Zechariah's Vision Of The High Priest, Joshua

Zechariah 3:1-5

Zechariah was a prophet contemporary of the prophet Haggai. He is believed to have begun his prophetic ministry in 520 BC. The name ‘Zechariah’ was the most common name in the Hebrew Bible. In Hebrew, it means “The Lord has remembered’.

There are 8 visions of Zechariah recording in the prophetic book of Zechariah.

This is the 4th of the 8 visions. This vision is a very interesting one!

Whenever we meet people for the first time, we get an impression of them. It is said that it takes less than 1/10th of a second to form an assessment of someone’s face. However, how accurate are our first impressions? Most of the times they are inaccurate. When we start getting to know them more, we realize that our first impression was wrong. We may have thought of someone to be very calm and composed at the first look but later would have realized that the person was exactly the opposite. The same is true with our spiritual lives as well. Some people portray themselves as spiritual giants but only to discover that they hardly have any relationship with God. We think of some people as spiritual babes but only to realize that they are actually men and women of great faith.

Zechariah experiences something similar in this marvellous vision.

Zech 3:1 - Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him.

Here, Zechariah sees a man named Joshua. Zechariah identifies him to be Joshua meaning he was somebody well-known to Zechariah.

Who is this Joshua?

Many misunderstand this Joshua to be the successor of Moses and the son of Nun.

However, he was not that Joshua.

Haggai 1:1 - In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying,

He was Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, who served as high priest during the times of Zechariah and Haggai.

The position of the High Priest is the most esteemed one among the Jews.

The Jewish temple consisted of three sections:

- The outer court

- Holy Place

- Holy of Holies

Any Jew could enter the outer court. However, only priests were permitted inside the Holy Place. At the back of the Holy Place was the Holy of Holies. Only the High Priest had the unique privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, that too, only once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement to burn incense and sprinkle sacrificial animal blood for the atonement of his own sins and those of the people of Israel (Leviticus 16).

The Holy Place and the Holy of Holies was separated by the curtain.

The High priest’s clothes were very special. He normally wore an ephod (Exo 28:6-14), breastplate (Exo 28:15-30), robe (Exo 28:31-35), turban (Exo 28:36-38), linen turban (Exo 28:39). There were bells on his robe (Exo 28:33; Exo 39:25-26). The bells jingling was a sign that he was still alive and that he had been accepted by God and not fallen to the ground dead.

Jews had an ancient practise of attaching a robe to the ankle or leg of the High priest. A priest in the Holy Place tended the other end of this rope, which had a very practical purpose. If the High Priest said or did something wrong, it was believed that he would die in the presence of the Holy God. Since nobody else was allowed enter that part of the temple without also dying, the rope was used pull out the body of the high priest, if necessary.

Zechariah sees this High Priest in vision. There was also the Angel of the Lord standing before him and Satan was also present there to accuse Joshua.

This resembled a court scene with 3 members:

1. Accused – Joshua, the High Priest

2. Accuser – Satan

3. Judge - Angel of the Lord

There is a difference between an angel and the Angel of the Lord. The Angel of the Lord is the only angel who refers to himself in the Old Testament as the Lord and God in the first person, while the other angels are messengers sent by God who did not accept this kind of glory. Bible scholars identify this Angel of the Lord to be pre-incarnate Christ.

Satan is accusing Joshua, the High Priest.

We find similar instance in the story of Job (Job 1:8-11) where satan went before the very throne of God to accuse Job, the one certified by God to be blameless and upright.