Zechariah 14:1 - Meaning and Application

God’s care for his church is shown here in ways that change suddenly and seem mixed together. At one moment, trouble rises strongly against his people. At the next, God turns things and works for their good. He does this for wise and holy reasons, and the two sides stand side by side in his plan.

God first appears to be against Jerusalem. Judgment begins with the house of God. When the day of the Lord comes (Zechariah 14:1), Jerusalem must pass through fire so it can be purified. God himself gathers all nations against Jerusalem for battle (Zechariah 14:2). He gives them their charge, as he once did to Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, telling them to take the spoil and seize the plunder (Isaiah 10:6). The people of Jerusalem have become the people under his anger. Who can stand before him, or before nations gathered by him? When he gives the order, he also gives success.

This points to Jerusalem’s fall to the Romans, who had many nations under their power. The houses would be looted, and their wealth carried off by the enemy. In order to satisfy both greed and a filthy lust, the women would be violated, as if victory gave permission for the worst crimes. Half of the city would go into captivity, to be sold or enslaved, and would have no power to rescue itself. Such is the ruin that comes in the great and terrible day of the Lord.

But God quickly changes his way and shows favor to Jerusalem again. Though judgment begins at God’s house, it does not end there, and it does not make a full end there (Jeremiah 4:27; Jeremiah 30:11). A remnant will be spared, the same as the third part mentioned earlier (Zechariah 13:8). Half will go into captivity, from which they may later be brought back, and the rest will not be cut off from the city as one might fear. Many of the Jews will receive the gospel and so will not be cut off from the city of God, his church on earth. As Isaiah says, a tenth will remain (Isaiah 6:13; see Ezekiel 5:3).

Their cause will also be taken up against their enemies (Zechariah 14:3). After God has used those nations as a rod to punish his people, he will then go out and fight against those nations by his judgments, just as he once fought against the enemies of his church in earlier days, such as the Egyptians and Canaanites. The tools of God’s anger will themselves become the objects of that anger. They will drink from the cup of trembling in their turn. Whomever God fights against, he will surely overcome. Every earlier day of battle, when God turned trouble into triumph for his people, is both a promise and a comfort. Since God does not change, it encourages his people to trust him now. It is also worth noting that the Roman Empire never flourished after Jerusalem’s destruction as it had before. In many ways, God fought against it.

Even though Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed, God will still have a church in the world. Gentiles will be brought in, and believing Jews will be joined with them (Zechariah 14:4, Zechariah 14:5). These verses are hard to understand, but many good interpreters take this meaning. God will keep watch over Jerusalem even when its enemies are tearing it down. His feet will stand in that day on the Mount of Olives, from which he can look over the city and the temple (Mark 13:3). When a refiner puts gold in the furnace, he stays nearby and watches it so it is not damaged. In the same way, when Jerusalem, God’s gold, is being refined, he will oversee it.

This was fulfilled in a literal way when the Lord Jesus was often on this mountain, especially when he ascended into heaven from there (Acts 1:12). It was the last place where his feet stood on earth, the place from which he rose. The wall that separated Jews and Gentiles will be removed. The mountains around Jerusalem, especially this one, showed that the city was enclosed and hard to approach. This mountain stood like a barrier between the Gentiles and Jerusalem, like the mountain of division in the Song of Songs (Song of Songs 2:17). But by the destruction of Jerusalem, that mountain will split in two, the Jewish barrier will be taken down, and the church will be opened up to the Gentiles, who were made one with the Jews when the middle wall of partition was broken down (Ephesians 2:14).

Who are you, O great mountain? The ceremonial law, the old system of sacrifices and rituals given through Moses, was a great mountain in the way of the Jews’ conversion. It seemed impossible to get over. Yet before Christ and his gospel, it was made level. That mountain moves away, but the covenant of peace cannot be broken, because peace is still preached to those far off and to those near.

A new and living way will be opened into the new Jerusalem, both for seeing it and entering it. Since the mountain is split, one half to the north and the other to the south, a very large valley will open up. This means a broad way of communication between Jerusalem and the Gentile world. Through it, the Gentiles will freely enter the gospel church, and the word of the Lord, which goes out from Jerusalem, will have free course into the Gentile world. In this way, the Lord’s way is prepared, for every mountain and hill is brought low, and the rough places are made into smooth valleys (Isaiah 40:4).

