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Louise Brislane's avatar

John,

I asked my cousin about his interpretation of Zechariah 4: 10 as he is a Hebrew scholar with an MA behind his name, & is in the Scriptures on a daily basis & has been quite helpful to me over the past few years when I run into problems in the Tanakh. The following is his reply to me as to what did Zechariah 4: 10 means:

Chapter 3 verse 8 is THE KEY verse in the whole discourse. Now you have to understand that the scrolls don’t normally have verses nor chapters and the discourse begins in Chapter 1 verse 2. But Verse 1 to 3 introduces the discourse.

In Chapter 4 verse 10, the KJV version uses “ plummet “.. The Hebrew word is “ eben “ which is a stone that was used with a string to measure the rightness of the building of the Temple of God. It is metaphorically talking of righteousness in perfection of the Temple which is the measure of the statute of Christ. God’s righteousness is to be absolutely precise.

See when I built my first house, we had to use dumpy levels to get the exact and precise measuring point and we used plumblines to get the walls exact 90 degrees perfect and upright and straight. And in verse 4 , instead of a dumpy level to make sure of the exactness of the building, Zechariah has the “seven eyes of the LORD” looking out to ensure the quality of the building and it is “the small things” that have to be right FIRST or the building will either be out of wack or worse still, the building could collapse. And so there is nothing wrong with the ESV nor the KJV. And I think the use of “ plumb line “ is great description of how God establishes righteousness in “HIS HOUSE “..

In a further email to me my cousin sent me some pictures of levels of today & yesterday & went on to finish his discourse with the following:

This is a dumpy level .. God’s building will be perfect and righteous and hence God’s dumpy level is “ These seven are the eyes of the LORD “ as quoted in verse 10..

I was only reading the story of Martin Luther earlier this week and how he awoke to the opening of Psalm 31 verse 1: “In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. ” and then ML understood that it was God’s righteousness alone that was needed when he landed upon Romans 1 verse 17 “ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith ”.

So the building of the temple of God is done in righteousness because God’s exactitudes are not our exactitudes ..

So I have come away with the knowledge that we do not value "righteousness" in the same way as the LORD does. We are not as precise as He is. You know over the past year as I have been reading again through the Psalms & Proverbs that certain words have been impressing themselves on me & with them of course is the verses they are in. One yesterday before I got my answer from my cousin was Psalm 19: 7 - 11 & it reminded me of Psalm 119 which jumped out at me last year when I was pondering on it, that Righteousness seemed to be a key as it is in Proverbs 12 for example where righteousness seems to pop up regularly.

Now I have my answer with what Zechariah is saying if I interpret the meaning in the way that my cousin has disclosed today. So if I should pick up my Strong's concordance from beside me & look at how many pages cover the verses that mention righteousness in the Scriptures I might get a clearer picture of the important role of righteousness in God's eyes. Blessings in the powerful Name of Jesus. Louise B.

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