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Zechariah 8: What the Passage Says

85 claims across 23 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Zechariah 8 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD of hosts speaks again through Zechariah, promising to return to Zion and live in Jerusalem, so that old men and women sit in its squares, each with a staff for age and children play there. He tells the people who are rebuilding the temple to be strong, since he now plans to do good to Jerusalem instead of harm, and he lists what they must do: speak truth, judge honestly, and swear no false oaths. He says the four fast days of Judah will become glad feasts, and that people from many cities and nations will come to Jerusalem to seek him, taking hold of a Jew's robe because they have heard God is with him.

Claim by Claim

  1. 8:1
    • The word of the LORD of hosts came to the prophet again.
    • The word came with a message to be spoken.
  2. 8:2
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • He was jealous for Zion with great jealousy.
    • He was jealous for Zion with great burning wrath.
  3. 8:3
    • The LORD said this.
    • He has returned to Zion.
    • He will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
    • Jerusalem will be called the city of truth.
    • The mountain of the LORD of hosts will be called the holy mountain.
  4. 8:4
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • Old men and old women will yet again sit in the open squares of Jerusalem.
    • Each of them will have his staff in his hand because of great age.
  5. 8:5
    • The squares of the city will be filled with boys and girls.
    • The boys and girls will be playing in its squares.
  6. 8:6
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • It may seem too wonderful, or impossible, in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those days.
    • It is ambiguous whether the second clause is a question ('should it also be too wonderful in my eyes?') or a statement ('it will also be wonderful in my eyes').
    • This is the declaration of the LORD of hosts.
  7. 8:7
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • He is about to save his people from the land of the east.
    • He is about to save his people from the land of the west, where the sun goes down.
  8. 8:8
    • He will bring them back.
    • They will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
    • They will be his people.
    • He will be their God.
    • This will be in truth and in righteousness.
  9. 8:9
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • He commands that their hands be strong.
    • He addresses those who hear these words in these days.
    • The words are from the mouth of the prophets.
    • Those prophets were present on the day the foundation of the house of the LORD of hosts was laid.
    • The foundation was laid so that the temple might be built.
  10. 8:10
    • Before those days there was no wage for a man.
    • Before those days there was no wage for a beast.
    • There was no peace for anyone going out or coming in, because of the adversary.
    • The word for adversary can mean either an enemy or distress.
    • The LORD set every man against his neighbor.
  11. 8:11
    • But now the LORD will not be to the remnant of this people as he was in the former days.
    • This is the declaration of the LORD of hosts.
  12. 8:12
    • The sowing will be a sowing of peace and will prosper.
    • The vine will give its fruit.
    • The ground will give its produce.
    • The heavens will give their dew.
    • The LORD will cause the remnant of this people to inherit all these things.
  13. 8:13
    • The house of Judah and the house of Israel were a curse among the nations.
    • Just as they were a curse, so the LORD will save them.
    • They will become a blessing.
    • They are told not to fear.
    • They are told to let their hands be strong.
  14. 8:14
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • The LORD purposed to bring harm on them when their fathers provoked him to anger.
    • The LORD did not relent from that purpose.
    • This is what the LORD of hosts says.
  15. 8:15
    • In the same way, the LORD has again purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem.
    • He has purposed to do good to the house of Judah.
    • They are told not to fear.
  16. 8:16
    • These are the things they are to do.
    • Each man is to speak truth to his neighbor.
    • They are to render judgments of truth and of peace in their gates.
  17. 8:17
    • No one is to devise evil in his heart against his neighbor.
    • They are not to love a false oath.
    • The LORD hates all these things.
    • This is the declaration of the LORD.
  18. 8:18
    • The word of the LORD of hosts came to the prophet.
    • The word came with a message to be spoken.
  19. 8:19
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • The fast of the fourth month, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth will become joy and gladness for the house of Judah.
    • Those fasts will become good appointed feasts.
    • They are commanded to love truth and peace.
  20. 8:20
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • Peoples will yet come.
    • The inhabitants of many cities will come.
  21. 8:21
    • The inhabitants of one city will go to another city.
    • They will say: let us go at once to entreat the favor of the LORD.
    • They will say: let us go to seek the LORD of hosts.
    • The one spoken to will answer: I will go also.
  22. 8:22
    • Many peoples and strong nations will come.
    • They will come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem.
    • They will come to entreat the favor of the LORD.
  23. 8:23
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • In those days ten men from all the languages of the nations will take hold.
    • They will take hold of the corner of the garment of a Jew.
    • They will say: we will go with you.
    • They will say: we have heard that God is with you.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

