Dec 27, 2022
ZECHARIAH 12-13:
Several times I have noted Zechariah and other
prophets who use the figure of shepherding a flock— picturing God’s
people. In chapter 11, there were puzzling verses where Zechariah
evidently performed an outward demonstration involving two staffs.
Other prophets did such demonstrations. In this one, evidently
Zechariah stood in for the Messiah. The two staffs were named Favor
and Union. Our Messiah, Jesus, came to restore us to God’s favor
and give us unity as God’s people— no matter from what race. The 30
pieces of silver is spoken of with irony: “this magnificent sum at which they valued me.”
Remember this shepherd picture!
ISAIAH 64:
Yesterday in chapter 63, we heard the people of
Israel ask a whole series of questions about the Lord,
like:
Is. 63:11b NLT “Where is the one who brought Israel through the sea, with Moses as their shepherd?
And here is another verse:
Is.
63:15 NLT LORD, look down from heaven;
look from your holy, glorious home, and see
us.
Where is the passion and the
might
you used to show on
our behalf?
Where are
your mercy and compassion now?
The chapter ended with deep pathos:
Is.
63:18 NLT How briefly your holy people possessed your holy
place,
and now our
enemies have destroyed it.
19 Sometimes it seems as though we never belonged to
you,
as though we had
never been known as your people.
However, don’t forget how the chapter started, with the Lord wearing blood-stained robes from trampling out the grapes (yes, ‘grapes of wrath’)— the nations who oppressed his people. This is a picture of the grape harvest that we saw so recently in Revelation 14. Note that in Isaiah the Lord does the trampling alone. And so we see also in Revelation, the final battle is won by the Lord acting alone.
REVELATION 18:
The part that puzzles me most in chapter 17 is this:
Rev. 17:8 GNT That beast was once alive, but lives no longer; it is about to come up from the abyss and will go off to be destroyed. The people living on earth whose names have not been written before the creation of the world in the book of the living, will all be amazed as they look at the beast. It was once alive; now it no longer lives, but it will reappear.
While that is confusing, the important thing is clear: Satan is the sponsor of the beast.
GNT Translation
note:
Zech. 12:10 [NLT “Then I will pour out a spirit
of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of
Jerusalem. They will look on me
whom they have pierced and mourn
for him as
for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a
firstborn son who has died.//GNT “I will fill the descendants of
David and the other people of Jerusalem with the spirit of mercy
and the spirit of prayer. They will look at the
one whom they stabbed to
death, and they will mourn for him
like those who mourn for an only
child. They will mourn bitterly, like those who have lost their
first-born son.]
[The
Masoretic Text says ‘me’, but then the undergoer changes to ‘him’
in the next phrase. This unexpected shift in undergoers caused some
textual variants, as scribes tried to reconcile the grammatical
difficulty. See the note in the NET at Lumina.Bible.org. The NLT
translation is more faithful in showing the difficulty. The GNT
followed textual variants in order to make the grammar sound
right.]
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Rev. 18:18 and cried out as they saw the smoke
from the flames that consumed her: [They said,] “There never has
been another city like this great city!”