Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee. (BCP p. 53)

Today is the final day of the two-year Daily Office Lectionary cycle. Fittingly, we have been reading the final books of the Old Testament: Malachi last week and Zechariah this week. Were it my choice, I would have reversed the two in order to end with the final verses of Malachi:

Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. (Malachi 4:4-6)

Was Malachi moved to write such words, perhaps sensing that this was the end -- there would be no more prophetic writings? They make a stirring conclusion to the Old Testament, and look forward to “Elias, which was for to come” (Matthew 11:14), as well as the “Sun of righteousness, aris[ing] with healing in his wings” (Malachi 4:2), both of them hundreds of years in the future.

How is one to take the prophetic writings? Our Lord took them seriously, repeatedly applying them to himself. The long tradition of Christian thought from St. Paul and the other apostles right through into the nineteenth century did the same. Modern scholarship is more likely to discount the possibility of any mystical meanings. Everything refers to the contemporary circumstances in which the prophets wrote, whether addressed directly or veiled in symbolic language. Such value as the old prophecies might have is limited to the prophets’ perception of the spiritual issues at stake in their time and place, and potential resonance with later times and places. All supposed references to a future Messiah are, of course, wishful thinking. Or they are propaganda to give hope to an oppressed people, much like (in this view) the Revelation of St. John the Divine. It is all comfortably removed from any serious application to our lives in the twenty-first century, cut asunder from the Gospels, the life of Christ, and the ongoing life of the Church.

Following this approach, our Lord must have been delusional to apply these ancient prophecies to himself -- if he ever did in the first place. Perhaps they were pasted in by the “early Christian communities” who supposedly created the Gospel accounts, choosing fragments of the sayings and actions of “Rabbi Jesus” that suited their immediate purposes and larding them over with pious fabrication.


In the Lectionary, we are given a full reading of Malachi, but only get about half of Zechariah. We spend a week -- this week now concluding -- reading from chapter nine to the end. The first eight chapters are represented by one fragment, Zechariah 1:7-17, appointed for Monday of the week closest to October 26 (Proper 25, Year One). His contemporary Haggai -- whose book is admittedly short -- gets just one day: Sunday of the week just mentioned, 1:1--2:9. [The word of the LORD came to both prophets in the second year of Darius (Haggai 1:1 and Zechariah 1:1). Malachi is probably about two generations later, contemporary with Nehemiah.]

All three of these prophets do indeed speak of their own time. Their pressing concerns are the post-exilic rebuilding of the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem, the re-establishment of Levitical and priestly ministry, the support thereof through tithes and offerings, and the spiritual condition of the community: people, priest and Levites all.

But intermingled with all this are statements that must have leaped out to John the Baptist and his cousin Jesus, as they leap out to us two millennia later:

Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. (Zechariah 9:9)

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered... (Zechariah 12:7)

... and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of his covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 3:1)

And there is the recurring image, here in Zechariah as well as the latter part of Ezekiel, and most of all at the end of the Revelation:

And it shall be in that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. (Zechariah 14:8 -- c.f. Ezekiel 47, Revelation 22:1-2)

Doubtless the liberals would say that St. John the Divine’s overactive imagination dredged up these Old Testament passages from his subconscious. I prefer to think that the Author considered it important enough to say three times, in the hand of three different witnesses.

It seems to me that a passage such as Zechariah 9:9 is paradigmatic of how prophecies are fulfilled. When the time is right, something happens in the plain light of day, and those who know the prophecy see it with sudden awareness, an awareness that most often overturns their world: “So that is what he was talking about!”


The book of the prophet Zechariah, especially its first eight chapters, is as much of a mixture of straightforward ethical teaching alongside wild and often incomprehensible visions as one can find in all of Scripture. I love the vision of the angel with the horses “among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom” (1:7-21); the measuring line (chapter 2); Joshua the high priest, who foreshadows the greater High Priest who is to come: “my servant the BRANCH” (3:8); the two olive trees, their branches emptying golden oil directly into the candlestick (chapter 4; c.f. Revelation 11:4); the “flying roll” and two women with “wings like the wings of a stork” in chapter 5, and the four chariots and mountains of brass in chapter 6.