8:1
"The word of the LORD came to me" is the standard formula a Hebrew prophet used to introduce a message he claimed to be delivering rather than composing. "The LORD of hosts" translates *YHWH tsevaʾot*, literally "the LORD of armies", the armies being either Israel's fighting men or the heavenly forces at God's command. "LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud.
8:2
The Hebrew word behind "jealous" (*qanaʾ*) covers fierce protective attachment as well as what English calls jealousy; it is the word used of a husband's feeling for his wife and of a person's burning zeal for a cause. "Fury" here translates a word meaning heat, the temperature of strong feeling, and is directed at Zion's enemies, not at Zion. "Zion" was originally the name of one hill in Jerusalem and came to stand for the city as a whole, and especially for the temple hill.
8:3
The Hebrew verb can be read either as "I have returned" (already done) or "I will return" (still to come); the King James takes the first, most modern versions the second, and the Hebrew itself does not settle it. Zechariah was writing after the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 586 BC; "the mountain of the LORD" is the temple hill in the city. "Truth" translates *emet*, which means reliability and faithfulness as much as factual accuracy.
8:4
"Streets" here means the open squares and public spaces of a city, not roadways. In the ancient world old age reached in peace, and children safe enough to play outdoors, were the standard picture of a city that had not been besieged, starved or deported for a generation.
8:6
"Marvellous" in 1611 English meant astonishing to the point of being beyond belief or beyond doing; the sense is "too hard," not "lovely." "The remnant of this people" is a set term for the survivors of the Babylonian conquest and their descendants who had come back to a much-reduced Judah, perhaps a few tens of thousands where a kingdom had been.
8:7
The Hebrew reads literally "the land of the sunrise and the land of the sunset." Naming the two opposite directions is a way of saying "everywhere", the deported Jews were in fact scattered mainly eastward to Babylon but also into Egypt and elsewhere.
8:8
"In truth and in righteousness" hangs loose in the Hebrew and can attach either to the people (they will belong to God faithfully and rightly) or to God (he will be their God faithfully and rightly). Translators split on it; the King James keeps the ambiguity.
8:9
"Let your hands be strong" is a Hebrew idiom for taking courage and getting on with the work, not a comment on physical strength. The foundation-laying refers to the rebuilding of the temple destroyed in 586 BC: work began after the return from exile, stalled for years, and restarted in 520 BC under the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. "The prophets" are those speaking at that restart, Zechariah's own contemporaries.
8:10
"Hire" means wages or hire-income: work by people and by draft animals brought in nothing. "Went out or came in" is an idiom covering the whole of ordinary daily life, leaving home in the morning and returning at evening, so the sense is that no one was safe going about their business.
8:11
"The residue" is the same group called "the remnant" earlier: the survivors of the exile.
8:12
In this climate almost no rain falls between spring and autumn, and the heavy night dew off the Mediterranean is what keeps summer crops alive. Listing seed, vine, soil and dew together is a standard way of saying the whole agricultural cycle will work.
8:13
This refers to a fixed verbal formula. A nation whose fate was notoriously terrible became the yardstick in curses, "may you end up like Judah", and a nation visibly thriving became the yardstick in blessings. "Heathen" translates *goyim*, simply "the nations" or foreign peoples, with no implication about their beliefs.
8:14
"I repented not" uses "repent" in its older English sense of changing one's mind or relenting from a stated course; it does not mean feeling sorry for sin. "Your fathers" means the earlier generations, the ancestors.
8:16
The gateway of a walled city was a roofed public space where elders heard lawsuits, witnesses testified and contracts were sealed; "in your gates" therefore means "in your courts." "Judgment of truth and peace" means verdicts that are both honest and such that the community can live with the outcome.
8:17
A "false oath" is perjury in the specific ancient sense: swearing by the name of God to something untrue, usually in a legal dispute or over a debt or deposit, which was treated as an offense against God and not merely against the other party.
8:19
These four fast days marked stages of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, counting months from spring: the tenth month, the start of the siege; the fourth, the breaching of the city wall; the fifth, the burning of the temple; the seventh, the killing of Gedaliah, the governor left behind, which ended the last Judean administration. They were not commanded in the law of Moses but had grown up during the seventy years of exile.
8:21
"To pray before the LORD" translates an idiom that is literally "to soften the face of the LORD", to seek someone's favor, the way a petitioner approaches a king. In the picture being drawn, foreigners take the initiative and urge one another on.
8:22
People in other nations worshiped their own gods. So it was surprising news that they would come to Jerusalem.
8:23
"Ten" is a round number for "a large number of." The "skirt" is the corner or hem of the loose outer robe; grabbing it was the standard gesture of a suppliant clutching at someone who could help, the same motion used to beg a king or a creditor. Israelites wore tasselled corners on this garment, which may be the specific thing being seized. Note the proportion in the image: ten foreigners to one Jew, and the foreigners speak first.

Read Zechariah 8