What Does Zechariah 6:4 Mean?
Then I answered and said to the messenger who spoke with me, What are these, my lord?
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
Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord?THE KEY
The vision becomes legible when the seer asks the messenger speaking with him to name what he sees.
THE MEANING
You meet an image that does not explain itself, and your question is part of its disclosure. The messenger speaking with you is already present as the voice that can open what the image holds. Not knowing yet is a place where meaning can be spoken.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
You do not have to understand a vision immediately for your seeing to be real; here, asking is part of how its meaning emerges.
THE ROOT
הַדֹּבֵר
haddōvēr
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak; in its noun form, a spoken word or matter.
The Hebrew phrase can be heard literally as “the one speaking in me,” though it is naturally rendered “that talked with me.” The same root gives דָּבָר (dābār, “word” or “matter”), linking the voice that explains the vision with the reality it contains.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
The same root joins what is spoken with the matter under discussion: the messenger’s words give the vision intelligible shape.
dibbēr: Spoke or declared.
דִּבֶּר
This verb names the act of speaking; the verse presents the messenger as the one whose speech accompanies the seer’s encounter with the image.
THE PATTERN
What is seen becomes intelligible when a question brings it to the one who can interpret it.
I drew near to one of those standing by, and asked him the truth of all this. So he spoke to me, and made me perceive the untying of the words.And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, To you it has been given to know the mystery of the governance of God, but to those outside, all things come to be in parables.Then Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah, the prophet, and said, Do you know what you are reading? And he said, How can I, unless someone show me the way? And he urged Philip to come up and sit with him.THE THREAD
Then I said, My lord, what are these? And the messenger who spoke with me said to me, I will let you see what these are.The same Hebrew root for “talked” appears as the messenger speaks with Zechariah, and the question “What are these?” is followed by the promise, “I will shew thee.” The repeated wording makes the question a hinge between the image and its understanding.
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