Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, the hosts methodically show how Scripture is one cohesive story. Critical Thinking with a little bit of theology and apologetics and you have what this podcast is about. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity today must address woke, deconstruction, and progressive Christianity, all topics that are addressed if we go purposefully through the Bible. Join Glenn and Steve weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S16 || Conquests Accurately Foretold || Zechariah 9:5-8 || Session 16 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
Unlock the ancient world and witness the convergence of prophecy and history as we journey through the powerful narratives of Zechariah and the extraordinary exploits of Alexander the Great. Promising more than just a history lesson, we explore how his conquests across Philistine cities resonate with prophetic foresight, especially in the cities of Tyre and Gaza. Expect to learn how the literary art of chiasms in Hebrew scripture paints these locations as Israel’s enduring adversaries and how Alexander's campaign marked the fulfillment of these prophecies by dismantling Philistine power and culture. We dissect the notion of telescoping prophecies, revealing their layered meanings that offered hope to those in Alexander's time and continue to inspire today. Join us in this compelling episode that bridges ancient history with modern faith challenges.
Open your Bibles to Zechariah, chapter 9, starting in verse 5, and we're reasoning through a section where we're going to be following Alexander the Great's march through the land that Zechariah is prophesying. Zechariah prophesies the destruction of these lands that Alexander fulfills about 190 years after Zechariah. It's quite interesting because these are literally fulfilled. Therefore, we're going to see some things here in these very seldom trod sections of the Bible, places that most people don't travel, we've got some very interesting gold nuggets that we're going to pick up along the way. So, if you have your Bible, we're going to start reading. In chapter 9, starting in verse 5, says this Ashkelon will see it and be afraid. Gaza, too, will writhe in great pain, also Ekron, for her expectation has been confounded. Moreover, the king will perish from Gaza and Ashkelon will not be inhabited, and a mongrel race will dwell in Ashdod. I will cut off With this. He's again going through these cities. Now notice, in verse 5, he follows what is called a chiasm. Chiasm is a first half and a second half that are mirror images of each other. The pathway through these cities go Ashkelon, gaza, ekron, and then back through reverse order Gaza and Ashkelon again.
Speaker 1:Much of Hebrew literature follows this basic model of a chiasm. There's small ones like this inside of larger ones that are even in this book of Zechariah Very interesting literary structure that helps people remember where they are in the book. Before the days of chapters and verses and everybody having a copy in their pocket, they used memory techniques such as chiasms and repeated words. All these cities originally belonged to the Philistines and, of course, the Philistine was the nation that was a perpetual pest, a perpetual enemy in the Old Testament against the nation Israel. They attacked Israel for many years during the times of the kings, and these cities did not follow the Lord. They were enemies of God and were conquered multiple times. Ashdod, if you remember, was a city of the Philistines. The first place I think of is back during one of the battles that Israel had with the Philistines. Eli was the priest and Israel took the Ark of the Covenant into battle against the Philistines. The Philistines captured the Ark and took it to where Ashdod is where they took it.
Speaker 1:They took it to Ashdod and set it up in this temple, this pagan temple with an idol, dagon. By the next morning, what had happened to this idol Dagon?
Speaker 2:The priests came in and their god Dagon had been toppled over. So they put Dagon back up. They come back in the next morning and not only is Dagon over again, but his head is knocked off and separated from his body. From that point on, those priests they walk around the threshold area where the idol Dagon is, because they recognize that this Ark of the Covenant they have there is being protected by Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Speaker 1:With things like that. The Philistines were constant enemies of Israel. They were constantly conquering Israel. Here it's, going through these cities Ashdod, ekron, gaza and saying that these cities are going to be destroyed and even ultimately turned towards God. Alexander the Great brought an end to the Philistine nation. After Alexander, the Philistines never were a world power again. It basically destroyed their culture and their nation During the time of the Maccabees. Israel defeated and plundered Ashdod again.
Speaker 1:These passages were literally fulfilled in the centuries right after Zechariah. Then, in verse 6, it says there a mixed race or a mongrel race shall settle in Ashdod. The literal meaning of this word is a bastard. A bastard is a child of unmarried parents. A bastard is a child of unmarried parents. In those days, a bastard did not have the right to the family traditions. The family inheritance was not a rightful heir.
