What Does Zechariah 7:13 Mean?
And it happened, just as he called out and they would not hear and respond, so they called out and I would not hear and respond, 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 it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the LORD of hosts:THE KEY
The refusal to hear another’s cry becomes the condition of one’s own cry.
THE MEANING
The verse describes a relationship in which refused cries are answered with refusal: the people who would not hear call out and find themselves unheard. It presents the LORD’s nonresponse as deliberate and reciprocal, not as an inability to hear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that I can keep closing myself to another’s plea while remaining certain my own call will be answered is undone here.
THE ROOT
שָׁמְעוּ
shame'u
GROWS FROM
שמע
shama
Hear, listen, heed, respond.
“hear and respond” in this verse is shame'u. English can make hearing sound like a sensory act; שָׁמַע (shama, hear, listen, respond) can carry listening through to response. The same root governs both refusals here: the people do not heed the cry, and then their own cry goes unheeded.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear; listen and respond.
שְׁמַע
The familiar imperative carries the same movement from receiving words to heeding them, which makes the refusal in this verse more than simply not noticing.
shemuah: Report or news; what is heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
Even a report bears the same root: the language links receiving what is said with what happens after it is heard.
קָרָא
qara
GROWS FROM
קרא
qara
Call, cry out, summon, proclaim.
“called out” in this verse is qara. The cries in the verse are calls directed toward someone who could answer. The same call first meets closed ears, then returns from the callers as an appeal they themselves cannot get answered.
ALSO GROWS
miqra: Convocation or assembly; a gathering called together.
מִקְרָא
This branch shows how a call can summon others into response, giving the cry here its relational force.
qeri'ah: Calling or reading aloud.
קְרִיאָה
A cry is a voice sent outward to be received; the verse turns on whether that call is answered.
THE PATTERN
A cry denied can return as the measure by which the denier’s own cry is received.
Whoever stops up his ear to the cry of the emptied one also cries out, and is not answered.If I see crookedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear and respond.For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with what measure you measure, it will be measured to you.THE THREAD
If you press them down in any way, and they cry out at all to me, I will surely hear and respond to their cry.Exodus 22:23 uses the same hearing root in the LORD’s emphatic promise to hear the afflicted person’s cry. Beside Zechariah, the shared root reveals hearing as a response: one cry meets refusal, while the other is met with a promise to answer.
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