Then You Will Know YA’OH Tsaba’oth Has Sent Me

[2:5] And I lifted my eyes, and I looked, and behold a man, and in his hand a line of measuring.

[2:6] And I said: To where are you going? And he said to me: To measure Yaroshalam, according to what is it’s breadth, and according to what is it’s length.

[2:7] And behold, the messenger, the one speaking to me, went forth; and another messenger went forth to meet him.

[2:8] And he said to him: Run! Speak to this young one, saying: An open village without walls will Yaroshalam be inhabited from the multitude of men, and of beasts, within the midst of her.

[2:9] And I will be to her, says YA’OH, a wall of fire all around; and for glory I will be in the midst of her.

[2:10] Be warned! Be warned! And flee from the land of the north, says YA’OH! For like the four winds of heaven I have spread you abroad, says YA’OH.

[2:11] Be warned, Tsayon! Save yourself, the one dwelling in the daughter of Babal!

[2:12] For thus says YA’OH tsaba’oth: after glory has He sent me to the nations, the ones who spoil you. For the one touching you he is touching the cornea of His eye.

[2:13] For behold here am I, the one waving my hand upon them, and they will be spoil to their servants. Then you will know that YA’OH tsaba’oth has sent me.

[2:14] Sing and have fun, daughter of Tsayon! For behold I am coming, and I will dwell in the midst of you, says YA’OH.

[2:15] They will be joined, many people, to YA’OH in that day, and they will be to me for a nation, and I will dwell in the midst of them. Then you will know that YA’OH tsaba’oth has sent me.

[2:16] YA’OH will inherit Ya’ohdah His portion upon the holy land, and He will choose again in Yaroshalam.

[2:17] Shut up, all flesh, before YA’OH! For He has been stirred up from out of His holy dwelling place!

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Commentary

In order to fully understand the above vision that the prophet Zachar-Ya’oh (Zechariah) witnessed in the 6th century BCE we must go over some of the history leading up to it in detail.

The prophet saw this vision in the second year of King Daray’osh (Darius), but this is not the Daray’osh known as Hystaspes who became king of Persia. The Daray’osh mentioned in the Book of Zachar-Ya’oh was the king of Media and the “second year” mentioned at the very beginning of the prophet’s book was the king’s second year upon the throne of Media in 516 BCE. The seventy years of the desolations of the city of Yaroshalam (Jerusalem) from 589/8 BCE, when the Neo-Babylonian army of Nabochadnezzar II began the rampaging siege of Yaroshalam, to 519 BCE when Cyrus the Great (550-517 BCE) issued his decree to rebuild the temple, were over (Zachar-Ya’oh 1:12); but the rebuilding of the city and the temple of YA’OH which had commenced in the year 519 BCE had not been accomplished.

The rebuilding work could not be completed because Cyrus did not honor and keep his word and our people who returned back from exile in Babylonia to the promised land to rebuild, on the supposed authority of Cyrus’s decree, were prevented from building “all the time that Cyrus lived” (Ezra 4:4-5). Cyrus did nothing to silence and remove the opposition, which is why YA’OH orchestrated to have him killed on the battle field two years later in 517 BCE, and for a female warrior-queen of the Massagetae to find his dead body among the slain Persian soldiers and to have his head disrespectfully and irreverently cut off and put inside an animal skin bag filled with human blood (Herodotus, Histories, 1.214.3-4).

With Cyrus out of the picture in 517 BCE our people attempted to resume the reconstruction work in Yaroshalam, but the opposition appealed to Cyrus’s son and successor Cambyses who ordered that all work cease immediately until further notice be given from him (Ezra 4:7-24). At that point, our people looked to Daray’osh of Media for help. He had been given the kingship of the Persian province of Babylonia by his deceased relative Cyrus during the years 530-520 BCE (Daniel 9:1). The first year of Daray’osh as “king of Babylon” in 529 BCE is mentioned in Daniel 9:1, but a revolt in Babylon led by Nabonidus II son of Nabonidus I (556-539 BCE) in 520 BCE forced Daray’osh the Mede to evacuate Babylon and return to Media. Cyrus recaptured Babylon from the Babylonian rebels in 520 BCE and he ascended the throne of Babylon for a second time.

The war against the rebel Nabonidus II son of Nabonidus I is recounted by Herodotus in his Histories (Herodotus, 1.74; 1.188) but modern European scholarship is confusing it with the peaceful capture of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BCE in the time of Nabonidus I. Herodotus’s King Labynetos (Λαβύνητος) is a plausible corruption of no other Neo-Babylonian royal name except that of Nabonidus. Old attempts to equate Labynetos the elder and his son Labynetos the younger with king Nabonidus (556-539 BCE) and his oldest son Belshazzar who was never king have lost all of their interpretive force.

