I'm still reading the minor prophets. I don't know where we got that word from, but their message is anything but "minor." Zechariah - next to last in the set up of these marvelous oracles - pulls no punches. As a person who truly believes that "the Bible is the trustworthy word of God" I simply can't ignore these words.
8 And the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying,
9 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another,
10 do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart." Zechariah 7:8-10, ESV
These are words the prophet Zechariah spoke to religious and political power brokers during the time the exiles are returning to Jerusalem during the reign of Darius - around 520 - 516 BC. They summon ideas/imperatives found in Deuteronomy.
They are followed by words which report Israel's disobedience to these imperatives: "11 But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. 12 They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the LORD of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets."
The phrase "they made their hearts diamond-hard" is one that jumps off the pages of this ancient prophet in convicting ways for followers of Jesus in our current world.
Those convicting words are then followed by words that make it clear how God feels about this:"Therefore great anger came from the LORD of hosts.13 "As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear," says the LORD of hosts, 14 "and I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro, and the pleasant land was made desolate."
When we confuse religious and political power with the heart and character of God, we can expect to ignore God's call when He calls out to us and for Him to not hear our call when we finally decide to call out to Him.
As John Walton and Brent Sandy say in The Lost World of Scripture, "The legal sayings in the Pentateuch [see reference to Deuteronomy above] revealed the character of Yahweh, and the character of Yahweh has not changed. Believers still have the obligation to reflect that character as they seek to be holy as God is holy. Jesus, as God in the flesh, embodied the character of God, and so the revelation through legal sayings is fulfilled in him, and through him we see how we are to respond to those legal sayings. The authority of the legal sayings is found in the revelation they offer of the character of God and the way they serve as guides to holiness.s" (page 221)
For a number of years, when I teach Biblical Interpretation (and other related classes), I insist that one of the first questions we should ask of any text is "What does this text teach me about the character of God?" When I faithfully ask that question - as apparently Zechariah did - I discover that God is concerned about "the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, the poor." If, as we often say, God's character is unchanging (Hebrews 13:8 as an often quoted text), then can a religious/political power broker who is unconcerned about what God is concerned about actually be the kind of person followers of Jesus should support?
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