Zechariah 1:12

Then the Angel of the Lord answered and said,.... The same that was among the myrtle trees in the bottom, Zechariah 1:8: O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem, and on the

Then the angel of the LORD answered and said, O LORD of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years?

Then, when the surveying angels had made their report of the prosperity of the heathen, the angel of the Lord, the Angel, the Lord Christ, Mediator of the church, and Head of the church, answered and said; prays as one interceding. O Lord of hosts: Christ speaks to his Father, speaks as one much affected with the state of his afflicted church. How long wilt thou not have mercy? it is the expostulation that well befits a praying soul; it is not the inquiry of a discontented mind, but the request of one longing for mercy. So David, ,2; and the souls under the altar, . On Jerusalem, thy chosen mountain, heir of promises to be re-edified; and on Judah’ s cities too, of whose rebuilding, peace, and prosperity thou hast, O Lord, spoken great things, Jeremiah 30 Jeremiah 31 Jeremiah 32 Jeremiah 33, and Ezekiel 36 Ezekiel 37, &c. Thou hast had indignation; they have felt thine anger and hot displeasure, it was just, and is so still; but it is not to be perpetual. Thine anger hath smoked against the sheep of thy pasture. These threescore and ten years; the term prefixed for the captivity is fully come, it is the seventieth year of their miserable captivity; now show mercy, build Zion, and glorify thyself in doing it, for the set time is come. It is now seventy years since thy temple was burnt, and Jerusalem sacked; and full eighty years since Jeconiah with many of thy people were carried captive into Babylon, and somewhat more since many were carried with Jehoiakim, from which to the second of Darius are much about eighty-eight or nine years. Then, when the surveying angels had made their report of the prosperity of the heathen, the angel of the Lord, the Angel, the Lord Christ, Mediator of the church, and Head of the church, answered and said; prays as one interceding. These threescore and ten years; the term prefixed for the captivity is fully come, it is the seventieth year of their miserable captivity; now show mercy, build Zion, and glorify thyself in doing it, for the set time is come. It is now seventy years since thy temple was burnt, and Jerusalem sacked; and full eighty years since Jeconiah with many of thy people were carried captive into Babylon, and somewhat more since many were carried with Jehoiakim, from which to the second of Darius are much about eighty-eight or nine years.

Zechariah 1:12 Then the angel of the LORD answered and said, O LORD of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years?Ver. 12. Then the angel of the Lord] That advocate with the Father, Jesus, the just one, 1 John 2:1, who appeareth to his afflicted people, and feelingly pleads for them, as being afflicted in all their afflictions, even the angel of his presence that saveth them, Isaiah 63:9. It much moved him to hear that God’ s enemies were in better case than his people; and this puts him upon the following passionate expostulation. O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem, &c.] Usquequo Domine. Calvin had these words much in his mouth; thereby breathing out his holy desires in the behalf of the afflicted Churches, with whose sufferings he was more affected than with anything that befell himself. It is said of Melancthon that the miseries of the Church made him almost neglect the death of his dearest children; and put him upon many prayers and tears; which, like music upon the water, made a most melodious noise in the ears of God. When Luther in a certain epistle checked him, and chided him for his exceeding great care of the Church’ s welfare, calling him pertinacissimam curarum hirudinem, &c., he meekly replied, Si nihil curarem, nihil orarem; If I should not care so, I should not pray so. God seemeth sometimes to have lost his mercy (as here, How long wilt thou be unmerciful to Jerusalem?), and then we must find it for him. He seems to have forgotten his people; we must remind him. He seems to sleep, delay; we must waken, quicken him, with "How long, Lord?" "Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion; for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come," saith Daniel, who is probably held to be the penman of that excellent Psalm and he speaks it with as much confidence as if he had been in God’ s blessed bosom the while. This also he spake, not now by a spirit of prophecy, or special revelation; but by way of argumentation, or necessary demonstration: "For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof"; they pity her, and melt over her, therefore thou, Lord, much more; since all their tenderness is but a spark of thy flame, a drop of thine ocean. Against which thou hast had indignation, these threescore and ten years] There is much ado among interpreters about Jeremiah’ s seventy years and Zechariah’ s seventy years, whether one and the same, or different one from another. That of Scaliger is most unlikely, who reckoneth these years of the captivity from the first year of Xerxes with his father Darius, unto the fourth year of Darius Nothus.

(12) Consequently, the angel of the Lord intercedes for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah. These threescore and ten years.—This is an old English expression. The Hebrew has one word—seventy—which is often used as a round number. From the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (B.C. 605-6) to the date of the decree of Cyrus for the return of the Jews (B.C. 538) is sixty-eight years. These are the seventy years of captivity foretold by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25:11; Jeremiah 29:10). But eighteen years had now elapsed since that decree of Cyrus. Consequently the angelic intercessor, in saying “how long . . . these seventy years,” can hardly have referred to the seventy years spoken of by Jeremiah, since the actual number of years was now eighty-eight. Therefore it is most probable that the reference is to the period of sixty-eight years between the second taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, when Zedekiah was removed in chains to Babylon (B.C. 588), and the year of this prophecy (B.C. 520).

Verse 12. Then the angel of the Lord] He who was among the myrtles-the Lord Jesus. O Lord of hosts, how long] Jesus Christ was not only the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," but was always the sole Mediator and intercessor between God and man. These threescore and ten years?] This cannot mean the duration of the captivity for that was nearly twenty years past. It must mean simply the time that had elapsed from the destruction of the temple to the time in which the angel spoke. As the temple was destroyed in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, and this vision took place in the second year of Darius, the term of seventy years was completed, or nearly so, between these two periods.

12. answered] The word does not necessarily mean replied to a question, but has here, as elsewhere, the more general signification of speaking in a manner corresponding, or “answering” to the circumstances described and the feelings called forth by them (comp. Job 3:2 (margin); Daniel 2:26; Acts 5:8). Pitying Zechariah and his countrymen in the disappointment, which the answer of the horsemen (Zechariah 1:11) could not fail to cause them, inasmuch as it told of rest and quiet, whereas the “shaking of all nations” was the predicted sign of returning favour to Zion (Haggai 2:7; Haggai 2:21-22), the Angel proceeds to speak “answerably” to this feeling, in the intercession which he now offers on their behalf. His sympathy and intercession make it probable, as Calvin remarks (though he offers the alternative of its being any angel you please), that this Angel of the Lord was “Christ the Mediator.” these threescore and ten years] Comp. Jeremiah 25:11; Ezra 1:1. The meaning is: Why art Thou still angry with us, when the appointed time of our punishment, the seventy years of our captivity, has expired?

And the Angel of the Lord answered - the implied longing, by intercession with God.

12. The purpose of the vision is to remove this sense of disappointment and despondency by a solemn reaffirmation of the promises of the past (12-17).