What Does Zechariah 1:3 Mean?
Therefore say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts, Turn to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will turn to you, says the LORD of hosts.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the LORD of hosts.THE KEY
The same verb names both your return to God and God’s turning toward you, making this a verse of reciprocal movement.
THE MEANING
The invitation is alive now: when you turn toward God, God turns toward you. The same Hebrew verb carries both movements, so the verse presents relationship as a meeting of returns.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that returning to God is a one-sided pursuit is undone: the verse answers your turning with God’s own turning toward you.
THE ROOT
שׁוּבוּ
shuvu
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
sh-w-b
To turn back or return.
The command to return and God’s promise to turn toward you use forms of the same verb, שׁוּב (shuv, “turn” or “return”). Hebrew lets one root carry both movements, joining your turning toward God with God’s turning toward you.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return or turning.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun keeps the root’s sense of a turning back, giving the verse’s command a wider family of return-language.
meshubah: Turning away, apostasy, or backsliding.
מְשׁוּבָה
Its connection to the same root shows that turning away and returning are movements named by one seed.
heshiv: Bring back or restore; a causative form of shuv.
הֵשִׁיב
This branch shows how the root can describe not only turning back, but bringing something back.
THE PATTERN
A turning toward God is answered by God’s movement toward the person.
From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes, and you have not guarded them. Turn back to me, and I will turn to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, How shall we turn back?Turn back, O turned-away children, and I will heal your turnings-away. Look, we come to you, for you are the LORD our God.THE THREAD
Turn back, O turned-away children, and I will heal your turnings-away. Look, we come to you, for you are the LORD our God.The Hebrew words translated “return” (שׁוּבוּ, shuvu, “return”) and “backslidings” (מְשׁוּבָה, meshubah, “turning away”) both grow from שׁוּב (shuv, “turn” or “return”). The same root holds both the departure and the turning back, while Jeremiah names healing as the answer to that return.
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