Week 32 Zechariah
Yesterday morning I read Zechariah 1-6.
Last night I reread it in the furnace room, hoping a second time would help.
The six chapters talk about eight visions Zechariah had. I don’t know exactly how visions work – it seems like they’re kind of hyper-realistic dreams, although Zechariah doesn’t say he was asleep. They’re also detailed and pretty normal on one level: I saw a man sitting on a red horse that was standing among some myrtle trees in a small valley. Sounds like a middle-eastern Zane Grey western.
But the vision gave Zechariah the ability to see things that were usually hidden, that there’s more to things than meets-the-eye.
Anyway one thing I noticed is that Zechariah seems like a guy who is in-over-his-head. Even though the basic idea with a vision is that you’re being enlightened Zechariah acts like he’s in the house with his sunglasses on. I counted nine times where he asks for clarification about what he’s seeing.
The horses: What are all those horses for?
The four horns: what are these?
Four blacksmiths: what are these men coming to do?
Nine questions. Asked because he didn’t understand things that were meant to help him understand. About as many questions as there were answers.
Sitting on the wooden bench last night at nine o’clock there was quite a bit I didn’t understand. So it was reassuring to know Zechariah was stymied too.
Note: quotes from Zechariah 1:8, 9, 18, 20 (NLT)