Text

[14] Then the LORD will appear over them,

And the Lord shall be upon them,

And his arrow go forth like lightning;

And shall go forth like a lightning bolt,

The LORD God will sound the trumpet

The Lord Almighty shall shall trumpet with a trumpet

And march forth in the whirlwinds of the South,

And he shall go forth in his threatening surge

[15] The LORD of hosts will protect them,

The Lord Almighty shall shield them,

And they shall devour and tread down the slingers

And they shall consume them,

And they shall bury them in slingstones

They shall drink their blood like wine,

And they shall drink them as wine,

And be full like a bowl

And they shall be full like the bowls of the altar

Drenched like the corners of the altar.

Notes on Text

Here we see the promise of God’s aid to the “sons of Zion” from verse 13.  Verse 14 describes the nature of this aid, and verse 15 describes the results of it.  Perhaps the most interesting part of this verse is the language towards the end of verse 15 “they shall drink their blood like wine / and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar.”  We should notice some similarities between this language and the language found in verse 7, “I will take away its blood from its mouth…”  Consuming blood is forbidden by Hebrew dietary restrictions, specifically because the blood was viewed as containing the creature’s life or power.  So in verse 7, the blood is removed from the Philistine’s mouths because it belongs to God himself and the Philistines are entering into reverence to God.  In verse 15, the victory of the sons of Zion (with God’s substantial help) is described using the language of ritual sacrifice, with the Greeks who will die in this promised victory taking the placing of the sacrificial animal, and the sons of Zion taking the place of the altar of God.  The godly, then, are sanctified through the blood of battle in this passage.  This poses an interesting contrast to verses 9-10, wherein the triumphant arrival of the King ushers in a new era of peace and the weapons of war are destroyed.  Possibly this dissonance indicates that different source texts have been incorporated into Zechariah 9, possibly it is just the case that verse 9-10 are describing the end state that will occur as a result of the deeds described later in the chapter.