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Forgiven

by Lance Ponder⁽⁸⁵⁾
http://fkiprofessor.xanga.com

Zeph 3:14-15 Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil.

Again we see a reference to a daughter. In modern science the term daughter implies a byproduct or simply an outcome product. This idea is consistent with the biblical usage. The next logical question then is who is Zion. Throughout scripture the term Zion refers to either a mountain or a very important personality. Often a mountain or a hill is used as a metaphor for the relative importance of an individual or group. Mount Zion is of particular importance, however, because it is often associated with Jerusalem as a place or with Messiah as a personal figure. Since the term daughter here implies a group, the daughter of Zion, then, is logically a people who are produced by Jerusalem or Messiah. Messiah is intrinsically linked to Jerusalem from the time Abraham met Melchizedek (Gen 14:18, Heb 5:6) until he was crucified. Two temples were built on a hill in Jerusalem known generally as Zion (2 Sam 5:7) and prophecy clearly speaks of an ultimate Temple where God lives (Rev 21:22) being on a mountain with the river of life flowing from the temple (Eze 47:1).

How much of this is poetic and how much of it is literal may be widely debated, but there is little room to debate that Messiah Jesus Christ is the personification of Zion. As such, the next logical step is to assume the daughter of Zion is the group of followers to come which today we call Christianity. We know that the New Covenant includes forgiveness of sin, justification, and sanctification.

For those seeking to put Zeph 3:14-15 in a purely Jewish perspective, we can view this passage as a poetic prophecy looking forward to the return of exiles from Babylon. The Babylonian Empire collapsed internally and was subsequently conquered by the Persians who in turn permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem in the late sixth century. It is hard to take this as more than a poetic reference to the return from exile, however, since Jerusalem was never again a free political state without fear of evil from those around it. This passage makes far more sense as an apocalyptic prophecy because this same promise has never been fully realized in the normal order of human affairs. The promise of freedom from fear and the clearing away of enemies to those who follow Christ is promised after our Lord’s return.

Article submitted Thursday, September 29, 2011 & read 170 times.

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