Part Two We all know that sin stops us from inheriting the kind of world God the Creator envisaged for us; a world of peace, joy, righteousness, justice, and glory, not to mention communion with the Lord Himself. God set the world in motion, permitting the Fall and the devastation that it has brought in its wake. He made covenants with man; signposts and promises to the better world that He still intends to bring about: The Noahic covenant establishes …
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Part One When we examine the clear New Covenant passage in Jeremiah 31:31ff, we see that verses 31 and 32 name Israel and Judah as parties. We see also that it concerns the future (“the days are coming”), and that the NC will supersede in some way the Sinai Covenant. It is crucial to ask what the main promise of this covenant is, which is not difficult to ascertain. The New Covenant in the chapter concerns an internal or spiritual …
I have been thinking for a while that it might be a good idea to write about the New Covenant. Although there seems to be little confusion about it in the minds of Jeremiah, Paul, or the author of Hebrews, it has become something of a bugbear among Dispensationalists. In this series I want to interact a little with their issues, but I also want to provide my understanding of the New Covenant, which, as it happens, adds one more …
Part Four The Times of the Coming King[1] The last three chapters of the book of Zechariah document circumstances surrounding the advent of the coming Ruler, the Messiah. The oracle opens with a battle against Jerusalem (Zech. 12:1-9). The text indicates that Jerusalem and its rulers will be used as a means of judgment against the surrounding nations (Zech. 12:9). Not that Jerusalem gets off scott free. But this scene emphasizes the Lord’s role in defending His people. …
Part Three The Prophet as Actor and Two Covenants In various parts of the Old Testament some of the prophets were ordered to act out a scenario as a pictorial revelation to onlookers. In 1 Kings 20:35f. a prophet asked a man to strike him so that he could act the part of a careless guard who had lost his prisoner in order to make his tale a parable of the king’s release of the Syrian Ben-Hadad. Isaiah was …
Part Two The Ominous Visions of Chapter Five There is without any doubt an eeriness about the two visions of Zechariah 5. The flying scroll he sees first (Zech. 5:1-4) is thirty feet long (which is somewhat out of the ordinary), and fifteen feet wide (which definitely is).[1] Unger comments, Since these measurements are the exact size of the tabernacle in the wilderness, as may be computed from the boards used to build it (Exod. 26:15-25), the indication is …
Part One The Branch Builds Yahweh’s Temple But the scene changes when three visitors from Babylon leave a gift of silver and gold (Zech. 6:9-10).[1] From these precious materials he is told to make a crown, and then do an odd thing with it; place it on the head of Joshua the high priest (Zech. 6:11).[2] Then he is to utter certain words, words which cannot pertain to Joshua himself, but of which he plays a symbolic part in illustrating. …
Zechariah was active from 520 to about 480 B.C. He is mentioned along with Haggai in Ezra 5:1 and 6:14. His post-exilic book is remarkable for its imagery[1] and for its sustained messianism. This has caused some interpreters to despair at an interpretation, especially of its first and last thirds.[2] His use of covenant terminology is confined to two enigmatic passages (Zech. 9:11; 11:10). There are covenant intimations in the book (e.g. Zech. 6:15). But it is apparent that in …
Part Four A Literal Reading The structure of Ezekiel reaches its crescendo in the theme of the returning Glory to the Temple in Ezekiel 43:1-7.[1] This return must be linked with the abandonment of Solomon’s Temple by the Glory-cloud in chapter 11. There is a narrative-theological arc extending from Ezekiel 8 and 11 over to Ezekiel 43. This arc from a literal temple to what is often taken to be a spiritual temple at the end of the book, …
Part Two A Valley Full of Dry Bones The first vision in Ezekiel 37 is the best known in the book. If people are ignorant of everything else in the book, they are often aware of the valley of dry bones, though frequently they have no idea what it means. It surely doesn’t help when commentators apply the whole passage to the Christian church. The bones stretch out over a wide area, and the prophet is given an aerial …