Cyrus issued his decree to rebuild the temple of YA’OH in the “first year” of his second Babylonian throne tenure which was in 519 BCE, the 70th year of the city of Yaroshalam’s desolation (2 Chronicles 36:21-23), and not 538 BCE which was only the 51st year of the city’s desolation. Cyrus was killed two years after he issued his decree (1 Esdras 5:73).

After the recapture of Babylon in 520 BCE, Cyrus set aside palaces in Babylon for his relative King Ahasuerus (i.e. Cyaxares II) of Media, the father of Daray’osh the Mede (Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 8.5.17). The enemies of our people within the promised land wrote to Ahasuerus the Mede to complain about them at this time (Ezra 4:6). In the fall of the year in 519 BCE, Cyrus made his son Cambyses co-regent king of Babylon, and the first year of Cambyses in Babylonia commenced in the spring of 518 BCE.

The Greek historian Xenophon makes the mistake of saying that Ahasuerus (Cyaxares II) the Mede had no son in order to claim incorrectly that Cyrus was his immediate successor. Yet the Book of Daniel tells us that Ahasuerus did have a son to whom the throne of Media could be inherited. King Ahasuerus died in 518 BCE and his son Daray’osh the Mede received the kingdom of Media at the age of 62 (Daniel 6:1 [incorrectly 5:31]).

The record must be set straight and clarified here that the king of Babylon named “Belshazzar” who was slain in the night according to Daniel 5:30 was King Amel-Marduk (562-560 BCE). The only adult king of Neo-Babylonia who was murdered at his capital of Babylon was Amel-Marduk. Belshazzar was his given name at birth and Amel-Marduk was evidently the name he adopted upon becoming crown prince and the designated heir apparent of his father Nabochadnezzar II. He was murdered in 560 BCE by Nergal-sharru-usur (Neriglissar), his brother-in-law, who then claimed the throne of Babylon for himself. The Book of Daniel says King Belshazzar reigned into a “third year” (Daniel 8:1) because Amel-Marduk is known to have commenced his reign before his father’s death. Thus, his reign was actually longer than the two years from the death of his father in 562 BCE and the accession of his regicide brother-in-law in 560 BCE.

The scriptures DO NOT say that Daray’osh the Mede became “king of Babylon” when King Belshazzar was murdered in the night. This is a gross misunderstanding of the history due in large part to the erroneous Christian chapter and verse numbering system appearing in Christian bibles. Daniel 5:31 is really the first verse of chapter 6 and a total of thirty years elapsed between the murder of Belshazzar/Amel-Marduk in 560 BCE at his captial and the accession of Daray’osh the Mede in Babylonia in 530 BCE. Daniel 6:1 (incorrectly 5:31) is talking about when Daray’osh the Mede became the “king of Media” in 518 BCE at the age of 62, and not when he became “king of Babylon” in 530 BCE at the age of 50.

One of Daray’osh the Mede’s first acts as king of Media was elevating Daniel to be the top man within his administration which was governed by 120 princes (Dan 6:2 [incorrectly 6:3]). The first official year of Daray’osh the Mede in Media was 517 BCE. This “first year” is mentioned in Daniel 11:1 where the messenger speaking with Daniel mentions it as a current event. It was also the “third year” of Cyrus (Daniel 10:1) counting from the renewal of his Babylonian reign in 520 BCE. Cyrus was killed in battle that same year in 517 BCE.

The decree of Daray’osh the Mede quoted in Daniel 6:25-27 which called for everyone in his kingdom of Media to acknowledge the Higher Power worshiped by Daniel as the Supreme God was issued in the first year of Darayosh the Mede in 517 BCE but after the death of Cyrus that year. This decree could not have been made while Cyrus was still reigning because Cyrus honored the pagan god Marduk as the Supreme God of gods the entire time he was alive.

At the beginning of the following year of 516 BCE in the spring, in the second year of Daray’osh the Mede as king of Media, a young palace guard at the royal court of Daray’osh named Zarababal (Zerubbabel), son of Sha’althay’al, obtained permission from Daray’osh to resume the rebuilding work of the second temple in Yaroshalam (1 Esdras 5:6). This would have entailed an endorsement from Cyrus’s son Cambyses (wrongly called ארתחששתא in Jewish manuscripts) who ordered that the construction work be completely shut down the previous year until he decided it could move forward (Ezra 6:21).

