Stead again. He points out the intertextual connections between Zechariah 4:7 and Isaiah 40:4, 42:16. In all these passages, mountains are being brought low. One of the remarkable contrasts is that in Isaiah (especially 42:16), Yahweh Himself levels mountains; in Zechariah, Zerubbabel carries out the demolition.
What are the mountains? Stead points to passages that address various world powers as mountains (Isaiah 41:11-15; Jeremiah 51:25; one might add the mountain that fills the whole earth in Daniel 2), and concludes that “the ‘great mountain’ facing Zerubbabel is the world power which opposes the temple building,” which at least for a time is Persia. In the power of the Spirit, Zerubbabel lays low the mountains of the nations, while completing the house of the mountain of Yahweh, which becomes chief of the mountains.
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