God Is The God of Vengeance - Zechariah 1-7

Zechariah 1:18-21 (ESV)

A Vision of Horns and Craftsmen

And I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, four horns! And I said to the angel who talked with me, “What are these?” And he said to me, “These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” Then the LORD showed me four craftsmen. And I said, “What are these coming to do?” He said, “These are the horns that scattered Judah, so that no one raised his head. And these have come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations who lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter it.”

Zechariah is a motivational speaker sent by God to motivate the returning remnant from Israel’s 70 year captivity to rebuild their covenant with God.  Ezra returned with some to rebuild their Temple.   Nehemiah will return with some to rebuild the city.  Zechariah is attempting to motivate them to restore the covenant they had with God.   In the first six chapters he gives them eight visions.  Each vision is used to motivate them to return to God and restore His covenant with them.   The above passage is the second vision.   The motivation Zechariah is using here is:

There will be justice on Israel’s enemies.  

God wants them to know that during the 70 years that He was discipling them, He was not ignoring the evilness of those wicked nations He actually used to discipline them.  God is the avenger of our suffering that occurs at the hands of our enemies.   In one of his many commentaries on the New Testament books, John MacArther wrote the following about vengeance:

It is important to note that retaliation belongs to God alone. The Bible explicitly forbids Christians to take their own vengeance. 

We are not to take vengeance.  In fact, we are to do the opposite.   Note what Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 5:43-48 (ESV)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Zechariah, however, wants the nation to know (and us) that just becuase we are not to take vengeance on others, that does not mean God won’t.   It is He who can balance love and wrath to create holy vengeance.   Our vengeance is unholy.  We can’t balance love, mercy, grace and wrath.     We lean one way or the other ... mostly toward wrath.   The people can return to God and re-establish their covenant becuase they can trust God to balance the need for vengeance on their enemies.