Hi JosyWales and Brother James,
I think this verse perfectly captures the issues God had been trying to deal with in Judah. In one place Jeremiah points out he is in his twenty-third year of warning them to stop their idolatry an avert God's judgment on them. Their response when some had escaped to Egypt, taking Jeremiah with them is, 'we had plenty when we worshipped the queen of heaven, and since we stopped making offerings to her we have been in want'. They didn't see that it was God who had brought them into want as a punishment for idolatry, nor, that He had always provided for them when they had been faithful to Him. When Jeremiah addresses the women of Judah, in Egypt, this is what they replied:
Jeremiah 44:19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men? {men: or, husbands?}
It's precisely because of the headship (over a wife) which God gave again to men after the fall, that God promised Himself to destroy the men if they would not repent. I think you are forgetting that none of the idolatrous worship systems were without sexual deviancy. As a result, all the men and women worshipping the queen of heaven, had broken several of the laws by which they ought to have been bound in covenant to God. So, they were not only breaking the second commandment, but were committing abominations - all stoning offences
Deuteronomy 13:6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which [is] as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; 7 [Namely], of the gods of the people which [are] round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the [one] end of the earth even unto the [other] end of the earth; 8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. {bondage: Heb. bondmen} 11 And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.
Here is the word in Isaiah 3:17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts. Check out H6596. 25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
God has a place in His heart for widows, which we see all through scripture. They are to be taken care of. In the situation which would befall the women of Judah, there would be very few men left to become a legitimate covering to them, and a comfort, in a right way.
Isaiah 3:26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she [being] desolate shall sit upon the ground. {desolate: or, emptied: Heb. cleansed}
Josy, these things happened as Jeremiah describes them. One aspect of his account stands out to me, which is, that they people who had been worshipping the queen of heaven had no spiritual insight whatever, and even when the meaning of external events was being spelled out to them year by year, they still preferred to worship the queen of heaven rather than their Creator and Saviour. This is what Paul describes in principle in Romans 1:
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. [creature = person or thing]
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication...'
'they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge', is the basis of all idolatry. Romans 1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their image-inations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Joshua was the real High Priest at the time of Zechariah's vision. God showed Zechariah the role of the true High Priest as the substitute of all men, who would offer Himself. He (Joshua/God our Saviour - Messiah) would take on our dirty garments (sin) and through the sacrifice of Himself would bestow upon us new, clean, priestly garments, and we would be given the helmet of salvation, and the Holy Spirit by whom we are able to exercise His authority spiritually. The High Priest had/has special duties in the Temple/temple, which only he could/He can do. In the vision Joshua is both a High Priest and an ordinary man who had to offer sacrifices for his own sins. But, as a picture of the Messiah/High Priest yet to come, we see how Satan opposed/opposes Messiah's ministry, and opposes the brethren (believers).
Revelation 12:10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
The Branch is a reference to Messiah's descent from Jesse of the tribe of Judah. If you think of a tree standing the right way up - not the way you would draw a genealogy on paper, (with the root at the top), then it's easy to see Jesse's eight sons as branches, with David's descendants forming their own 'branch' system within the whole tree. The 'branch' is the Hebrew word for 'sprout'. This picture was understood by the people, and fits in very well with other prophecy, such as Isa 6:13 and Num 24:17, where Sceptre is a (wooden) rod.
sceptre
H7626 שֵׁבֶט shebet (shay'-bet) n-m.
1. a scion, i.e. (literally) a stick (for punishing, writing, fighting, ruling, walking, etc.) or (figuratively) a clan
[from an unused root probably meaning to branch off]
KJV: X correction, dart, rod, sceptre, staff, tribe.
Isaiah 54:5
For thy Maker [is] thine husband;
the LORD of hosts [is] his name;
and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel;
The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
Isaiah 59:20 And the Redeemer shall come to Zion [Jerusalem], and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD.
Luke 13:27 But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all [ye] workers of iniquity. 28 There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you [yourselves] thrust out. 29 And they shall come from the east, and [from] the west, and from the north, and [from] the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. 30 And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.
31 The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. 32 And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third [day] I shall be perfected. 33 Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the [day] following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.
Zion (previously Jebus) is a rocky mount - a hard, dry place, with no fresh water. It has to be piped in somehow.
Symbolically, this is like the heart of stone, which God promised to change to a heart of flesh in those who receive Him (Messiah).
