Five: Clean Garments for the High Priest (The Fourth Vision) - Zech 3
- Oct 5, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 6, 2024
1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. 2 The Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?’
3 Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. 4 The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’
Then he said to Joshua, ‘See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.’
5 Then I said, ‘Put a clean turban on his head.’ So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood by.
6 The angel of the Lord gave this charge to Joshua: 7 ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: “If you will walk in obedience to me and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place among these standing here.
8 ‘“Listen, High Priest Joshua, you and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch. 9 See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes [or facets] on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.
10 ‘“In that day each of you will invite your neighbour to sit under your vine and fig-tree,” declares the Lord Almighty.’
Every now and again I have a worry dream which always takes the same form. In it I’m scrambling to get into my clerical robes, acutely aware that the service should have begun ten minutes ago, that the Bishop is waiting, and that I haven’t finished writing my sermon yet. Even in real life I’ve been known to take all my coloured stoles to some great service in the cathedral for fear of being the only priest wearing the wrong one.
In Zec 3, High Priest Joshua is standing in a heavenly courtroom wearing the wrong robes. The Angel of the Lord is presiding, Satan is making accusations and, shockingly, Joshua is wearing filthy clothes!
How shameful! How dare this man even be in God’s presence! We expect him to be cast out at any moment. But no. Instead, the Lord turns to the Accuser and says, “‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”
Understanding of the nature of The Accuser or Satan seems to develop through the Old Testament and into the New. At times he acts like a Director of Public Prosecutions, alerting the Lord to people’s bad behaviour. At others he positively incites rebellion. In the Gospels he tries unsuccessfully to tempt Jesus to follow another path and in the Letters of the NT he is an enemy to be resisted. Zechariah would, I think, have approved of Rev 12: 10: ‘The accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.’
We know that Jerusalem had been burned to the ground and the people taken into exile. Now, a couple of generations later, some of their grandchildren (now grown up) had come back and were slowly rebuilding the Temple, trying to get life back to normal, and finding it hard going.
Joshua, like all High Priests, was their representative. He, and they, were sooty survivors, like burning sticks snatched from the fire – the remnant, rescued from that time of destruction. And far from dwelling on their guilt, God was going to show them his grace.
The attractive phrase ‘sooty survivor’ was coined by commentator Pamela Scalise (p219). But, as other scholars point out, the ‘filth’ of Joshua’s clothing is a far stronger word, reminiscent of the words for excrement or vomit. Joshua is not simply besmirched by association with the Exile, he is steeped in the filth of sin. Drastic measures are needed.
“Strip off his filthy clothes,” God tells the angels standing by. Then to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.” There is not only grace, but glory too. Filthy rags are removed and festival garments are put in their place.
The fact that Joshua couldn’t do it himself but needed someone else to do it for him may remind fans of C S Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia of the scene in The Voyage of the Dawntreader, where Eustace isn’t able to take off his dragon skin, but needs the Lion to do it for him. It hurts when it happens, but he feels so much better for it.
Back to the heavenly courtroom. Zechariah pipes up and suggests a turban to go with it, and the angels add this as well.
The high priest used to wear a turban (Ex 28: 4, 36-38), which the Authorised Version amusingly calls a mitre. On the turban was placed a gold plate engraved with the words ‘Holy to the Lord’, which we will come across again in the final chapter. The commentator Richard Phillips (p72) suggests that the turban thus represents practical godliness, and that this rightly follows after the forgiveness and cleansing symbolised by the clean set of robes.
The next thing that happens is that the angel of the Lord gives Joshua the high priest a command along with a promise:
“If you will walk in obedience to me and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place among these standing here” (v7). The command is to obey God (like every Israelite) and keep his requirements (a term used particularly of priests carrying out their Temple duties). The promise is that Joshua will be allowed to govern God’s house and have charge of his courts (that’s the Temple), and God will give him a place “among these standing here” (that’s the heavenly court).
So as well as grace and glory, Joshua is promised government.
The Temple will be completed, Joshua will be able to carry out his high priestly duties, and he will be in charge of the place, as befits his role. And God will grant him access to his heavenly Council – a bit like when Abraham found himself invited to argue the case for Sodom to be spared if there were enough righteous people in it (Gen 18: 16-33).
Grace, glory and government.
It would be very pleasing if the last three verses of the chapter could be summed up in a word beginning with G as well. Grace, glory, government and… gerbils, perhaps. Or giraffes. Or gyroscopes. Or giblets.
Let’s read it again and see:
The angel of the Lord says, ‘“Listen, High Priest Joshua, you and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch. See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day. In that day each of you will invite your neighbour to sit under your vine and fig-tree,” declares the Lord Almighty.’
The Branch might seem like an odd title for the servant of the Lord, but it would have been readily understood by those who were familiar with Isaiah the prophet. In 11: 1-3, 5 he writes:
‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him –
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord –
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord…
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.’
So the Branch is an image of the Messiah, and the Lord promises to bring him into the picture, although he doesn’t say when.
