Scripture Daily

Context No. 4280 of 4322 · Zechariah

Context · Reflection

Zechariah 1:17-21: in context

17“Proclaim further, saying, ‘The LORD of Armies says: “My cities will again overflow with prosperity, and the LORD will again comfort Zion, and will again choose Jerusalem.”’” 18I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, four horns. 19I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these?” He answered me, “These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” 20The LORD showed me four craftsmen. 21Then I asked, “What are these coming to do?” He said, “These are the horns which scattered Judah, so that no man lifted up his head; but these have come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations that lifted up their horn against the land of Judah to scatter it.”

Zechariah brings a word of hope to a people recently returned from exile, still surrounded by rubble and discouragement: the LORD says, my cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the LORD will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem. And then he is shown a vision: four horns that had scattered God's people, and four craftsmen coming to cast those horns down. The forces that had scattered and oppressed would themselves be brought low.

Two notes of hope sound together here. First, God's tender promise to comfort his people again: to restore, to prosper, to choose Jerusalem once more. The discouraged, scattered people are told that God has not finished with them; comfort and restoration are coming. And second, the promise that what scattered and afflicted them, the horns, will not have the last word; God is raising up craftsmen to cast them down.

When God's people feel broken and afflicted, surrounded by the rubble of what has gone wrong, God's word is that he will comfort Zion again, that he has not abandoned his people, and that what scattered them will itself be brought down. Our discouragement is not the end of the story. God comforts his people, restores what was ruined, and in his time deals with what has afflicted them.

When I feel broken and scattered, surrounded by the rubble of what has gone wrong, do I hold to God's promise that he will comfort Zion again, that he has not abandoned his people, and that the forces which scattered and afflicted them will themselves be brought low in his time?

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