Those Jews who believe will also come in and join the Gentiles in the gospel church. “You shall flee to the valley of the mountains” means they will hurry into the church with the Gentiles, just as the Gentiles once came in with them (Zechariah 8:23). The valley of the mountains is the gospel church, where the Jews were added daily, as many as should be saved. They fled to that valley as to a place of safety. This valley is said to reach to Azal, or the separate place, meaning all those whom God has set apart for himself. When God makes his mountains a way by turning them into a valley (Isaiah 49:11), that way will be open to all travelers (Isaiah 35:8), and even the foolish will not lose it.

Or this may mean those who are now separated from God. For the Gentiles, who were far away, will be brought near together with the Jews, who were a people near to him. Both will have access to one another, and both will have shared access to God as Father through one Spirit (Ephesians 2:18). They will flee to the valley of the mountains, to the gospel church, with a strong sense of danger from the curse of the law. They will flee from the coming wrath, from the avenger of blood who is chasing them, to the church as to a city of refuge, or like doves to their windows. It will be like the days when people fled before the earthquake in Uzziah’s time (Amos 1:1).

The gospel shows the wrath of God from heaven (Romans 1:18), so that we may wake up and escape for our lives. We must flee as from an earthquake, because we feel the ground ready to sink under us. We cannot find any firm place to stand in this world, so we must run to Christ, and in him alone we can stand secure and at peace.

God will also appear in his glory to carry out all this. “The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with you.” This may refer to his coming to destroy Jerusalem, to destroy Jerusalem’s enemies, to set up his kingdom in the world, which is called the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:37), or to his final coming at the end of time. In any case, it teaches us that the Lord will come. This has always been the faith of God’s people: behold, the Lord comes to keep every word he has spoken at the right time.

When he comes, all his saints come with him. They follow his movement and are ready to serve his purpose. Christ will come at the end of time with ten thousands of his saints, just as he came to give the law on Mount Sinai. And every believer, since he belongs to God as his God, may look forward to that coming with joy and say, “The Lord my God shall come.” This will be the comfort of all who belong to him, for blessed is the Lord, and all the saints will be with him. That will be their lasting joy, to live in his presence. So they may rightly pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, and bring all the saints with you.”

God’s providence also appears here as strangely mixed (Zechariah 14:6, Zechariah 14:7). “In that day” the light will not be clear or dark, neither day nor night, but at evening time it shall be light. Some take this to mean the whole time from then until the coming of the Messiah, when the Jewish church had neither full peace nor constant trouble, but a cloudy day, with neither steady rain nor steady sunshine. But it can also be understood more broadly, as a picture of God’s usual way of ruling in providence and grace.

This gives us the normal pattern of God’s dealings. The day of his grace and the day of his providence are neither fully bright nor fully dark. It is so with God’s church in this world. Where the Sun of Righteousness has risen, it cannot be complete darkness, yet before heaven it will not be full day. It is so with believers too. They are not darkness, but light in the Lord, and yet, while much error and sin still remain in them, it is not perfect day.

It is also true of God’s providences toward his church. In general, the church’s affairs are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. There is a mixture of mercy and judgment, and we are not sure which will seem to prevail, whether it is evening twilight or morning twilight. We are caught between hope and fear, unsure how to read what is happening.

Still, there is comfort here: “It shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord.” This means, first, that these mixed events are beautiful and fit together under one plan. There is one design and one purpose in all of them. All the wheels make one wheel, and all the turns together make one day. Second, these things are brief. It is as if they last for only one day, only a little while. The cloud that darkens the light will soon pass. Third, God sees all of it and is working in it all. These things are known to the Lord. He notices them and orders and arranges everything for the best, according to the counsel of his will.

At last there is a very joyful end: “At evening time it shall be light.” It shall be clear light, and no longer dark. We are sure of this in the world to come, and we hope for it in this world too, even when evening comes and our patience is worn out from waiting all day for relief. Yes, even when we fear it will become fully dark, and when things are at their worst and the church’s condition seems most miserable. As the sun goes down at noon for the church’s enemies, so light rises at night for the church. Light springs up for the upright out of darkness (Psalm 112:4). Deliverance often comes when the burden has become heaviest, and when God’s people have stopped expecting it, so that it comes as a pleasant surprise.