Scripture Daily

Context No. 1425 of 4322 · Zechariah

Context · Reflection

Zechariah 7:8-14: in context

8The LORD’s word came to Zechariah, saying, 9“Thus has the LORD of Armies spoken, saying, ‘Execute true judgment, and show kindness and compassion every man to his brother. 10Don’t oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.’ 11But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear. 12Yes, they made their hearts as hard as flint, lest they might hear the law and the words which the LORD of Armies had sent by his Spirit by the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the LORD of Armies. 13It has come to pass that, as he called and they refused to listen, so they will call and I will not listen,” said the LORD of Armies; 14“but I will scatter them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they have not known. Thus the land was desolate after them, so that no man passed through nor returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”

The word of the LORD comes to Zechariah with a plain summary of what God asks: render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, or the poor, and do not devise evil against one another in your hearts. But, the prophet recalls, the people of an earlier generation refused to listen; they turned a stubborn shoulder, stopped their ears, and made their hearts hard as flint, so they would not hear the law God sent by his Spirit through the prophets. And so great wrath came, and a sobering reciprocity: as I called and they would not hear, says the LORD, so they called and I would not hear.

God's summary of what he wants could hardly be plainer: true justice, kindness, mercy, and above all care for the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, the poor. This is what he chiefly asks, not first elaborate worship but the treatment of the defenseless with justice and compassion. And the people's response is described in a chilling progression: they refused to listen, turned their backs, stopped their ears, and finally made their hearts hard as flint. It is a picture of the hardening that comes from repeatedly refusing God's call to justice and mercy; a heart that keeps saying no to the claim of the vulnerable does not stay soft, it turns to stone. And then the passage names a sobering symmetry: as I called and they would not listen, so they will call and I will not listen. There is a real correlation, God says, between our refusing to hear his call and our own prayers going unheard; the ear we stop against the cry of the poor is the ear God may stop against our cry. This is not a mechanical exchange so much as a spiritual truth, that a heart hardened against the vulnerable is a heart hardened toward God, and hardened prayer receives a hardened answer. What God asks is not obscure: justice and mercy to those who cannot defend themselves. To refuse it is to turn the heart to flint, and to risk finding, when we call, the silence we gave to others.

Am I giving God what he chiefly asks, true justice and mercy to the vulnerable around me, or am I stopping my ears to their cry and letting my heart harden to flint, and do I see the sobering link between the ear I close to others and the answer I receive when I call?

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