Text

[5] Ashkelon shall see it and be afraid;

Ashkelon shall see and shall be afraid,

Gaza too, and shall write in anguish;

And Gaza also shall be exceedingly anguished,

Ekron also, because its hopes are withered.

And Akkaron, because it has been dishonored by its trespasses.

The king shall perish from Gaza;

The king shall be destroy from Gaza,

Ashkelon shall be uninhabited;

And Askalon shall not be inhabited.

[6] A mongrel people shall settles in Ashdod,

And foreigners [ἀλλογενής allogenēs] will inhabit Azotus,

And I will make an end to the pride of Philistia.

And I shall humble the hubris of foreign tribes [ἀλλόφυλος allophylos].

[7] I will take away its blood from its mouth,

I will remove the blood from their mouths,

And its abominations from between its teeth;

And their abominations from the middle of their teeth,

It too shall be a remnant for our God;

And this shall also be left to our God,

It shall be like a clan in Judah, 

And they shall be as a ruler of a thousand in Judah 

Ekron shall be like the Jebusites

And in Akkaron as the Jebusites

[8] Then I will encamp at my house as a guard,

And I shall erect a structure for my house,

So that no one shall march to and fro;

So that neither would they pass by nor return,

No oppressor shall again overrun them,

And neither would they come upon them nor drive them out

For now I have seen with my own eyes.

Since now I have seen with my own eyes

Notes on Text

I often struggle with passages like these, in which many cities are listed, because understanding where those cities were and what their relationship was to ancient Hebrews is obviously critical to understanding the message of the passage.  Helpfully, I turned to the New Interpreter’s Bible commentary on this passage, which noted a couple of things that are interesting with regard to these geographic locations.  The commentary deals with verses 1-8 as a single unit and notes that essentially what is being described is a procession from north to south.  It also notes that Hadrach, which is mentioned in verse 1, is mentioned no where else in the Bible, and although there are non-Biblical inscriptions describing Hadrach, they cease completely after 698 BCE¹, suggesting the place was completely destroyed around that time.  Accordingly, the commentary suggests that God is being described here as reenacting a 7th or 8th century Assyrian military campaign which proceeded from north to south.  Particularly given verse 8, in which God encamps in their house and defends against future incursions, it seems pretty plausible to me that this was a deliberate act of parallelism on the part of the author, in which God’s conquest mirrors the conquest of worldly empires which overthrew the sovereignty of God’s people. 

This passage also has some interesting things to say about foreigners/mongrel peoples/Philistines.  In the Greek, the words used here are ἀλλογενής allogenēs and ἀλλόφυλος allophylos. The prefix ἂλλος allos means “another’s” or “strange.” The words γένος genοs and φῦλον phylon (which are cognate to genus and phylum), essentially refer to both kinship groups and political units, in the sense of a tribe or clan, but also in the broader sense of a race.  In the ancient world, nationality and kinship were viewed as synonymous.  For example, Israel, as a nation, is shorthand for the tribes of Israel, which is to say a group of people who are descended from a single common ancestor, who was named Israel.  

Interestingly, these foreign clans are incorporated into God’s kingdom in verse 7. “I will take away the blood from its mouth, and its abominations from between its teeth” is an explicit statement that they will become subject to Hebrew dietary restrictions (in which the blood must be drained from meat and specific foods are designated unclean), and then they are made like a clan of Judah. 

This treatment of Gentile peoples can be interpreted several ways.  One of those ways is as a straightforward parallel to worldly empires, in which subject peoples are conquered and incorporated into the tribute and belief systems of their new suzerains.  There is an argument that is advanced in many places in Hebrew scripture in which the obligations due to God are essentially identical to the obligations that would be due to an ancient emperor², which is to some extent an act of political resistance by an aristocratic priesthood subject to foreign emperors.  Read in this sense, what is being promised is essentially an act of political revenge, although a key characteristic of this story is that rather than actual worldly political agency, it is God who ascends to political supremacy. 

Read through the eyes of New Testament authors and specifically Matthew, this passage is interesting because it explicitly describes God’s treatment of Gentile peoples.  Matthew’s gospel is the closest to a form of Christian Judaism of all of the Gospels, and much more ambiguous than, for example, Luke when it comes to the validity of Christian evangelism to non-Hebrews. Notably, it is also Matthew that cites Zechariah most extensively, and so it is worth considering as we continue reading Zechariah what we think Matthew is pulling from this. 

Footnotes

[1] New Interpreter’s Bible Vol VII,  pp. 804 <back to top>

[2] It should also be noted that many ancient emperors made the argument that they were in fact gods, with attendant religious practices. <back to top>