CRITICAL NOTES.] Zechariah 7:8-14.] God requires obedience, not formal fastings. The disobedience of the fathers brought judgment upon the nation.
Zechariah 7:9. Execute] Admonitions which have special reference to evils of which they were guilty. Judgment] Righteous impartiality in public and private matters. “Judgment of truth (cf. Ezekiel 18:8) is such an administration of justice as simply fixes the eye upon the real circumstances of any dispute, without any personal considerations whatever, and decides them in accordance with truth” [Keil]. Mercy] Tender love to all. Compassion] to the unhappy, sympathy for human suffering.
Zechariah 7:10.] This verse specifies some of the chief ways of violating the preceding requisition, and shows that it covers the thoughts of the heart as well as the acts of the members [Lange]. Imagine] i.e. devise evil (Psalms 36:4; Micah 2:1). Meditate no revenge, but act up to the royal law of love.
Zechariah 7:11.] The attitude of the people towards these precepts described. Their fathers and some of them refused], paid no serious attention; then pulled away], like a refractory beast refusing the yoke (Nehemiah 9:29; Hosea 4:16). “It seems rather to refer to one on whose shoulder we lay our hand, when he is reluctant to listen to us, in order to arrest, and beseech him to hear, but he fretfully and violently ‘draws the shoulder’ from our kind and earnest grasp” [Wardlaw] Stopped] Made heavy (Isaiah 6:10; Jeremiah 7:26; Acts 7:57).
Zechariah 7:12. Adamant] Hard and impenetrable as stone (Ezekiel 3:9; Ezekiel 11:19). Wrath] The consequence of disobedience and obduracy (2 Chronicles 36:16).
Zechariah 7:13. He] by his prophets. They] cried in calamities, retribution in kind. They would not hear God, and he would not hear them (Proverbs 1:24-26; Isaiah 1:15).
Zechariah 7:14.] The great wrath described in its execution. Scattered] for 70 years among foreign and barbarous nations; like a tempest driven among those who pitied them not. After] their exile and expulsion no occupants possessed the land. Passed through] Lit. goes away and returns again (Exodus 32:27), pass to and fro. They] The Jews themselves to blame; they desolated the pleasant land] lit. the land of desire; made the choice land a desert by their sins (Jeremiah 3:19; Psalms 106:24).
DIVINE REQUIREMENTS AND HUMAN DISREGARD.—Zechariah 7:8-14
The prophet exposes the hollowness of mere outward forms, and reminds the people that their ruin was not caused by neglect of ritual, but by disregard of the plainest duties of justice and humanity. They had refused to hear the reiterated and explicit injunctions of the prophets, and they are reproved for their folly. Notice—
I. The Divine requirements specified. They had practised injunctions of their own imposing and neglected the commands of God. The prophet repeats the substance of former teaching and urges the claims of Jehovah.
1. Sincerity in life. Obedience is better than sacrifice.
(1) Execute judgment. Practise justice officially and privately, before God and man. Judgment must be true, without personal considerations or partiality. “He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between man and man.”
(2) Compassionate the miserable. “Show mercy” to the unfortunate, be kind and have “compassions every man to his brother.” “Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together,” says Goethe.
(3) Oppress not the helpless. Special regard must be paid to the widow and the fatherless, the stranger and the poor. “Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child” (Exodus 22:21). “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
2. Purity in heart. We must not only do no wrong, but not even wish it. No evil must be devised in the heart. “Let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.” Cherish no ill-feeling, no wish to retaliate. All evil inclinations and spiteful intentions must be subdued. We can never act rightly if we do not feel and think rightly. Hence the law of God restrains the heart. “Beware that there be not a thought (word) in thy wicked (Belial) heart” (Deuteronomy 15:9).
II. The Divine requirements disregarded. Except men execute judgment, whatever be their fastings and pretensions, they reject the word of God. Ceremonial observances without love to God and man are a solemn mockery.
1. They refused to hearken to God’s word. They hated the claims and rebelled against the authority of God’s commands.
(1) They were wilfully deaf. “Stopped their ears.”
(2) They were wilfully prejudiced. “That they should not hear.” They had no desire to know, much less to practise. God pursued them in earnest, constant warning, but they shook their shoulders, refused to submit or bear the yoke, and were determined in their obstinate purpose (cf. Acts 7:51). “They hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.”
2. They hardened their hearts in sin. “They made their hearts as an adamant stone.” They were resolved that nothing should make an impression upon them: they became proud, presumptuous, and inflexible. Divine power even could neither soften their hearts nor shape their lives. “They dealt proudly, and hearkened not unto thy commandments, but sinned against thy judgments (which, if a man do, he shall live in them), and withdrew the shoulder, and hardened their neck and would not hear.”
III. The fatal consequences of disregarding the Divine requirements. Most terrible are the penalties here set forth. “Therefore,” since they have rejected God, punishment will be in proportion to the violation of his law. “Terrible penalties, withal, if thou still need penalties,” says Carlyle, “are there for disobeying.”
1. God was angry. “Therefore came” wrath, a great wrath, from the Lord of hosts. This anger is evinced—
(1) By disregarding their prayers. “They cried, and I would not hear.” There is “great reason,” says Bp. Reynolds, “that God shall refuse to hear him who refuseth to hear God.” “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.”
(2) By scattering them among other nations. “I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations.” The common bond of humanity and social intercourse was broken (Deuteronomy 28:49-50); they were cast out of their own into a land of perfect strangers, from whom they received no kindness nor mitigation of sorrows.
