Freedom for Prisoners: The theme of the Lord’s universal reign from Jerusalem returns in Zechariah 14, but this passage and the other chapters in between reveal a period of danger from corrupt leadership and external attack. It is not possible to ascertain a specific chronology, and even the relative chronology is not precise. The context and arrangement of Zechariah 7–8 had opened up an indeterminate length of time between God’s restoration of the Jewish community in the sixth century B.C. and the end times. The prophecies in Zechariah 9–14 reveal that future in terms of existing OT texts. Before the king’s worldwide reign of peace can begin, war resumes in order to free the diaspora Jews to return to the land.

9:14–15  This third-person depiction of a storm theophany clarifies that the Lo…