Today, I am reading and commenting on  Zechariah 7-10.

In the past I have seen chapters seven and eight as having different themes.  Chapter seven stands as a bit of condemnation for us when we worship God and perform the rituals He has commanded for our own sake, rather than for God and for others.  Chapter eight focuses on God’s promise to restore the people of Israel, and by extension to build the Church.  I want to interject that I do not believe that the Church has inherited all of the Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel.  In this particular case, I believe the prophecy concerns both the people of Israel and the Church, in slightly different ways.  Having said all of that, today I realized that there is a theme running through both chapter seven and chapter eight.  In chapter seven God tells those who consulted Zechariah the following: “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.  Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”  Then in chapter eight God says this to His people: “Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; do not plot evil against each other, and do not love to swear falsely. ”  This is the same message.  And it is a message which God sent through His prophets again and again.  God keeps trying to tell us that His commands are designed to either empower us to do those things, or to show us how to do them.  When we start to think we can follow His commands by going through the steps without caring about people, we miss the point.  When we start understanding that following God’s commands are not about what’s in it for us, but rather about helping others, then we are starting to truly do as God desires.  And when we do that we will see what God prophesied through Zechariah here.  Ten people will latch on to one of God’s people because they see that God is with them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.