Speaker 1:And after returning from the Babylonian captivity, some Jews settled near Ashdod and intermarried to the point that they lost their native language. We're told that in Nehemiah, chapter 13, verses 23 and 24. They had intermarried with these people lost their language, so they were basically losing their inheritance as a Jewish people by intermarrying with this. God predicts this. Of course. God knows the end from the beginning. He knows the future free acts of his people, but yet they are the ones who freely did it. Could have decided otherwise, but nevertheless, god knows this is going to happen. Verse 7 says that he will remove the blood from their mouth and the detestable things from between their teeth. Steve, what do you think he's talking about there?
Speaker 2:Well, I think this is referring back to their idolatrous ways and their unlawful acts that they had done. God is saying that, through these overthrow of these cities that have been passing the side of Israel for so many years, that he is forcing them to give up these idolatrous practices and unawful things that they've been doing.
Speaker 1:Of course, in those days they would sacrifice to the idol sacrifice. They would take an animal and cook it, burn it in the idol. These sacrifices were usually eaten not always, but very often they would eat them. They would cook it, basically on the idol fire, but then they would take and eat it. The detestable things are the false sacrifices, the unclean animals and the sacrifices made to these pagan gods. He's saying I'm going to take that blood and those detestable things from between their teeth. Therefore, what he's going to be doing is stopping the idol worship. He's going to be stopping the people in these areas from idol worship and, of course, this had happened for hundreds of years, many centuries. These people had been I mean going all the way back to prior to Joshua's day. The people of Canaan had these detestable practices and Israel never succeeded in driving them out of the land and never succeeded in stopping them, because Israel was not right with God themselves. Therefore, here God says there will be a day. In that day this idol worship will stop. The detestable things will be taken from between their teeth.
Speaker 1:Now what happened in history was Alexander the Great came through and destroyed everything in his path. Alexander was a military genius and he achieved all this with an army that was relatively smaller than many of the other armies in those days. One of the ways he achieved his success is by completely destroying cities as he went. He could not afford to have a military power behind him after he passed through, so he wasn't going to leave anybody that was able to come up against him. He progressed from the north to the south, as these cities are mentioned here, and destroyed them one by one and completely destroyed them, killed thousands of people in each city as he went through. He was a military genius, but he was also very brutal and very barbaric.
Speaker 2:And this is a campaign where he's going through the area on his way down to Egypt to fight and conquer the Egypt area down there at the south of the nation of Israel. I want to pause here for a second. Glenn prophecies that Zechariah has given to the people, how it's encouragement to them because these are things that are going to happen in the future, and that the nation's going to be restored, jerusalem's going to be restored, the temple and the house of worship is going to be there, the Messiah is going to be ruling from there, and that these are all things of encouragement for the people. These items that we've talked about in this session and in the last part of last session, these are all things that have already happened from our perspective, and they happened roughly if it was around the time of Alexander's campaign, around 330 BC. So this is roughly about 200 years later.
Speaker 2:From the visions and prophecies that are given by Zechariah, who's the encouragement that is given to at that time? Those people that were living in that era of Alexander coming through. I could just see them looking at these cities falling Tyre in the north and now all of these cities in the Gaza area, and reflecting back, their rabbis reflecting back on the prophet Zechariah, saying this is exactly what Zechariah had prophesied 200 years ago and it came about. And so now these other prophecies and we're going to see some of them as we continue in this session they're still yet to happen in the future. So it gives these people that are living in the time 200 years later from Zechariah encouragement too that what Zechariah said is coming to pass. Therefore, these other ones that are going to happen, we can take encouragement that they're going to happen in the future as well.
Speaker 1:In places like Tyre were literally fulfilled. It said there was so much gold in the streets it was like dust. And again, 2,500 years later, there were people on the seashores going through the sand panning for flecks of gold. These things were literally fulfilled when Alexander came through. Look at the middle of verse 7. And they also.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about these nations that are being judged. They also will be a remnant for our God and be like a clan in Judah. Here he's very clearly saying these cities are going to be destroyed. I'm going to stop their idol worship. I'm going to take the detestable things out of their mouths. The people will be punished and they will be no more. That was literally fulfilled in Alexander's day and to some degree again in the time of the Maccabees. But nevertheless, these people around Israel have never been a remnant for our God. They're not like a clan in Judah worshiping the true God. Some of these things are still yet to be fulfilled. That's why we use the word telescoping. There's a double fulfillment, or there's things intermingled in here which can still be fulfilled in the future, even though they had a partial fulfillment in the past or even a spiritual application in our day.
