Zechariah 1:11-13
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
11 And they answered the angel of the Lord,[a] who was standing among the myrtle trees: “We have been patrolling the earth, and now the whole earth rests quietly.” 12 Then the angel of the Lord replied, “Lord of hosts, how long will you be without mercy for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah that have felt your anger these seventy years?”[b](A) 13 To the angel who spoke with me, the Lord replied favorably, with comforting words.
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- 1:11 Angel of the Lord: chief angelic figure in God’s heavenly court, and perhaps the “man” of 1:8.
- 1:12 These seventy years: allusion to the period of divine anger mentioned in Jer 25:11–12 and 29:10. Here the symbolic number seventy is understood to mark the period without a Temple in Jerusalem. Since these seventy years would have been almost over at this point, this symbolic number would have provided motivation for rebuilding the Temple as a sign of the end of the exile.
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