Teaching Notes Book of Zechariah - Chapters 4 and 5
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Quarantine Day 75. Tuesday. IRONMAN at Peachtree continues by Zoom.
Hugh C. Wood, Atlanta, Georgia
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Zechariah 4 New International Version (NIV)
The Gold Lampstand and the Two Olive Trees
4 Then the angel who talked with me returned and woke me up, like
someone awakened from sleep. 2 He asked me, “What do you see?”
I answered, “I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and
seven lamps on it, with seven channels to the lamps. 3 Also there are two olive
trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.”
4 I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?”
5 He answered, “Do you not know what these are?”
“No, my lord,” I replied.
6 So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not
by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.
7 “What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become
level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it!
God bless it!’”
8 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 9 “The hands of Zerubbabel have
laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you
will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.
10 “Who dares despise the day of small things, since the seven eyes of
the Lord that range throughout the earth will rejoice when they see the chosen
capstone[a] in the hand of Zerubbabel?”
11 Then I asked the angel, “What are these two olive trees on the right
and the left of the lampstand?”
12 Again I asked him, “What are these two olive branches beside the two
gold pipes that pour out golden oil?”
13 He replied, “Do you not know what these are?”
“No, my lord,” I said.
14 So he said, “These are the two who are anointed to[b] serve the Lord
of all the earth.”
Footnotes:
Zechariah 4:10 Or the plumb line
Zechariah 4:14 Or two who bring oil and
Zechariah 5 New International Version (NIV)
The Flying Scroll
5 I looked again, and there before me was a flying scroll.
2 He asked me, “What do you see?”
I answered, “I see a flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits
wide.[a]”
3 And he said to me, “This is the curse that is going out over the
whole land; for according to what it says on one side, every thief will be
banished, and according to what it says on the other, everyone who swears
falsely will be banished. 4 The Lord Almighty declares, ‘I will send it out,
and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears
falsely by my name. It will remain in that house and destroy it completely,
both its timbers and its stones.’”
The Woman in a Basket
5 Then the angel who was speaking to me came forward and said to me,
“Look up and see what is appearing.”
6 I asked, “What is it?”
He replied, “It is a basket.” And he added, “This is the iniquity[b] of
the people throughout the land.”
7 Then the cover of lead was raised, and there in the basket sat a
woman! 8 He said, “This is wickedness,” and he pushed her back into the basket
and pushed its lead cover down on it.
9 Then I looked up—and there before me were two women, with the wind in
their wings! They had wings like those of a stork, and they lifted up the
basket between heaven and earth.
10 “Where are they taking the basket?” I asked the angel who was
speaking to me.
11 He replied, “To the country of Babylonia[c] to build a house for it.
When the house is ready, the basket will be set there in its place.”
Footnotes:
Zechariah 5:2 That is, about 30 feet long and 15 feet wide or about 9
meters long and 4.5 meters wide
Zechariah 5:6 Or appearance
Zechariah 5:11 Hebrew Shinar
Zechariah 4Q80 Dead Sea Scrolls 50BCE
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Manuscripts of the 12 Manuscripts
https://www.bible.ca/manuscripts/bible-manuscripts-Septuagint-twelve-Greek-Minor-prophets-scroll-Nahal-Hever-Bar-Kochba-Cave-of-Horrors-letters-Dodekapropheton-Greek-8HevXIIgr-50BC.htm
The Greek Septuagint Twelve Minor Prophets scroll (2100 years old)
Introduction:
1. The Greek minor prophets
scroll was discovered in 1952 AD is one of the most important archeological
finds ever.
a. Dodekapropheton is the
Greek name for the 12 prophets as a collection.
b. It is a scroll of the
entire 12 minor prophets even though much of the text is destroyed over time.
c. It shows the Bible we
hold today is the same as it was before the time of Christ.
d. It proves the entire Old Testament was
translated by Jews into Greek before the time of Christ.
2. The Greek minor prophets
scroll dates to about 50 BC:
a. “Dating Conclusion:
Both hands give the impression of belonging to the late Ptolemaic or early
Roman period. Some features favour an earlier rather than a later date; no
feature recommends a later rather than an earlier date.” (Greek Minor Prophets
Scroll from Nahal Hever, Emanuel Tov, p25, 1990 AD)
b. Late Ptolemaic is
100-30 BC and Early Roman begins at 30 BC.
c. So Emanuel Tov, a
Jewish Scholar living in Israel dates the Greek scroll to before the Birth of
Christ and favours the “early date” ie. Before the Roman Era.