Speaker 2:The next part there in 7, it says and Ekron like a Jebusite Well, jebusite is referring to Jerusalem like a Jebusite. Well, jebusite is referring to Jerusalem. It was the city of Jebus and the people that lived there were Jebusites. Then David conquered it, turned it into the city of David, which then became Jerusalem. He's very clearly saying that he's going to take out all this idol worship and all these unlawful acts they're doing, and they're going to become remnants of people that want to worship the one true God, yahweh. And that's what he's referring to there, talking about a clan of Judah and also like a Jebusite.
Speaker 1:So, like we said in the previous session, we don't have any issue saying part of these things are fulfilled in the past and part of them in the future, because our Lord Jesus did this exact same thing in the synagogue, reading the Word of God. What we would do is say that, well, these things are just symbols and there's no meaning behind the symbol, or it's some sort of interpretation that's so malleable that we can make it to mean anything we want. No, the words have meaning and even the ones that are symbolic are symbolic of something real, but, as we've seen here, there's really no symbolism here in this section. These things are literally fulfilled. It's just a matter of when these things are literally happening to the literal cities in these places. Let's go ahead. Steve. Can you start at verse 8 and read through verse 9?
Speaker 2:But I will camp around my house because of an army, because of him who passes by and returns. Can you start at verse? Just and endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Speaker 1:With this. In verse 8, god says there will be a day when he camps around his people and protects them against all their enemies. Now, in Alexander's day, this was indeed fulfilled, because God protected Jerusalem from destruction. As Alexander came marching through the area, he was destroying one city after another and killing much of the population, killing thousands of people and killing large percentages of each city. He gets to Jerusalem and the first century historian, josephus, tells a story that kind of fills in the gaps here.
Speaker 1:According to Josephus, when Alexander came to Jerusalem, the high priest and all the priests put on their priestly garments, opened the gates, which you don't do in a military campaign. If somebody's coming up against you, the gates were closed to keep them out. He opens the gate and marches out to them in a procession with all of their fine priestly garments, and Alexander's generals pulled him aside and said they're coming to us. We can kill them right here on the road and walk right in. We don't have to fight to overcome the walls. Alexander stopped them, went over and talked to them. The high priest invites them into the city, takes them into the temple and opens up the book of Daniel, and the book of Daniel prophesies Alexander the Great, as the story goes if you believe Josephus anyway that Alexander then spared the city.
Speaker 1:Of course he heavily taxed them, but he didn't kill them, spared the city and kept going. He came back through on another campaign and also didn't destroy them. This was literally fulfilled when he said I'm going to protect you. If we take this whole section to be the march of Alexander and that does fit then it also fits that Alexander bypassed it. I think there's also a possibility here, steve, though, that there'll be a future double fulfillment. What would be your?
Speaker 2:thoughts. That's also the same thing that Daniel did with Cyrus the Great Whenever he came into Babylon. Daniel is there. Cyrus comes in defeating I think it was Belteshazzar, one of Nebuchadnezzar's descendants. Daniel pulls out Isaiah and shows Isaiah to Cyrus and says here's one of our prophets that prophesied that you were going to be coming through here and that you were going to be a defeater of Babylon. That had been predicted, like something like 150 years before.
Speaker 2:Through this story that the rabbis have Alexander coming through Jerusalem, and also through Daniel and his interaction with Cyrus, we see that the prophecies of God are something that are foretold of in hundreds of years in the future and that we can take pleasure and confidence in knowing that what he is telling us through his prophetic word in these prophets are something that are reliable, something that will take place, something that might be partially fulfilled and something that might yet to be fulfilled, but in either case, they're something that are true and valid and physical. They're actually things that took place. They're not things that we could just all of a sudden spiritualize and create them into something that they're not really meant to be.
Speaker 1:Look again at verse 8. Verse 8 says I will camp around my house because of an army, because of him who passes by and returns. Now that was literally fulfilled in the day of Alexander the Great. He bypassed it, he came back and God protected the city. The next part of the sentence says and no oppressor will pass over them anymore. So if we take the first half of that and the verses prior to this as being literally fulfilled in Alexander's day to the cities in Canaan and Israel, then that sentence there no oppressor will pass over them anymore has to also be taken literally Now.
Speaker 1:I think we can apply that in the future, simply because the oppressors have been oppressing Israel for the entire history of its existence. We're hard-pressed to find a time when it didn't happen. It's happened today. It happened going all the way back to Joshua's day. There's oppressors that come in and have attacked Israel for all time. Therefore, we would hold that yes, god protected Jerusalem in the days of Alexander. It doesn't mean he won't also fulfill the same prophecy in the future and do it in a time where it will be permanent and that day, no oppressor will ever conquer Israel again because the Lord Jesus will be there and will be literally protecting the city from all oppressors.
