Zechariah 4:5-7 New English Translation
5 He replied, “Don’t you know what these are?” So I responded, “No, sir.” 6 Therefore he told me, “This is the Lord’s message to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by strength and not by power, but by my Spirit,’[a] says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
Oracle of Response
7 “What are you, you great mountain?[b] Because of Zerubbabel you will become a level plain! And he will bring forth the temple[c] capstone with shoutings of ‘Grace! Grace!’[d] because of this.”
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Zechariah 4:6 sn It is premature to understand the Spirit here as the Holy Spirit (the third Person of the Trinity), though the OT prepares the way for that NT revelation (cf. Gen 1:2; Exod 23:3; 31:3; Num 11:17-29; Judg 3:10; 6:34; 2 Kgs 2:9, 15, 16; Ezek 2:2; 3:12; 11:1, 5).
- Zechariah 4:7 sn In context, the great mountain here must be viewed as a metaphor for the enormous task of rebuilding the temple and establishing the messianic kingdom (cf. TEV “Obstacles as great as mountains”).
- Zechariah 4:7 tn The word “temple” has been supplied in the translation to clarify the referent (cf. NLT “final stone of the Temple”).
- Zechariah 4:7 sn Grace is a fitting response to the idea that it was “not by strength and not by power” but by God’s gracious Spirit that the work could be done (cf. v. 6).
New English Translation (NET)
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