Zechariah 1:1–6 (NLT) 1 In November of the second year of King Darius’s reign, the Lord gave this message to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah and grandson of Iddo: 2 “I, the Lord, was very angry with your ancestors. 3 Therefore, say to the people, ‘This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.’ 4 Don’t be like your ancestors who would not listen or pay attention when the earlier prophets said to them, ‘This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Turn from your evil ways, and stop all your evil practices.
As we have seen in the introduction with the team from the Bible Project, Zechariah is a complex book, ‘a wild ride’. Indeed Jerome, one of the great scholars of the early Christian Church, described Zechariah as “the most obscure of books”.
Zechariah’s answers our questions about where is the world going from the perspective of faith in God and hope in God’s future through the promised Messiah, Jesus. He is not only Israel’s hope, but the hope of the nations.