Shashbazar, the governor of Ya’ohdah, was finally able to transport the holy vessels of the temple entrusted to him by Cyrus in 519 BCE back to Yaroshalam at this time in 516 BCE (Ezra 1:7-11). He did not bring the holy vessels from Babylon to Yaroshalam in 519 BCE when he initially started working on the foundation of the second temple. It was Daray’osh the Mede who ordered that the holy vessels Cyrus delivered into the care of Shashbazar could leave Babylon and be returned to Yaroshalam in the spring of 516 BCE (1 Esdras 4:44-57).

Shashbazar evidently died in the first half of the year in 516 BCE not long after Daray’osh gave his decree and Zarababal became the new governor of Ya’ohdah. The loss of Shashbazar must have caused our people great bewilderment, for they gave up hope that it was indeed time to rebuild and they called off the reconstruction work. Then the prophet Khag-Ya’oh (Haggai) stood up in the sixth month of the second year of Daray’osh the Mede to rebuke the people and to urge them not to stop but to continue the work (Khag-Ya’oh 1:1-4).

The prophet Zachar-Ya’oh (Zechariah) stood up two months later in the eighth month of the second year of Daray’osh the Mede (Zachar-Ya’oh 1:1). The people of Ya’oh-shar-al responded to the words of the two prophets and they began laying the stones for the temple foundation on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month (Khag-Ya’oh 2:18). Zarababal was promised that he would become the “signet” of YA’OH (Khag-Ya’oh 2:23), thus reversing the curse of his ancestor King Yachan-Ya’oh (Jeconiah) who was the “signet” that YA’OH removed from His hand (Yaram-Ya’oh 22:24). Two months later, in the eleventh month of the second year of Daray’osh the Mede, Zachar-Ya’oh saw the vision that I am about to discuss now.

It was important to go over this history in detail in order to have the proper context that is needed to understand the vision. The Ghabaray (Hebrew) exiles in Babylonia came back to the land in 519 BCE armed with the decree of Cyrus to rebuild the temple of YA’OH, but the future looked bleak because Cyrus did not stand by his decree. He allowed the opposition to prevent us from buidling. Then Cyrus died two years later in 517 BCE and his son Cambyses shut everything down that year.

Daray’osh the Mede revived the decree the following year in 516 BCE but Shashbazzar the governor of Ya’ohdah died and the people stopped working until the prophets Khag-Ya’oh and Zachar-Ya’oh stirred them up to resume the restoration work.

Line by line…

[2:5] The prophet sees a man, a messenger from heaven, with a measuring line in his hand.

[2:6] The prophet asks the man where he is going, and the man tells the prophet that he is going to measure Yaroshalam according to its breadth and its length. The act of measuring here is to determine the people who make up Yaroshalam, that is, the messenger is not measuring the physical limits of the city but rather the people who will constitute the city’s elect group of inhabitants.

[2:7] As the messenger with the measuring line continues on his way, the prophet sees another messenger come forth to meet him.

[2:8] The second messenger stops the first messenger in his tracks and gives him a directive to run back to the prophet and tell him that Yaroshalam will be an open village without walls. This detail must not be missed, for the old city of Yaroshalam in the days of the prophet Zachar-Ya’oh DID have walls built. It was not an unwalled village.

[2:9] In this verse YA’OH interjects and says that He will be a wall of fire to Yaroshalam. A wall of fire is a wall that cannot be penetrated, climbed, or undermined, as it would consume any that would attempt to do one or the other. Thus, in regard to Yaroshalam being inhabited without walls, YA’OH is saying that He will engage Himself to secure her boundaries as effectually as if she were surrounded with an actual wall of fire. This cannot be describing the old city of Yaroshalam that the exiles returning from Babylonia built and inhabited, for that Yaroshalam had walls and it was never an impenetrable city at any point during the entire second and third temple periods from 519 BCE to 70 CE.

In other words, the city to be measured in 2:6 is not the old Yaroshalam of that time; on the contrary, the vision shows that the prophet was being told about a future Yaroshalam that will measured and sized up.

[2:10] Now YA’OH warns and urgently implores His people to flee from the land of the north.