John 7:37 In the last day, that great [day] of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believes on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given]; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
I think this verse perfectly captures the issues God had been trying to deal with in Judah. In one place Jeremiah points out he is in his twenty-third year of warning them to stop their idolatry an avert God's judgment on them. Their response when some had escaped to Egypt, taking Jeremiah with them is, 'we had plenty when we worshipped the queen of heaven, and since we stopped making offerings to her we have been in want'. They didn't see that it was God who had brought them into want as a punishment for idolatry, nor, that He had always provided for them when they had been faithful to Him. When Jeremiah addresses the women of Judah, in Egypt, this is what they replied:
Jeremiah 44:19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men? {men: or, husbands?}
It's precisely because of the headship (over a wife) which God gave again to men after the fall, that God promised Himself to destroy the men if they would not repent. I think you are forgetting that none of the idolatrous worship systems were without sexual deviancy. As a result, all the men and women worshipping the queen of heaven, had broken several of the laws by which they ought to have been bound in covenant to God. So, they were not only breaking the second commandment, but were committing abominations - all stoning offences
Deuteronomy 13:6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which [is] as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; 7 [Namely], of the gods of the people which [are] round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the [one] end of the earth even unto the [other] end of the earth; 8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. {bondage: Heb. bondmen} 11 And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.
Here is the word in Isaiah 3:17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts. Check out H6596. 25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
God has a place in His heart for widows, which we see all through scripture. They are to be taken care of. In the situation which would befall the women of Judah, there would be very few men left to become a legitimate covering to them, and a comfort, in a right way.
Isaiah 3:26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she [being] desolate shall sit upon the ground. {desolate: or, emptied: Heb. cleansed}
Josy, these things happened as Jeremiah describes them. One aspect of his account stands out to me, which is, that they people who had been worshipping the queen of heaven had no spiritual insight whatever, and even when the meaning of external events was being spelled out to them year by year, they still preferred to worship the queen of heaven rather than their Creator and Saviour. This is what Paul describes in principle in Romans 1:
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. [creature = person or thing]
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication...'
'they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge', is the basis of all idolatry. Romans 1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their image-inations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Joshua was the real High Priest at the time of Zechariah's vision. God showed Zechariah the role of the true High Priest as the substitute of all men, who would offer Himself. He (Joshua/God our Saviour - Messiah) would take on our dirty garments (sin) and through the sacrifice of Himself would bestow upon us new, clean, priestly garments, and we would be given the helmet of salvation, and the Holy Spirit by whom we are able to exercise His authority spiritually. The High Priest had/has special duties in the Temple/temple, which only he could/He can do. In the vision Joshua is both a High Priest and an ordinary man who had to offer sacrifices for his own sins. But, as a picture of the Messiah/High Priest yet to come, we see how Satan opposed/opposes Messiah's ministry, and opposes the brethren (believers).
Revelation 12:10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
The Branch is a reference to Messiah's descent from Jesse of the tribe of Judah. If you think of a tree standing the right way up - not the way you would draw a genealogy on paper, (with the root at the top), then it's easy to see Jesse's eight sons as branches, with David's descendants forming their own 'branch' system within the whole tree. The 'branch' is the Hebrew word for 'sprout'. This picture was understood by the people, and fits in very well with other prophecy, such as Isa 6:13 and Num 24:17, where Sceptre is a (wooden) rod.
sceptre
H7626 שֵׁבֶט shebet (shay'-bet) n-m.
1. a scion, i.e. (literally) a stick (for punishing, writing, fighting, ruling, walking, etc.) or (figuratively) a clan
[from an unused root probably meaning to branch off]
KJV: X correction, dart, rod, sceptre, staff, tribe.
Isaiah 54:5
For thy Maker [is] thine husband;
the LORD of hosts [is] his name;
and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel;
The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
Isaiah 59:20 And the Redeemer shall come to Zion [Jerusalem], and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD.
Luke 13:27 But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all [ye] workers of iniquity. 28 There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you [yourselves] thrust out. 29 And they shall come from the east, and [from] the west, and from the north, and [from] the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. 30 And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.
31 The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. 32 And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third [day] I shall be perfected. 33 Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the [day] following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.
Zion (previously Jebus) is a rocky mount - a hard, dry place, with no fresh water. It has to be piped in somehow.
Symbolically, this is like the heart of stone, which God promised to change to a heart of flesh in those who receive Him (Messiah).
John 7:37 In the last day, that great [day] of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believes on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given]; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
