King James Version · The Persian return
Zechariah 14
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Behold, cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into , and the residue of the people shall not from the city. Then shall go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon , which is before on the east, and shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of king of Judah: and my shall come, and all with thee. And it shall come to pass in that day, that shall not be clear, nor dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to , not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be . And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from ; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. And shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one , and his name one. All the land shall be turned as a plain from to south of : and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place, from ’s unto the place of the first , unto the corner , and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king’s winepresses. And men shall in it, and there shall be no more utter ; but shall be safely inhabited. And this shall be the plague wherewith will smite all the people that have fought against ; Their shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their shall consume away in their . And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour. And Judah also shall fight at ; and the wealth of all the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and apparel, in great abundance. And so shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, and of the ass, and of all the that shall be in these tents, as this plague. And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against shall even go up from year to year to the King, of hosts, and to keep the . And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto to the King, of hosts, even upon them shall be no . And if the family of go not up, and come not, that have no ; there shall be the plague, wherewith will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the . This shall be the punishment of , and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the . In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, UNTO ; and the pots in ’s house shall be like the bowls before the . Yea, every pot in and in Judah shall be unto of hosts: and all they that shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the in the of hosts.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
Christians read this chapter differently
- Should Christians keep the biblical feasts? · Zechariah 14:16-19
Every view at its strongest, with who holds it and what it has to answer for.
The world at this moment · The Persian return, 539 BC to 332 BC ›
Persia takes Babylon and reverses its policy, sending exiled peoples home to rebuild their temples. Judah returns as a small province, rebuilding under imperial permission rather than independence.
- Persia
- The largest empire the world had yet seen, from the Indus to the Aegean, run through provinces, a royal road, and a postal system. Its policy on conquered peoples was to send them home and fund their temples, in exchange for loyalty and prayers for the king. The Cyrus Cylinder states the policy in Cyrus's own words, and Ezra opens with the same policy applied to Judah.
- Judah
- A small, poor province called Yehud, a fraction of the old kingdom, with a rebuilt temple that made the people who remembered the first one weep. No king, and no prospect of one. Leadership passes to priests and scribes, which shapes everything afterward.
- Greece
- Persia and Greece collide at Marathon and Salamis, Persia loses, and Athens spends the following decades on the Parthenon, tragedy, and Socrates. Herodotus writes the first history in order to explain that war. Then Plato and Aristotle, whose vocabulary the church will still be using at Nicaea eight centuries later.
- Further afield
- Rome throws out its kings and becomes a republic. In India and China this is the age of the Buddha's early followers and of Confucian teaching taking hold. More of what the world still thinks with was invented in this era than in almost any other.