Zechariah 1 – 7

Verse 1:6 talks about God’s words versus man:

Didn’t My words and My rules that I dictated through My servants the prophets outlive your rebellious ancestors? That’s why they repented eventually and realized, “The Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, has done to us exactly what He decided He would do if we behaved this way. His punishments match our evil thoughts and acts.”

Notice every one of the figures in the Bible except Elijah and Enoch. Now one could argue both died, but that is not recorded in the Bible and although Jesus was raised He first died. Enough for the technical mumbo jumbo, the point is God’s words have survived since written. How many authors can claim this feet? Sure some texts have survived, but how many are studied daily by so many across the world? There is a power in what is written that makes sense to the reader.

Verse 3:1 had me want to “study” the term “Accuser”:

Then the heavenly messenger showed me a fourth vision: Joshua, the high priest, was standing in front of the Eternal’s Special Messenger who was presiding over a heavenly council meeting. Standing to Joshua’s right was the one called the Accuser. He was ready to argue that Joshua was unworthy to serve as high priest.

Many translations have the “Accuser” as “Satan” and was footnoted that way which made me wonder how the word “Satan” came to be. Satan was derived from the Hebrew word שָּׂטָן (satan in phonetic spelling using our alphabet) meaning adversary. So Satan became a “transliteration” of a Hebrew word to a proper name, like Christ from the Greek word “Christos”.  So while Satan is the proper name for the devil in English, that was not translated from text. Again a technically useless fact since today we know evil as Satan. “A rose by any other name is just as sweet” from Romeo and Juliet reminds us not to get hung up on the name of evil, just know it is evil.

Verse 5:9 makes me think about the “stork” that delivers babies:

Then in this vision, I looked up and saw two women moving forward with wings resembling the wings of storks. With the power of the wind in their wings, they lifted the basket up to a place somewhere far away, between heaven and earth.

Notice “women” and “baskets” can easily give one the mental image of a stork delivering a baby. This may be using an analogy that people of the time may understand or since the stork is an “unclean” bird it shows the people they are evil. The stork is viewed in nature as a very loyal bird returning to its nest for life therefore great images for mothers. Also, Norse and Roman myths have storks being a symbol of fertility. Greeks had a myth of them stealing babies. The stork could seem benign but have evil undertones and there to “demonize” our world though childbirth.

I know that last statement was off in the conspiracy wonderland, but often things like this are true and get dismissed since they seem false. Even still they provide a foundation for demonic influences to creep into our world if left unchecked.