Though your last national memory was the execution of your king’s sons. No! Here, God’s idea of greatness is not power, but peace.įear not. I thought surely God would picture a military power, a burgeoning economic giant, an international powerhouse. I must confess this completely caught me off guard. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of great age. Buried beneath layers of the past, God saw a future. Somehow God looked amidst the rubble and saw restoration. Everywhere they looked they saw reminders of their sinful past…and the devastating consequences. Judah was a byword.ħ0 years later they returned. They sat among the rubble of the temple, unprotected by their broken city walls. The last thing burned into Judah’s mind was their king, Zedekiah, marched before the firing squad of his day, where he saw all of his sons executed, and then his own eyes gouged out so that his last visual memory would be the death of his own sons. The walls broken down, the temple torn apart, this once great nation became a byword. Jerusalem, that city on a hill, became nothing more than a pile of rubbish. Storming in the from the east, they ransacked the temple, destroyed the palace and pillaged cities and villages. Babylon succeeded in making sure Israel became that. Zechariah 8:13ĭ defines “byword” as an object of general reproach, derision or scorn. And as you have been a byword of cursing among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so will I save you, and you shall be a blessing.
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