Speaker 2:This exactly comes back to how you started off this session, glenn, in talking that Jesus himself stopped in the middle of the verse, saying that the first part of the verse had been fulfilled within the hearing of those people. So therefore, by inference that the other part is still yet to happen, this isn't a great example of that and how we can use the plain written language of the Word to come to those type of conclusions. Yeah, the oppressors will not pass over them anymore. They were still under oppressors of a province of Persia at this time, then Greece, then Rome. We've seen them that this particular part of the latter part of 8 is still yet something to come.
Speaker 1:This idea of specifically talking about the Jewish people and specifically talking about Jerusalem and Judea, judah, of having a time where there will be no military oppressors going through it. This is not the only time that this is mentioned. There's a small handful of these. Let me read just a few of these. Joel 3.17 also says there will be a day when Jerusalem will be holy and strangers will pass through it no more. Isaiah 52.1 says quote the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you. Close quote Isaiah 60.18, quote violence shall no longer be heard in your land. And then in Nahum 115 says quote the wicked one shall no more pass through you. He is utterly cut off. Close quote Today neither Jerusalem nor the church. We can't even really spiritualize this as being in the church One because there was too many literal cities in there.
Speaker 1:Secondly, the church today is what our Lord described it at in the parables of the kingdom over in the gospels. The church today has leaven in it. Leaven is sin. It's a mixture. The church has wheat and tares. The church is the mustard seed that grows up, that has birds in it. So the church is mixed with good and evil and it's awaiting future fulfillment.
Speaker 1:We can't spiritualize this into being the church simply because, look at us, if we're honest with ourselves, we're stuck in Romans 7, the things I want to do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do, that I do. We are both, as Christians and as a church, torn between following the Lord and sin. Be honest with ourselves, my all-millennial friend. The church is not holy as it needs to be, not today. There will come a day when this is literally fulfilled and there will be no literal military campaigns through Jerusalem, because the Lord will be there.
Speaker 1:Matter of fact, later in the same book, in Zechariah 14, verses 1 through 3, describes a battle where Jerusalem will be overtaken, plundered and the women attacked, right here in the same book. Here he's saying there will come a time when there will be no enemies coming in ever again. But yet again in the same book by the same author, zechariah 14 describes a time where there will be enemies. We have to take these things and apply them when the passage would apply them, not when we think it ought to fit into our system. Here in Zechariah 9, when it says no enemies anymore must be the kingdom. And in 14, where it says the enemies are coming in are prior to that.
Speaker 1:Now, in a spiritual sense, there will be a day when no follower of God has to worry anymore about anyone coming against them or any evil or temptation coming against them. We do not have this today. Also, look at the end of verse 8. The end of verse 8 says, quote Now I have seen with my eyes. God can declare the end from the beginning and he can declare prophecy, and it be absolutely sure God can see what comes to pass.
Speaker 1:Here's a question, steve discussion question. What would it be like to be in God's will and not have anyone trying to hinder the work that we do for his kingdom? Because that's the flow of this. He's saying there will come a day when no enemy comes up against us. So I think we can apply that, at least in theory, to a sense where what would it be like if we were Christians doing the Lord's work through the church for following the Lord Jesus and there'll be no sin in our lives and there's no enemy coming up against us, no temptations to get off the path? What would it be like to be in a situation like that? I think?
Speaker 2:it would be great. It would be freedom and a pleasurable experience. You wouldn't have to be cautious, you wouldn't have to be looking over your shoulder to think that somebody was going to come and file a complaint against you and you possibly lose your job over it. There's also nations today, at the time that we're recording this, where it is against the law to be a follower of Jesus Christ. If you do declare that you're a follower of Jesus Christ, it's a death penalty in those countries. So people that are going into those countries and spreading the gospel, they're also putting their life on the line. There's many nations across the world at this point in time that people are putting their lives on the line, missionaries, in order to spread the gospel. Yeah, look forward to the time whenever there's no enemies trying to suppress it and that there's freedom to be able to express the joy of knowing Jesus Christ and how he can give us eternal life.
Speaker 1:With this. We're going to stop here, because the very next verse has a very well-known one that was fulfilled in Jesus' triumphal entry. So we're going to learn about our Lord Jesus way back here in the book of Zechariah as we reason through that next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for being with us, as always. May God bless you.