Whew!!!!

I believe that the genuine prophets (for there have ever been many false prophets), the ones whose writings we have in the Old Testament, faithfully presented the word of the LORD as it came to them. It was not simply their imagination, or their clever political and social commentary; it was exactly what they claimed -- the “word of the LORD.” I suspect that some of it was as strange to them as it sometimes seems to us. And I suspect that they knew that there was more to it than what they could comprehend, even as they wrote it, words and visions that would not be clear until some future generation.

And I heard, but understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. (Daniel 12:8-9)

Trailing Edge Technology

Tomorrow, I am sending an old friend to the recycling bin at the landfill. It is a Hewlett-Packard Vectra HM Computer, approximately fifteen years old. It has a Pentium I processor running at 75 MHz, and was a fine machine for its day.

I had two of them, purchased at the local university surplus shop for $5 each; I got the second one for spare parts. I combined the memory SIMMs from the two machines, adding yet more from an older Dell that I had been using (an Intel 486 machine, which had also been an old friend) and putting the two hard drives in the one case. Thus customized, it had 96 MB of memory, one 500 Mbyte drive and one 4 Gbyte drive, plus drives for CD-ROM and 3.5” floppy disks. There are no USB ports. I ran it with the Windows 95 operating system, and Lotus SmartSuite office software. It did everything a computer should do, though it took its sweet time about it. The boot routine was especially slow because it checked all 96 MB of memory, taking three or four minutes. I would start it up, go fix a cup of tea, and come back.

In some ways it was better than the modern computers. The case is solid, well-constructed, made to last. None of the internal components were made in China, so far as I can tell; most of them are from Japan with a few from the U.S.A., as hard as that is to believe. I used it for about six years and it never gave me the slightest trouble.

But time marches on. The Official Music Office Computer, a Dell Dimension with Pentium IV processor, was the oldest and slowest on the church network. Recently, they upgraded to Windows 7, and discovered that the network would no longer work with my lonely Windows XP machine attached – and my machine would not handle Windows 7. (We skipped over Windows Vista, thank goodness.) So, while I was out in West Virginia last month, my computer was replaced by the second-oldest machine, the one that used to be in the secretary's office, a Dell Optiplex 755. Chris, the wonderful computer person who handles such things for the church, told me I could have the old machine for my very own.

My “new” Pentium IV has moved across to my desk and is now offline, not hooked up to anything but the electrical outlet. But unlike the old HP Vectra, it has its problems. There are two optical drives, a CD-RW and a DVD. Neither of them work nowadays, and haven't for some time. Nor do they respond to cleaning, or any other troubleshooting that I have been able to attempt.

Thus, I took it apart this afternoon to fix it up a bit. I had purchased a shiny new DVD-RW drive to install, but once I got into it, I learned that the perfectly good method of connecting drives which has been used for years is now obsolete; the new drive has a different connector, and if I am going to use it, I must purchase an adapter board. I will look into this tomorrow at the retailer. Mind you, this “obsolete” computer is only six years old, built in 2004.

So, I took the CD drive (read-only) from the HP Vectra and put it in the Pentium IV. It is fifteen years old, has seen heavy use, and works like a charm, albeit slowly. “Made in Japan,” the label on the drive says. I am also using the HP keyboard, which is heavy and solid. I have three of these, again from the surplus shop – free when purchasing a computer or $3 otherwise, back in those days; serial keyboards, all.

I am hard on keyboards because I eat while I write. I get bread crumbs and peanut butter in them, spill tea on them, and much more. I have gone through several Dell keyboards over the years, but have never yet managed to kill one of these HP beauties. One of them has the letters worn off the keys, but it still works.

Or it would if they still made computers with a port for a serial keyboard. The New Official Music Office Machine does not have one: USB only. It comes with a miserable little black keyboard which I hate. The keys are too small, they have the light and insubstantial feel of a laptop, and my hands cramp after only a few minutes of work, to say nothing of everything feeling wrong. And I bet that the first time I spill a cup of tea on it, it will be history. “Made in China,” the label on the bottom says.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that (a) the New Official Machine is fast, (b) all the drives work (though it does not have a floppy drive; I pulled the one out of the HP Vectra, and may install it if I can get permission – and if they haven't gone and “improved” the connectors on those like they have on the DVDs), and (c ) Windows 7 is not too bad as operating systems go. It seems to work, which cannot always be said for Microsoft products.

