street (Lamentations 2:11, 19).

We need only picture to ourselves any city in which one lives, the ground strewn with these little almost-corpses, alive only to suffer. We do not know how great the relief of the yet innocent, almost indomitable joyousness of children is, until we miss them. In the dreadful Irish famine of 1847, the absence of the children from the streets of Galway was told to me by Religious as one of its dreariest features.

In the dreary backstreets and alleys of London, the irrepressible joyousness of children is one of the bright sunbeams of that great Babylon, amid the oppressiveness of the anxious, hard, luxurious; thoughtless, careworn, eager, sensual, worldly, frivolous, vain, stolid, sottish, cunning faces that traverse it. God sanctions by His word here our joy in the joyousness of children, that He too takes pleasure in it—He, the Father of all. It is precisely their laughing, the fullness of her streets with these merry creations of His hands, that He speaks of with pleasure.

If it should be marvelous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those - (not these) days, shall it be marvelous in My eyes also? says the Lord of hosts. Man’s anticipations, by reason of his imperfections and the checkered character of earthly things, are always disappointing. God’s actions, by reason of His infinite greatness and goodness, are always beyond our anticipations, past all belief. It is their very greatness that staggers us.

It is not then merely that the temporal promises seemed “too good to be true” (in our words) (Jerome), “in the eyes of the people who had come from the captivity, seeing that the city was almost desolate, the ruins of the city walls, the charred houses showed the actions of the Babylonians.” It is in the day of the fulfillment, not of the anticipation, that they would seem marvelous in their eyes, as the Psalmist says, “This is the Lord’s doing: and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

The temporal blessings which God would give were not so incredible. They were but the ordinary gifts of His Providence: they involved no change in their outward relations. His people were still to remain under their Persian masters, until their time too should come. It was a matter of gladness and of God’s Providence, that the walls of Jerusalem should be rebuilt: but not so marvelous, when it came to pass. The mysteries of the Gospel are a marvel even to the blessed angels.

Since that fulfillment was still future, so the people in whose eyes that fulfillment would be marvelous were future also. And this was to be a remnant still. It does not say, “this people which is a remnant,” nor “this remnant of the people” (that is, those who remained from the people who went into captivity), or “this remnant,” but “the remnant of this people” (that is, those who would remain from it, namely, from the people who had returned). It is the remnant of the larger whole, this people (see at Amos 1:8, vol. i. p. 247, n. 28, and on Haggai 1:12, p. 305). It is still “the remnant according to the election of grace;” that election which obtained what all Israel sought, but, seeking wrongly, were blinded (Romans 11:5–7).

Shall it be marvelous in My eyes also? — It is an indirect question in the way of exclamation. “It be marvelous in My eyes also,” rejecting the thought as alien from the nature of God, to whom “all things are possible, yea, what with men is impossible” (Matthew 19:26).

As God says to Jeremiah, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18:27). “For with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27).

Cyril says: “For He is the Lord of all powers, fulfilling by His will what exceedingly surpasses nature, and effecting at once what seems good to Him.

The mystery of the Incarnation surpasses all marvel and discourse, and no less the benefits resulting for us. For how is it not next to incredible that the Word, Begotten of God, should be united with the flesh and be in the form of a servant, and endure the Cross and the insults and outrages of the Jews? Or how should one not admire beyond measure the outcome of the dispensation, by which sin was destroyed, death abolished, corruption expelled, and man, once an unfaithful slave, became resplendent with the grace of an adopted son?”