3. There are two caves
where scrolls were found: Cave 8 “Cave of Horrors” and Cave 5-6 “Cave of
Letters”
4. The Greek minor prophets
scroll was discovered at cave 8 in the Nahal Hever which is located about 5 km
south of En Gedi
a. Nahal (river) Hever
(Hebron = friend) means “river of the friend”. The town of Hebron is due west.
b. During the Bar Kochba
rebellion of 135 AD, also known as the “Second Jewish War with Rome”, the rebel
Zealot had moved from Qumran, Gamla and Kh. El Maqatir to Masada and the two
caves high in the hills of the Nahal Hever.
c. Cave 8 is known as the
“Cave of Horrors” (Ma'arat Ha'Eimim) because 40 skeletons were found here, the
remains of those seeking refuge during the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Archaeologists
found three ostraca, which had been placed on the skeletons, inscribed with the
names of the deceased.
d. The Romans killed the
rebel Jews by smoke inhalation by setting fires at the entrance.
e. In 1952 AD skeletons of
Men, women and children were excavated and reburied in the inner cave area.
f. The scroll of the 12
prophets represented a high value possession to these Jews in 135 AD, being 200
years old at the time.
g. Fragments of Jewish
prayers were found in Aramaic.
5. In the “Cave of Letters”
(cave 5-6) the following was found letters that date from 94-132 AD and
included three collections:
a. A leather waterskin
containing 15 letters (in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek), most of which were sent by
Shim'on Bar Kohkba (Shim'on b. Kosiba), the leader of the Bar Kohkba revolt.
b. A wrapped package
stored inside a leather purse, containing 35 personal financial records,
belonging to a woman named Babatha.
c. Five contracts
belonging to Eleazar ben Shmuel, a farmer from Ein Gedi.
d. Four languages were
used on the manuscripts: Greek, Hebrew, Nabatean, Aramaic
e. Of special note is that
all the scripture manuscripts were in Aramaic also known as “Square Hebrew”.
This is a different language and Mosaic Hebrew and modern Hebrew. Remember, in
the first century Hebrew was almost extinct being used only by the Jerusalem
temple elites.
f. Three other special
documents were found in the Cave of Letters (cave 5-6):
i. Marriage Contract
(5/6Hev37) A woman named Babata who was married and divorced/widowed twice had
a marriage contract in her possession that was found in cave 5-6. It was
written by husband which said, "If I [Babata's husband] die before you,
you will live in my house and receive maintenance from it and from my
possessions.". (5/6Hev37, Babata marriage contract, 135 AD)
ii. Sale Contract (5/6Hev47)
iii. Redemption of a Writ of
Seizure (5/6Hev36)
I. The Greek 12 minor prophets scroll of the Septuagint
1. The Greek scripture
scroll (cave 8) is the longest scroll ever found in Israel at 32 feet long and
are currently housed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
a. Two different men wrote
the entire scroll. We know this by graphology of textual styles that point to
two different “hands” through handwriting analysis.
b. Printed on vellum (animal
skin) with carbon ink.
c. Many skins were joined
to create a scroll 10 meters long and 35 cm high.
2. The document is in Greek expect for Mosaic
Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) where they wrote the name of God YHWH in the extinct
Hebrew alphabet.
a. Other documents found at
the same time would use four stars **** as an early “nomina sacra”
substitution.
b. This substitution of
Mosaic Hebrew for Greek in the name of God is probably the very beginning point
of “nomina sacra”.
c. Nomina sacra developed
into the Christian era and became almost ridiculous because they would create
substitutional abbreviations for other “sacred” things including: God, Father,
Son, Holy Spirit, Saviour, Cross, Christ etc.
d. While Christians
eventually abandoned the practice of nomina sacra altogether, the Jews continue
the practice by writing the word God in English as G-D where a dash is
substituted for the letter O.
