Scripture Daily

Context No. 642 of 4322 · Zechariah

Context · Reflection

Zechariah 13:1-9: in context

1“In that day there will be a fountain opened to David’s house and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. 2It will come to pass in that day, says the LORD of Armies, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they will be remembered no more. I will also cause the prophets and the spirit of impurity to pass out of the land. 3It will happen that when anyone still prophesies, then his father and his mother who bore him will tell him, ‘You must die, because you speak lies in the LORD’s name;’ and his father and his mother who bore him will stab him when he prophesies. 4It will happen in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies; they won’t wear a hairy mantle to deceive, 5but he will say, ‘I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground; for I have been made a bondservant from my youth.’ 6One will say to him, ‘What are these wounds between your arms?’ Then he will answer, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’ 7“Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me,” says the LORD of Armies. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; and I will turn my hand against the little ones. 8It shall happen that in all the land,” says the LORD, “two parts in it will be cut off and die; but the third will be left in it. 9I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, ‘It is my people;’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’”

This chapter opens with a beautiful promise: on that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and the people of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. And it closes with an image of how God brings a people through to himself, an image that is harder but just as full of grace. Speaking of the remnant that survives, God says, I will bring this third through the fire; I will refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them; I will say, they are my people, and they will say, the LORD is my God. Fire and refining, and then, on the far side of it, the deepest intimacy the covenant knows.

Notice what the fire is for. It is not there to destroy the remnant but to refine them, the way a silversmith puts silver through the flame not to ruin it but to purify it, burning away what is not silver until what is left is clean and true. And notice the outcome the refining produces: not just a purer people, but a people bound to God in the closest possible mutual belonging, they call, he answers; he says my people, they say my God. The fire is the road to that intimacy, the process by which a people are purified enough to belong wholly to God and to know they do.

That reframes the fires I would rather avoid. When I am in the furnace of some hardship or testing, my instinct is to read it as destruction, as God against me. Zechariah offers a different reading: that God may be refining me as silver, burning away what is not true in me, and that the purpose on the far side is a deeper belonging to him, a closer, truer relationship in which he says my people and I say my God. Can I trust that the fire I am passing through is God's refining, meant not to destroy me but to purify me toward belonging wholly to him, rather than only an affliction to endure?

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