[2:11] In this verse we find out that the “land of the north” in verse 10 is the land of the “daughter of Babylon.” Tsayon (Zion) the people must save themselves and get out of that land immediately. This cannot be talking about ancient Babylon for two reasons. Number one, because ancient Babylon is not north of our land. It is east of our land. Number two, because our people did not have to flee ancient Babylon and save themselves. Cyrus said they could walk out freely in 519 BCE and go home without fear of anyone harming them. There was nothing threatening our people at that time and they did not flee from any danger. They strolled out of ancient Babylon in confidence and in safety.

In other words, the warning to flee is not talking about fleeing from ancient Babylon. It is a warning to flee a future Babylon, the daughter of ancient Babylon, i.e. north America which has the bulk of the chosen people who descend from middle passages slaves, and has had the chosen people as slaves longer than any other enemy nation in history. The people of Ya’oh-shar-al who obey the order to flee that future Babylon, which is none other than the empire of the United States of America, will be the people who build the impenetrable Yaroshalam without any defensive walls because it will be protected by YA’OH.

[2:12] The prophet now switches to speaking on behalf of a future man who will be sent by YA’OH to herald doom to the nations who have spoiled His people in the lands of their enemy captors where YA’OH scattered them in His wrath. When these heathen nations, America being chief among them, put their hands on His people it was as if they were touching the cornea of His eye. Whenever something touches the cornea of your eye, like dust, you feel irritation and the urge to rub your eyes in order to relieve the sensation and remove whatever is causing it.

In the same way, YA’OH is going to rub out and obliterate the heathen nations who have touched His people, the main target being the empire of the United States of America, and He is going to do so AFTER they have fled the land of the north where that future daughter of Babylon will be situated. The man appointed by YA’OH to lead this exodus is “after glory,” not after his own glory, but rather he is after the glory of YA’OH to be manifested upon His redeemed chosen remnant.

[2:13] The leader of the future exodus, the man who is appointed to be chief, will wave his hand upon the enemies, and that will trigger disasters to be unleashed from YA’OH, and then the redeemed will know that YA’OH is indeed the one who has sent this man to them. He cannot be any man who was alive during the first restoration in the 6th century BCE in the time of the kings of Persia. Neither the governor Zarababal, nor the prophet Khag-Ya’oh, nor the prophet Zachar-Ya’oh do what is predicted in verse 13.

[2:14] The redeemed who have fled and who have escaped the daughter of Babylon are told to sing and to have fun because YA’OH has promised them that He will come and dwell among them in their midst. To where do they flee after saving themselves from the daughter of Babylon in the land of the north? Where are they to go in order to sing and to enjoy themselves? To the wilderness where they will find grace (Yaram-Ya’oh 31:1-2). The chief of the escaped captives will build the city of YA’OH (Yashai-Ya’oh 45:13) in the wilderness and he will build the tabernacle palace of YA’OH. The redeemed remnant will have a city and a land of their own in the wilderness and be established upon their own base (Zachar-Ya’oh 5:11) while they are there. This is that future Yaroshalam that will be impenetrable because it is inhabited by YA’OH and it is surrounded by His protective wall of fire.

[2:15] The restoration movement in the wilderness will blossom and grow and attract many people and they will come and join themselves unto YA’OH. That will also be a sign to the redeemed that YA’OH has sent that man to be their leader and their chief. For YA’OH will prosper the work of his hands.

[2:16] The people will not stay in the wilderness forever. YA’OH intends to bring them out of the wilderness at a certain time, after He has fully restored them, and settle them back in the land He swore to give to their ancestors Abrahm, Ya’oh-tsakhak, and Ya’oh-shar-al. Then Ya’ohdah will be His portion among the nations again and the old city of Yaroshalam that sits in total ruins today as a result of the Roman destruction in 70 CE will be repaired.

[2:17] All flesh is ordered to shut their mouths before YA’OH. They will do so when YA’OH has finally stood up after centuries of silence. He will stand up and go forth to fight for His people once He has gathered all of His remnant to safety in the wilderness, and then He will punish the world for their iniquity. Who will be able to stand?

This imminent destruction will be so severe that a man will be more rare than fine gold (Yashai-Ya’oh 13:11), gold which can only be found in Opayr (Ophir) because Opayr is the location of the wilderness in the far east where the sun rises, where the remnant is being gathered as we speak, and where they will be saved from the destruction that is coming. This is the Philippine islands, Cebu to be exact, where a ravenous bird has been proclaiming the name above all names, and executing the counsel of the name’s owner, in fulfillment of the prophecies of Yashai-Ya’oh 41:25 and 46:11.

His name is YA’OH
Always has been. Always will be.

#EXODUS2023

1.15.7252 (April 5, 2023)