e. Of course the ultimate
substitution was provided by the Holy Spirit himself in the 27 books of the New
Testament that consistently substitute KURIOS (Greek for “Lord”) for YHWH in
all Old Testament quotations in the New Testament.
f. Jehovah’s Witnesses, in
their standard delusional ignorant bliss, will point to YHWH written in Mosaic
Hebrew as proof that their New World Translation (NWT) is superior to all other
Bibles because they “RESTORED” the name of God with Jehovah. Since a Jw is
forbidden to read non-Watchtower religious materials on the internet, their
knowledge is no greater than what the Watchtower tells them. To illustrate
their unscholarly delusions, almost no JW even knows that the letter “J” does
not exist in Greek, Hebrew. Worse still, not even English, which was derived directly
from Hebrew, had a letter “J” before about 1650 AD. The 1611 AD KJV for
example, does not have contain a single “J”. They spelled Jesus’ name as IESUS
instead. So the NWT very modern substitution of JEHOVAH for the original
autograph KURIOS in the Greek New Testament is beyond bizarre. There are no
known Hebrew copies of Matthew, only rumours. And if these rumors were true, it
was probably a translation from the original Greek Matthew into Hebrew. Of
course 100% of Greek new testament manuscripts use KURIOS (LORD) and NEVER use
YHWH. So it was the Holy Spirit “who willed” the substitution of Kurios for
YHWH throughout the New Testament. Of course none of the truthful information
ever phases a JW because they blindly follow the Watchtower Magazine when it
contradicts the Bible. Jesus said, “leave them alone, they are blind guides”.
3. The 12 minor prophets are
all accounted for but extant fragments exist only for Jonah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Zechariah. Here are the actual sections of text that
have survived and can be read today. The rest is lost due to damage and decay
over 2100 years.
a. Jonah 1:14-2:7; 3:2-5;
3:7-4:2; 4:5.
b. Mic 1:1-8; 2:7-8; 3:5-6;
4:3-5; 4:6-10; 5:1(2)-6(7).
c. Nah 1:13-14; 2:5-10;
2:13-14; 3:3; 3:6-17.
d. Hab 1:5-11; 1:14-2:8;
2:13-20; 3:8-15.
e. Zeph 1:1-6; 1:13-18;
2:9-10; 3:6-7.
f. Zech 1:1-4; 1:12-15;
2:2-4(1:19-21); 2:6-12(2-8); 2:16(12)-3:2; 3:4-7; 8:19-21; 8:23-9:5.
4. The Greek scroll of the
12 minor prophets has clear signs of correction of the Greek text to fit it to
the Hebrew text then current.
a. It is almost identical
to our modern text in our bibles today but small differences do exist.
b. The does not necessarily
mean the scroll was translated from an older text that was corrected with a
different new text. Most of the differences can be explained by the original
translators trying to convey the meaning from Hebrew into Greek. Just like our
modern English Bibles differ widely in specific words used and word order, in
the end they all say basically the identical thing.
c. What is most
interesting, is that the text sometimes agrees with the both the LXX and
Masoretic, while in other cases differs from them both, while in other cases agrees
with the LXX over the Masoretic and vice versa.
No claim to (c) owned by Steve Rudd: November 2017
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Bible Project
Overview: Zechariah
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Zechariah is specific about dating his writing (520–518 BC).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Zechariah
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Zechariah 4 New International Version (NIV)
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Dead Sea Scrolls Bible Translations
http://dssenglishbible.com/scroll4Q80.htm
Commentary on Zechariah 4
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/kdo/zechariah-4.html
Commentary on Zechariah 5
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/kdo/zechariah-5.html
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How to Read the Bible: The Prophets
Bible Project
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Hugh C. Wood, Atlanta, Georgia
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
The Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament is a derivative of a public domain electronic edition.
Keil, Carl Friedrich & Delitzsch, Franz. "Commentary on Zechariah 4:5". https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/kdo/zechariah-3.html. 1854-1889.
No claim to (c) owned by Steve Rudd: November 2017
17 USC § 107 Fair Use. No claim of monetary remuneration on same.
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END
"Hugh C. Wood", "Hugh Wood", King Darius, Peachtree Church, Zechariah 4, Zechariah 5, 4Q80, 4Q76, Gold Lampstand and the Two Olive Trees, Flying Scroll,