So my Very Own Dell Dimension Pentium 4 is on my desk, and I will use it for everything that matters to me, such as my databases of anthems and journal articles. Its predecessor, a Pentium III Dell (another surplus shop computer, $35 this time – prices for new computers go down, but surplus prices seem to go up) is going on the floor as a backup. And the old backup, the HP Vectra, has to go out the door.

I will miss it. I booted it one last time today to confirm that I had no data on it. It still works perfectly, or it did until I started pulling drives out of it.

At least I have a few bits remaining from the Old Days – the Vectra CD drive, in light tan, contrasts very nicely with the dark grey of the Pentium 4. The HP keyboard (also in light tan) is hooked up to it, along with an Epson dot matrix printer – it, likewise, works like a charm after what must be twenty-five years of use and is cheaper per page than the inkjet printers. I still use a genuine original equipment IBM PS-2 mouse. It has never needed a bit of attention beyond cleaning (and not much of that; it is layered with years of grime).

And I have a lifetime supply of 3.5” floppy disks.

odds and ends

I carried off several things from my mother's house. Most are of a practical nature, such as her Tupperware kitchen storage containers, two pounds of pinto beans, three pounds of white rice, and a five-pound bag of Martha White Corn Meal. A few have more of a lasting connection:

- A treadle sewing machine that had been my great-grandmother's; this was the only significant item. Mrs. C. was bemused when I arrived home with it, observing that "it needs a lot of work," but she put it in our bedroom beside her grandmother's sewing cabinet.

- A long-handled scythe that my grandfather used to mow hay. It, too, would need a lot of work, being rusty and dull, and the century-old handle (hickory? ash?) might not be up to regular use. But there it is, sitting in our storage unit. I have absolutely no practical use for it.

- A walking stick. On the last full day that I was there, I undertook a little task that had nagged at me for a couple of years; a sapling (Juglans nigra) had grown up through the branches of the apple tree, and with neglect was now some twelve or fourteen feet tall. I sawed it down, and decided that the bottom part of it would make a fine walking stick, straight for five feet with a nice crook at the top where I trimmed off the branches. Being black walnut, it will be sturdy. It has character, reminding me of Gandalf's staff and, much more than that, reminding me of the soil from which it grew. It, too, sits in our storage unit.

Several books:

- A Bible, in the Authorized King James Version, large print with the words of Jesus in red. It is fairly new; I gave it to Mother perhaps ten or fifteen years ago and it is not heavily used (though neither is it un-used). She wrote what she could recall of our family tree in the front pages of it. I am reaching the age where a large-print Bible will be welcome, so I have made this my principal Bible for home use, adding her death to the list of dates and names. Someday mine will join them.

- A Girl Scout Handbook from the 1930's, which she used in starting and leading a Scout troop; I alluded to this in the previous entry. In those days, the Girl Scout and Boy Scout handbooks were considerably more useful than their modern equivalents, where safety and political correctness rule.

- A book of poetry. When I visited her in August, she wanted her "old book of poems." She described it, but I could not find it in the house, nor could my sister. Mother had forgotten to add that it was no longer a "book," but a collection of loose pages in a plain manila envelope. We found it while cleaning out the house, too late for Mother to have for a final visit with these verses as she had desired. Many carry handwritten dates from her early teens, probably memorization assignments. It tends toward eighteenth and nineteenth century authors now out of fashion, such as Whittier, Emerson, Riley, and Longfellow, plus many whose names are entirely unknown to me. Of nineteenth century American poets whose popularity has remained, there is but little: one by Poe, one by Whitman ("O Captain, my Captain") and nothing by Emily Dickinson. There is a fair amount of Burns, a handful of snippets from Shakespeare such as the Soliloquy from "Hamlet," and a selection of political documents at the end: the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, and the Ten Commandments (which, in those days, were considered as foundational of American thought as these other documents). The book is, as mentioned, entirely fallen to pieces.

So should every worthwhile book be, by the time it has accompanied us through a lifetime.