The stone in v9 is more tricky. Some scholars think that the seven-eyed stone here is a gemstone with seven facets – after all, the high priest’s ephod and breast-piece had gemstones mounted upon them (Ex 28 again, this time v6-21).
Gemstone! That would do.
But it seems more likely that it’s a big stone used in building, which is why it’s set in front of Joshua, rather than put in his hand or attached to his shiny new turban.
God is going to engrave it with an inscription: it sounds like a capstone that you’d use to finish off a building, with some text written on it. If so, it means the Temple really is going to get finished – God is preparing the final stone already!
The seven eyes on it mean that God is watching to make sure his purposes are fulfilled. Why seven? Well, that’s the number of perfection, here and there throughout the Bible. In particular, in Rev 5:6 the Lamb standing on the throne of God has seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. God has perfect vision and perfect knowledge.
So, we have the Messianic Branch and an engraved stone for the high priest. What about the last part, the removal of sin in a single day and the promise of inviting the neighbours round to sit under vine and fig-tree?
High Priest Joshua was again to preside over the Day of Atonement, when the sins of Israel were symbolically cleansed, but that day had to be repeated year after year. Zechariah’s prophecy, though, speaks of a single decisive day.
A day to wash away the sins of the whole land. And a day to usher in a time of peace and prosperity. Not only would everyone have their own vine and fig-tree to sit under (a fairly common phrase in the OT for prosperity and security), but they will also invite their neighbours round to sit under them – a sign of friendship and the absence of loneliness.
The vine and the fig-tree (v10) are common signs of peace and prosperity in the Bible, according to commentator Mike Butterworth (p869) because they take a long time to produce fruit. Only a settled and secure land can be blessed with such benefits. Such was the case in the time of Solomon - 1Kgs 4:25 comments “During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba [far north to far south – in the UK, like saying from John O’Groats to Land’s End], lived in safety, everyone under their own vine and under their own fig tree.” Micah (4:4) promised that, in the last days, “everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.” Zechariah goes one better, though. In 3:10 “each of you will invite your neighbour to sit under your vine and fig tree,” so that prosperity is supplemented by community, and loneliness is banished. What a great picture of the life to come!
Israel was a long way off experiencing that in Joshua’s lifetime, even with the Temple completed. But we can easily see how well the whole passage is fulfilled by Jesus, the Great High Priest with (more or less) the same name.
On the cross he represents us all, as a high priest should. He takes the guilt and shows us God’s grace. His moment of defeat is in fact a moment of glory. Jesus walked in obedience to God and so, as Isaiah put it years earlier (9:6), “the government is on his shoulders.”
Grace, glory and government.
He is the promised Messiah, both a king (branch) in the line of David and our great High Priest. He took away the sins of the land – of the whole world – in a single day. And he promises us an eternity in God’s presence in peace and friendship – even better than those OT dreams of inviting the neighbours round to sit under your own vine and fig-tree.
We’ve now thought about High Priest Joshua and the greater High Priest and Messiah Jesus.
What about us?
Well, there are three striking images in this chapter that should inspire us, and I will finish off with them.
The first is the stick snatched from the fire or, in older language, the brand plucked out of the burning.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, described himself as ‘a brand plucked out of the burning.’ When he was only four years old the family house burnt down, and little John only narrowly escaped with his life. Later he saw that God’s grace had rescued him from the fires of hell, so that from an eternal perspective as well as an earthly one, he was ‘a brand plucked out of the burning.’ It was the phrase Wesley chose for his epitaph.
Do we take that seriously the fate we were heading for, and the miracle of our rescue from it? We are brands plucked out of the burning.
The second image is that of standing before God in filthy clothes, and having them replaced by beautiful finery. There’s a verse in Isaiah (64:6) which reads: “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”
I remember, years ago, watching a sketch in which a woman stands before the gates of heaven, trying in vain to gain entry. She protests that in her handbag she has all the documentation she needs – certificates of baptism and confirmation, subscriptions to various charities, and other evidence of good deeds. In desperation she opens her bag and pulls out…a pile of dirty rags.
Our greatest achievements cannot win us honour in God’s sight – they’re like a set of disgusting, filthy clothes compared with his purity and holiness. We need him, in his grace, to strip us of those and clothe us afresh. (It’s why some churches which practise baptism by full immersion give people clean white robes when they come out of the water – what a powerful symbol!)
Do we come to God for cleansing and renewal and reclothing? Or are we relying on what we think we’ve earned instead?
And the third striking image is that of a peaceful society with everyone having their own vine and fig-tree, and inviting their neighbours and friends to join them underneath, being shaded from the hot sun. God wants us to join him in the New Creation, and has opened the way by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
When we think of that heavenly realm we might think in terms of a feast, or a shining city, or a beautiful garden, or a family reunion. Zechariah invites us to add another image to that list – of friendship, security and neighbourliness under fig-trees and vines.
So that we can enjoy God’s grace, glory, government and… er… grapes.
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