2. The land was desolated. “For they laid the pleasant land desolate.” It was not the enemy, but their own sins that had cursed their country. God’s presence is the beauty of a nation, but sin will turn it into a barren waste. Human guilt desolates everything that is “pleasant.” Let us take warning. If we despise God’s word he will not hear our cry in the day of wrath. The harder men grow in heart, the heavier the stroke at the judgment day. Those who are lost will have to blame their own folly. No delusion will rob them of this conviction, and no remedy can be devised for the misery which they despised and cannot endure. “They would none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof: therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.”
RIGHTEOUS RETRIBUTION.—Zechariah 7:13
This is the first part of punishment, retribution in kind. They would not hear God when he called to them; now he will not hear them when they cry to him. This is God’s method of dealing with nations and individuals.
I. It is often physically true. The drunkard pays when at last he feels himself the slave of habits which he knows will ruin soul and body, and yet unable to throw them off. The licentious who survive the power of gratification may be tortured by appetites for which exhausted nature has no provision [cf. Lange].
II. It is always spiritually true. He that digs a pit for another shall fall into it himself. The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own devices (Proverbs 14:14). Those who contemn the word of God shall be unheard in the day of distress Alarmed at their situation, they will call, but God will not answer them. Thus men become the cause of their own misery, and constantly remind us of the wise man’s words: “Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way” (Proverbs 1:30-31; Proverbs 28:9; Galatians 6:7-8).
“I do as truly suffer
As e’er I did commit” [Shakespeare].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Zechariah 7:9. Love, the royal law of life, the essence of religion. Not religious profession, but the practice of social duty. Keep from evil in thought and act. Meditate no revenge, brood over no wrongs, but in all things act up to the requirements of God’s law. “Love worketh no ill.” “Love will not permit us to injure, oppress, or offend our brother; it will not give us leave to neglect our betters, or despise our inferiors. It will restrain every inordinate passion, and not suffer us to gratify our envy at the expense of our neighbour’s credit and reputation; but it will preserve us harmless and innocent” [Bp. Sherlock].
Moral duties. Required in every age. Superior to external ordinances.
Zechariah 7:10. Widow and fatherless.
1. A sad condition in life. Weak and helpless.
2. A proof of God’s care. “Widows and orphans are God’s clients taken into his special protection” [Trapp].
3. An evidence of true religion. “One of the surest tests of an intelligent Christianity, as well as of a high civilization, is found in the provision made and maintained for those who so often are the victims either of cruel neglect or, alas, of wilful oppression” [Lange]. Compare the teaching of Scripture with the customs of heathenism.
Zechariah 7:11. Pulled away the shoulder. What is implied in these words?
1. A benevolent purpose.
2. Remarkable human power to resist it.
3. Mysterious providence to permit resistance.
4. Astounding effrontery in the conduct indicated. “Pride not only withdraws the heart from God, but lifts it up against God” [Manton].
“All pride is willing pride” [Shakespeare].
Zechariah 7:12. Hearts as adamant. The stone, whatever it be, was hard enough to cut ineffaceable characters (Jeremiah 17:1); it was harder than flint (Ezekiel 3:9). It would cut rocks; it could not be engraven itself, or receive the characters of God. This is the last sin, obduracy, persevering impenitence, which resisted the Holy Ghost, and did despite to the Spirit of grace. Not through infirmity, but of set purpose, they hardened themselves, lest they should be converted and be healed (Isaiah 6:10). Observe the gradations.
1. The words of God are not heard.
2. The restive shoulder is shown. Men turn away, when God by the inner motions of his Spirit, or by lesser chastisements, would bring them to the yoke of obedience. They would not hear the burden of the law, whereas they willingly bore that most heavy weight of their sins.
3. Obduracy. Their adamantine heart could be softened neither by promises nor threats; therefore nothing remained but the great wrath which they had treasured to themselves against the day of wrath [Pusey].
Hardness is the state of a person insensible alike to entreaties, expostulations, warnings, admonitions, and chastisements (Jeremiah 5:3). Men become obdurate—
1. By separating themselves from God, the source of all life, just as a branch dries up when detached from the tree, or as a limb withers when the connection between it and the heart ceases.
2. By a life of pleasure and sin, the effects of which may be compared to those of the river north of Quito, petrifying, according to Kirwin’s account, the wood and leaves cast into its waters; or to those of the busy feet of passers-by, causing the crowded thoroughfare to grow hard [Rev. C. Neil].
Zechariah 7:11-12. Causes of spiritual ruin.
1. Heedless indifference.
2. Stubborn rebellion—
(1) in refusing the yoke, and
(2) in stopping the ears.
3. Resistance to the Holy Spirit.
Zechariah 7:13-14. Self-inflicted calamities.
1. Rejection of God in trouble.
2. Dispersion in strange lands.
3. Devastation of country. Mark the contrast: the land of desire and the land of desolation. Obey the word of God and seek to reach that heavenly “land of desire,” where desolation is unknown, and whither the spoiler can never come [cf. Fausset].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Zechariah 7:8-10, Duties. Your daily duties are a part of your religious life just as much as your devotions are [H. W. Beecher]. Formality in religion is the name of being alive [Jenkyn].
“The path of duty is the way to glory” [Tennyson].
Zechariah 7:11-12. Stopped ears. Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding by experience; the most ignorant by necessity; and beasts by nature [Cicero].
“The ear is the road to the heart” [Voltaire].
Zechariah 7:13-14. Come to pass.
“The past lives o’er again
In its effects, and to the guilty spirit
The ever-frowning present is its image” [S. T. Coleridge.]