Rebbetzin Chava Kuperman
Zechariah prophesies at the beginning of the Second Temple period and speaks of certain events also mentioned in the prophecies of Daniel and Jeremiah.
It is interesting to examine this. Let me remind you who Daniel is: Daniel's prophecies date to the end of the First Temple period and the early period following its destruction.
Daniel is one of four Jewish boys whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took captive and held hostage to demonstrate his power over the people of Israel.
The captive boys are the children of the highest-ranking nobles; all are of royal descent.
On the one hand, Nebuchadnezzar holds them as hostages whom he will kill if Judea rebels. On the other hand, he raises them as Chaldeans (Babylonians), so that when they grow up, he can send them back to Judea to introduce Babylonian culture there.
One night, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream, but when he wakes up in the morning, he realizes he has forgotten it. Yet there seems to have been something very important in the dream, and the king is determined to remember it.
He summons his sages, soothsayers, and sorcerers and demands that they tell him what he dreamed. No one knows. He orders the useless magicians to be killed. The news spreads through the palace and reaches Daniel. He declares that he can recount the king's dream: in the dream there was a statue—a head of gold, arms of silver, a torso of copper, legs of iron, and toes partly of iron and partly of clay. “What does this mean?” the king asks. “It symbolizes all the exiles that await the Jewish people,” Daniel replies. The statue embodies all the kingdoms that will rule over the Jews. The golden head is Babylon. The silver arms are Persia and Media. The copper torso is Greece, and the iron legs are Rome. There are two legs because Rome will be divided into two states, Western and Eastern. The statue's toes are partly clay and partly iron because Rome will split into the Muslim (clay) and Christian (iron) worlds. And all it takes is for a little stone to get under the monster's feet, and it immediately collapses. The little stone is Mashiach.
From Daniel's prediction, Nebuchadnezzar understands that his power will not last forever—Babylon will be followed by Persia, Greece, Rome…
Something must be done about this!
And so a royal order is issued: make a statue exactly like the one the king saw in his dream—but entirely of gold! And let all the peoples of the world bow down to it! This way, Nebuchadnezzar will secure his eternal rule over the world.
At last, the statue is ready. Everyone is prepared to bow down to it. Except for three boys—the very ones taken captive as hostages and held in the palace along with Daniel. Mishael, Hananiah, and Azariah refuse to bow down to the idol. Their defiance overturns and destroys the king's plan. Nebuchadnezzar orders them thrown into the fire, but they remain alive (see the Book of Daniel).
These events are alluded to in the Book of Jeremiah. He says that there were two false prophets among the Jews in Babylon—Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah—of whom the Almighty spoke as “prophesying lies in My name” (chapter 29, verse 21). We have a tradition that tells us how this happened:
Having declared themselves prophets, Ahab and Zedekiah began indulging in debauchery. Driven by an unbridled craving for carnal pleasures, they used their status as a convenient “cover story.” When one of them desired another man's wife or unmarried daughter, the other would set about persuading her. He would say that he had received a vision: Heaven had decided to send down into this world the soul of a righteous man, an outstanding sage, and so on. This woman or girl was meant to give birth to him... The father of this special child was to be that prophet over there—the friend of the man making the appeal. A night of intimacy would not be adultery; on the contrary, it would be a great mission that would bring a Man of G-d into our world. This is how they acted on each other's behalf, until they reached Nebuchadnezzar's daughter. She complained to her father. Her father was outraged and took action: he ordered the “prophets” thrown into the fire.
Announcing the sentence, the king said: “Just now, truly righteous men (Daniel's three friends) emerged from the fire unharmed. If these two are righteous as well, they too will survive!”
When Ahab and Zedekiah heard their sentence, they began asking for a third man to join them. Otherwise, it would be unfair. And let the third be Joshua, the priest, they insisted. (If the Temple had existed at that time, Joshua would have been the High Priest.)
Their request is granted. In the Book of Zechariah (chapter 3, verses 1 and 2), we read: “And He showed me Joshua, the High Priest, standing before the angel of the L-rd, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the L-rd said to Satan: the L-rd will be angry with you, Satan!.. For he is a brand rescued from the fire. And Joshua was dressed in soiled garments and stood before the angel...” ("Soiled" means charred.)
Most likely, the evildoers were counting on being saved even in the fire if they were together with a righteous man. But there was one righteous man and two evildoers. One righteous man could not save two evildoers… On the contrary, the wickedness of these two was enough for the righteous man's clothes to give way and burn—although Joshua himself survived.
This is one opinion. According to another opinion, Joshua's descendants will not behave particularly well. His clothing was damaged because of them. In the prophecy, the Almighty asks for his clothes to be changed (ibid., verses 4 and 5). There is another opinion according to which Joshua entered the fire wearing impure clothing, and that is precisely why it could not survive.
Verse 8 of chapter 3 says: “...your friends, Joshua, who sit before you, are men worthy of a miracle...”
Joshua's friends are the three boys who survived the fire. They are called Men of the Miracle.
And of the wicked false prophets, G-d says through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah, 29, verse 22): “...their names will become a curse for all the exiles from Judea who are in Babylon: ‘May the L-rd do to you what He did to Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire’”.
The First Temple was destroyed because of three sins that gripped people like an irresistible passion: idolatry, incest, and murder.
When the 2nd Temple was built, the Jews began pleading with the Almighty for these passions to weaken: “If they continue to rage in this world as before, we will not be able to withstand them!” The sages offered prayers, and the passion for idolatry waned.
Zechariah (chapter 5, verses 5-6 and onward, through the end of the chapter) says: “And the angel who had been speaking with me came forward and said to me: Please lift your eyes and see what this is that is coming forth. And I said: What is it? And he said: This is an ephah (a unit of volume) coming forth. And he said: This is their eye throughout the earth. And behold, a lead ingot weighing a talent is being lifted; and this is a single woman sitting inside the ephah...”. In this passage, the woman represents passion; confined within the ephah, she is isolated, deprived of influence in this world.
The Sages also wanted to eradicate the urge toward incest; as a result of their prayers, even the hens stopped laying eggs. It then became clear that if this urge were eradicated, the very possibility of procreation would disappear. They could not completely overcome the urge toward sexual immorality, but they managed to “blind it in one eye.” The urge toward forbidden relations with relatives remained, but was greatly weakened compared with what it had been before...
to be continued