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Zechariah

About this book
Chapter 14

1 A day of the Lord is about to come when your possessions will be divided as plunder in your midst. 2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to wage war; the city will be taken, its houses plundered, and the women raped.⁠ Then half of the city will go into exile, but the remainder of the people will not be taken away. 3 Then the Lord will go to battle and fight against those nations, just as he fought battles in ancient days.⁠ 4 On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives that lies to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in half from east to west, leaving a great valley. Half the mountain will move northward and the other half southward.⁠ 5 Then you will escape through my mountain valley, for the valley of the mountains will extend to Azal. Indeed, you will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come with all his holy ones with him.⁠ 6 On that day there will be no light—the sources of light in the heavens will congeal. 7 It will happen in one day—a day known to the Lord—not in the day or the night, but in the evening there will be light.⁠ 8 Moreover, on that day living waters will flow out from Jerusalem,⁠ half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea;⁠ it will happen both in summer and in winter.⁠ 9 The Lord will then be king over all the earth. In that day the Lord will be seen as one with a single name. 10 All the land will change and become like the rift valley from Geba to Rimmon, south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be raised up and will stay in its own place from the Benjamin Gate to the site of the First Gate and on to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the royal winepresses. 11 And people will settle there, and there will no longer be the threat of divine extermination—Jerusalem will dwell in security.⁠ 12 But this will be the nature of the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that have fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will decay while they stand on their feet, their eyes will rot away in their sockets, and their tongues will dissolve in their mouths. 13 On that day there will be great confusion from the Lord among them; they will seize each other and attack one another violently. 14 Moreover, Judah will fight at Jerusalem, and the wealth of all the surrounding nations will be gathered up—gold, silver, and clothing in great abundance. 15 This is the kind of plague that will devastate horses, mules, camels, donkeys, and all the other animals in those camps. 16 Then all who survive from all the nations that came to attack Jerusalem will go up annually to worship the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, and to observe the Feast of Shelters.⁠ 17 But if any of the nations anywhere on earth refuse to go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, they will get no rain. 18 If the Egyptians will not do so, they will get no rain—instead there will be the kind of plague that the Lord inflicts on any nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Shelters. 19 This will be the punishment of Egypt and of all nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Shelters. 20 On that day the bells of the horses will bear the inscription “Holy to the Lord.” The cooking pots in the Lord’s temple will be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar. 21 Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah will become holy in the sight of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, so that all who offer sacrifices may come and use some of them to boil their sacrifices in them. On that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

Texts in conversation

Compare Zechariah 14:8 and 1 Enoch 17:4

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

1 Enoch describes a vision of “living waters,” language that echoes Zechariah’s description of living waters flowing down from Jerusalem on the future day when God becomes king, showing how the Hebrew Bible influenced Jewish apocalyptic tradition.

Passages

Zechariah 14:8

Hebrew Bible
6 On that day there will be no light—the sources of light in the heavens will congeal. 7 It will happen in one day—a day known to the Lord—not in the day or the night, but in the evening there will be light. 8 Moreover, on that day living waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it will happen both in summer and in winter. 9 The Lord will then be king over all the earth. In that day the Lord will be seen as one with a single name. 10 All the land will change and become like the rift valley from Geba to Rimmon, south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be raised up and will stay in its own place from the Benjamin Gate to the site of the First Gate and on to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the royal winepresses.
500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Zechariah

1 Enoch 17:4

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
2 And they led me to a place of darkness, and to a mountain whose peak reached to heaven. 3 And I saw the places of the sun and moon and the treasuries of the stars and of the thunder in the utmost depths, where there was a fiery bow and arrows and their quiver, and a fiery sword and all the lightnings. 4 And they took me to the living waters, and to the fire of the west, which receives every setting of the sun. 5 And I came to a river of fire where the fire flows like water and pours into the great sea towards the west. 6 I saw the great rivers and came to the great river and to the great darkness, and went to the place where no flesh walks.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

References

"... The significance of the living waters and of the fire of the west (17:4), to which Enoch is next led, is not entirely clear. The expression “living waters” is used in the Hebrew Bible to express the meaning “fresh water” (e.g. Genesis 26:19), but that is hardly what is intended here. The expression is also used in Zechariah 14:8 in a context referring to life-giving water, and it is possible that this is what is in mind in 1 Enoch, but if so, the idea is not developed ..."
Michael A. Knibb, “The Use of Scripture in 1 Enoch 17–19,” in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome: Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst, ed. Florentino García Martínez and Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, JSJSup 82 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 170.
"... The next section (1 Enoch 17:4-5) with its references to various kinds of waters and rivers is less transparently the kind of thing one would expect to find in a royal tour, But rivers were not simply geographical features in the ancient Near East. The “living waters” of v. 4 are typologically the same as the living waters of Zechariah 14:8 which flow out of Jerusalem on the day that “Yahweh will become king over all the earth" (Zechariah 14:9). They are the means of prosperity and bounty which are associated with the ideology of kingship, divine and human ..."
Carol A. Newsom, “The Development of 1 Enoch 6–19: Cosmology and Judgment,” CBQ 42.3 (1980): 310–329.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Zechariah 14:8 and 1 Enoch 17:4

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