The prophet Zechariah is given a second vision, and in it he is carried into a heavenly courtroom where the Angel of the LORD sits as judge and Joshua the high priest is the defendant who is accused of committing grievous sins by satan.
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.
Zechariah 3:1 (NIV)
Joshua was the high priest of the exiles who had returned from Babylon. His name means “the LORD saves”—Yahweh saves, rendered as Yahushua in Hebrew and Yeshua in Greek, the same name later given to Jesus. As high priest, Joshua stood in a double position: he represented the people before God, and he represented God before the people. It was his responsibility to guard the purity of the temple and see that the people were ritually clean so that they could stand in the presence of the LORD. This priestly role is spelled out in Deuteronomy, where the Levites were set apart to stand before the LORD and to pronounce blessings in His name.
The LORD Rebukes the Accuser
The courtroom scene is much like the one we find in Job, where the adversary stands in the presence of the LORD to accuse God’s own people. And satan has a strong case as every one of them had gone their own way and given in to the desires of the world. The same thing he tried on the mountain with Jesus, and the same thing that had worked on everyone else, since Adam and Eve. Joshua himself, standing there in filthy clothes, was proof enough: he was unfit, not ritually clean, unable to withstand the presence of the LORD on his own merit. But the LORD does not answer the accusation, rebuking the accuser instead.
The LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”
Zechariah 3:2 (NIV)
What does it mean that Jerusalem is “a burning stick snatched from the fire”?
Jerusalem—the sinful, wayward people—had been heading toward the fire, and now God was in the process of snatching them back out of it and restoring them. But this is not the fire of refining, where something is tried and purified in the flame. It is the fire of judgment, and what is being described is not purification but rescue.
Picture an evil king who decrees that anyone who disobeys him will be thrown into a furnace heated seven times hotter than normal, and then does nothing to protect his subjects once they are in it. That was not what happened to Israel. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were thrown into just such a furnace in Babylon, and the LORD—not because He was obligated to, but because He willed it, in His own time—brought them out untouched. In the same way, the entire nation had been thrown into the furnace of exile under Babylon, forced to abandon God at different points along the way, and the LORD alone, in His own time, brought them out of that furnace and out of their servitude. This is not the final judgment; it is simply the discipline God allowed, and the deliverance He alone chose to bring.
Removing Our Filth
Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.” Then he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.”
Zechariah 3:3-4 (NIV)
The LORD did for Joshua exactly what He did for man in the garden: He covers what we cannot cover ourselves. He removes the shame, makes us righteous, and clothes us—yet people so often refuse to simply accept that gift. Since the time of Adam’s own children onward, we keep trying to find our own way of covering ourselves rather than receiving what He offers. It is available instantly, right now—but our instinct is to try it ourselves first and only turn to Him when that fails. Joshua, even when standing in the very presence of God, still could not fully recognize the soiled nature of his clothes.
Then I said, “Put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the LORD stood by.
Zechariah 3:5 (NIV)
The clean turban recalls the ordination of Aaron and the priests, formally reinstating Joshua into his priestly office. In that day, a larger, more ornate head-covering signified greater authority—much as you can still tell a priest’s rank today by the vestments he wears in a traditional church. So everything Joshua needed to succeed was provided to him—clean clothes, a turban, authority; all he had to do was stay on the path of God and not turn away from it.
Like the guest at the wedding banquet who came in without wedding clothes, we want the benefits of being part of God’s kingdom—the party, the feast—without wanting to actually belong to it. We come in on our own terms, refuse to be changed, take what is on offer, and stay only as temporary visitors rather than as those who are clothed by Him and included. God has already given everything needed to belong; the only thing left is whether we will live by it.
The angel of the LORD gave this charge to Joshua: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘If you will walk in obedience to me and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place among these standing here.’”
Zechariah 3:6-7 (NIV)
This charge is not ceremonial; it is something to be lived. And part of what it means to live it is recorded by the prophet Ezekiel:
They are to teach my people the difference between the holy and the common and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.
Ezekiel 44:23 (NIV)
This is the priestly task, and it is easy to miss what it actually requires. Too often, we simply hand people the answer to what is clean and what is unclean rather than teaching them how to discern it for themselves—giving them fish by the dozen instead of teaching them to fish. It is easy and convenient to teach a rulebook of 613 laws to someone rather than help them understand the heart of God and to hear His Voice on their own. We do not let people turn to God in their own time, in their own way. We hover over their growth —tracking, timing, and measuring their progress against our own schedule. We ourselves are meant to be led by God into a broader understanding of who He is—not narrowed down into a formula that keeps us safe.
The Branch
“Listen, High Priest Joshua, you and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch.”
Zechariah 3:8 (NIV)
Joshua and the priests seated with him were symbolic of what was still to come. Zechariah does not stop to define “the Branch,” likely because the term was already familiar from Jeremiah, spoken a generation earlier, pointing toward the messianic king in the line of David who would redeem the LORD’s people (Jeremiah 23:5).
“See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,” says the LORD Almighty, “and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.”
Zechariah 3:9 (NIV)
We cannot be completely sure what this stone with seven eyes means. Scripture has many symbols that people try to turn into religious symbols, even when they were never meant to be something else. What we can see clearly is the promise connected to it: the sin of the land will be removed completely in a single day. That single day points ahead to the cross when the sins of the entire world would be paid for by God.
“In that day each of you will invite your neighbor to sit under your vine and fig tree,” declares the LORD Almighty.
Zechariah 3:10 (NIV)
Zechariah is echoing a promise the people would already have known from Micah, a prophet who came before him:
Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken.
Micah 4:4 (NIV)
When sin has been dealt with, we are not left to solve everything by our own strength—going into “panic mode” or to fix what is broken. We are invited instead to rest in His presence and invite others into it, bound together by His love rather than by the things that tear people apart: ideology, language, circumstance. It is the blood of Jesus, not our shared background or our shared opinions, that actually unites us into something greater.
Without Jesus as the focal point, what we have is friendship—which is good, but it should not be dressed up and called fellowship if He is not at the center of it. A city can be full of churches on every corner, growing in number, and still have very little of this kind of fellowship in it—people gathered together because God has united them, not because of the connections or interests they happen to share. That is the fellowship Joshua’s cleansing and clothing were pointing toward all along: a people made clean, clothed, and brought together in the presence of the One who saved them from the fire.
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