Small Things: Zechariah 4:10

I am reading the minor prophets, or as the saying goes, they are reading me as I struggle with them. Mainly with their relevance today. Perhaps a book will come of this; I equally struggle with my writing because I can continue to use Amazon as the free vanity press it is, or I can try to be "discovered" by a real publishing house, or better, I can find a way to get readers. Or I can just let God take care of it and write what I write. 

Anyway, this is today's installment. It will look like I've skipped a lot of the minor prophets since my last such post, but that is only appearance. 

March 18, 2021, Zechariah 4. For this one I depend on the notes in the Believers’ Study Bible, which is an SBC production. In Zechariah’s fifth vision he sees and talks about a lampstand with two trees, olive probably, and oil drips into the receptacles continually so that the lights do not go out.  The message is very particular to the governor and priest at that time, as signs, the note says, of affirmation that they are doing the right thing in their leadership of the returned Jews in Jerusalem, in building the temple and the city. They are anointed ones (sons of fresh oil), but the message melds into a prophecy, or was seen as one in pre-Christ Israel, that there would be two Messiahs.

This is something I have just recently learned about through my husband’s studies, that there would be a Son of David and a Son of someone else, and these notes say some  Jews believed in a dual Messiahship of priest and king. This was not understood by all, of course, and it doesn’t seem to be operative in the New Testament records, because only “the Messiah” is spoken of, not “the Messiahs.” Why they would have seen two, I can’t know. Why not three, then? Prophet, priest, and king? Ah, there is no end to what the human mind can create for religious observance and dogma. I should know! My goal is to know the core, and be wary of all this additional materials not germane to the real gospel that Jesus and his first followers taught. Real hermeneutic should teach that, should reveal that.

One aspect of the minor prophets that holds us to it but also obscures it is the prominence of wonderful little poetic phrases that could be sermon or book titles, that carry weight in our own experience. We have one here, v. 10: For who as despised the day of small things? I will use that. However, I’m not sure what it means here, so research is needed. Is this a question to identify the sinner who do despise the day of small things? Or it is question to imply we should not despise the day of small things? Let’s go with the second, more positive version; I depend here on Bible Hub website:

Matthew Henry: Though the instruments be weak and unlikely, yet God often chooses such, to bring about great things by them. Let not the dawning light be despised; it will shine more and more to the perfect day.

Barnes Notes on the Bible: The simplest rendering is marked by the accents. "For who hath despised the day of small things? and (that is, seeing that there have rejoiced and seen the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel, these seven, the Eyes of the Lord, they are running to and fro in all the earth," 1:e., since God hath with joy and good-pleasure beheld the progress of the work of Zerubbabel, who can despise the day of small things? The day of small things was not only that of the foundation of the temple, but of its continued building also.

From Pulpit Commentary: Verse 10. - For who hath despised the day of small things? The "small things" are the weak and poor beginning of the temple (Haggai 2:3); as the Targum glosses, "on account of the edifice, because it was small." Small as the present work was, it was a pledge of the full completion, and was therefore not to be despised. So the question is equivalent to, "Can any one, after these promises and prophecies, presume to be doubtful about the future?"

So let’s ask ourselves, are we despising the day of small things? What a thing to contemplate. Most things are “small things.” Most days are “days of small things.” That frustrates those of us who have dreams. But the dreams come to fruition on the backs of “days of small things.” Today is a day of small things. Almost every day is. But to paraphase the silly old saying about acting, “There are no small people, just people living days of small things that add up to big things, if….”  And that IF is what matters. If you perceive them to be contributors to big things. If you see them as for God’s glory, no matter if it gets put on the evening news. If you see your writing as helping someone, even if it doesn’t get on the New York Times Bestseller List (a lot of c--- has been on that list). If you see the small things as meaningful to the person who gets the benefit of the service, even if just a kind card or a timely phone call.  If you see wiping the body fluids or waste from the ill person as vital to ongoing life as making the big paycheck. If you understand that what we consider small things often really are not.

Yes, this question is not a throw away in a text that otherwise seems irrelevant to our lives in 2021. The last year should convince us that the small things (a microscopic virus, a cotton mask) matters and are not to be despised (in the sense of dismissed as unimportant), any more than acts of kindness to the sufferers, many of whom were denied human presence in their suffering and death.  (And this was the worst, and probably most unnecessary part of this drama, in my mind. If the health care professionals could see them, why not the family?)

Let us not despise the day of small things.