What Does Zechariah 8:6 Mean?
Thus says the LORD of hosts. If it is marvelous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvelous in my eyes? 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
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; If it be marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvellous in mine eyes? saith the LORD of hosts.THE KEY
Your sense of what is impossible measures human sight, not what God can do.
THE MEANING
What looks impossible in your sight is not beyond the LORD’s reach. The verse places the remnant’s astonishment beside God’s own sight, measuring the promise by neither fear nor human scale.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that if restoration feels impossible to you, it must be impossible in reality.
THE ROOT
יִפָּלֵא
yippale
GROWS FROM
פלא
פָּלָא (palaʾ) means to be extraordinary or beyond ordinary ability; in this form, to seem too difficult.
“marvelous” in this verse is yippale. The same root can name a wonder and ask whether something is too hard. Here, what astonishes the remnant is placed beside God’s sight: the promise exceeds their expectation, but not God’s reach.
ALSO GROWS
pele: Wonder, marvel, or extraordinary thing.
פֶּלֶא
The remnant sees the promise as a wonder; the root itself holds that sense of the extraordinary.
nifla’ot: Wonders or extraordinary acts.
נִפְלָאוֹת
This plural branch shows the root describing what surpasses ordinary expectation, as the promise does for the remnant.
yippale: Be too hard or too difficult; used in Genesis 18:14.
יִפָּלֵא
The same form turns the wonder into a question of reach: can what seems impossible to people be too difficult for the LORD?
THE PATTERN
What exceeds human expectation remains within God’s power to bring about.
Is any word too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will turn back to you, at this season of life, and Sarah will have a son.Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great strength and outstretched arm, and nothing is too hard for you.For with God nothing will be impossible.THE THREAD
Is any word too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will turn back to you, at this season of life, and Sarah will have a son.Genesis uses the same Hebrew root, פלא (palaʾ), in asking, “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” Here, that root names what seems marvelous to the remnant. The shared word lets you hear Zechariah’s question as an answer already leaning toward no.
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