Israel’s ongoing assault by enemies surrounding it—Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthies—and America’s providing it with ordinance to defend itself, resonates with Zechariah’s prophecy that says, “I have bent Judah for me and filled the bow with Ephraim.” In that day, “his arrows will go forth as the lightning” and he will “subdue with sling stones” (Zechariah 9:13–15).
That is the time when Jerusalem becomes “a cup of trembling to all peoples round about, when they are in the siege against both Judah and against Jerusalem. In that day I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all peoples. All who burden themselves with it will be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it” (Zechariah 12:2–3).
Zechariah goes on to describe Israel’s leaders’ confidence in the Lord: “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem” (Zechariah 12:5–6).
That is also the time when the Jews as a whole convert to the Lord and live in tents for a season while the house of David won’t believe until he shows himself to them on the Mount of Olives: “One will say to him, What are these wounds in your hands? Then he will answer, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends’” (cf. Zechariah 12:7–14; 13:1–6).
