Book of Zechariah

I'll tell you a bit more about that in weeks to come.

But we have been in the book of Zechariah This will be our sixth week now, if you want to start finding your way to that book of the Bible.

This quite obscure book, full of strange visions and dreams, apocalyptic literature, as it's designated.

And today we come to the final chapter, the final great big climactic chapter of Zechariah.

And that destruction of Edom figures heavily in God's, in the words here, in God's contrast of his dealing with Edom and Israel.

Now, in response to the ministries of Haggai and Zechariah, the repatriated Jews rebuilt their temple, completing it about 515 B.C.

Probably the wall at this stage had been rebuilt or was being completed by Nehemiah's gang.

I think the timing, as different scholars differ subtly, but it's pretty established.

You've got it, as I say, in Ezekiel.

You've got it again and again in Zechariah.

You've got it dramatically in Malachi chapter 3, "The Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple." And this is the promise that God will come back, because I remember once asking William Horbury in Cambridge, one of the great Second Temple scholars of this last generation.

I said, "William, tell me, is there anywhere in Second Temple literature which says that the glory of the Lord has actually come back to the temple?" And William thought for a moment and said, "No, not really." He said, "The only place you might say is the end of Ben Sira," the book we sometimes call Ecclesiasticus, where the vision of the high priest in the temple is almost like a divine visitation.