What Does Zechariah 2:13 Mean?
Hush, all flesh, before the face of the LORD, for he is roused from his set-apart dwelling.
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
Be silent, O all flesh, before the LORD: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.THE KEY
The world is commanded to fall quiet because the LORD is not absent or still: he is roused from his dwelling.
THE MEANING
You are included in “all flesh”: the command reaches you as the LORD is roused from his set-apart dwelling. His presence is active, rising into view, and every creature is quiet before him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the LORD’s dwelling means distance or inactivity: he is roused from it, and all flesh is quiet before him.
THE ROOT
נֵעוֹר
nēʿôr
GROWS FROM
עור
ʿ-w-r
to wake, rouse, or stir awake
The Hebrew word carries the sense of being awakened or roused, adding movement to the KJV’s “raised up.” The silence of all flesh answers that awakening: the quiet is before a LORD who is stirring into action.
ALSO GROWS
ʿûr: awake; rouse
עוּר
Isaiah’s doubled “Awake, awake” uses this root for the LORD’s arm (Isaiah 51:9), echoing the awakening pictured here.
hēʿîr: awaken; stir up
הֵעִיר
This form of the same root describes stirring someone into action, giving “raised up” the added shade of readiness.
THE PATTERN
The presence of divine action brings all creation to silence.
But the LORD is in his set-apart temple. Hush before his face, all the earth.When God rises to judgment, to deliver all the bowed ones of the earth. Selah.And when he opens the seventh seal, there is silence in heaven for about half an hour.THE THREAD
Awake, awake, clothe yourself with strength, arm of the LORD. Awake as in the days of old, in the generations of the ages. Were you not the one who cut Rahab, who pierced the sea-dragon?Zechariah’s “is raised up” and Isaiah’s repeated “Awake” draw on עור (ʿ-w-r), the Hebrew root for waking and rousing. Zechariah pictures the LORD already stirred from his dwelling; Isaiah uses the same awakening language for the LORD’s arm.
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