The God who rejoices and comes

Three generations after the return from Babylon a temple stands in Jerusalem again, small and plain, and the priests are tired of their service. They lay blind and lame animals on the altar and sniff at it: what a burden (Mal 1:8, 13). Try offering that to your governor, says God, and see whether he is pleased with it. Into that boredom comes the last prophet of the Old Testament, and his first words come from God's own mouth: "I have loved you, says YHWH" (1:2). No accusation, no demand, but a declaration of love to people who bring Him lame lambs. The people shrug: "How have You loved us?" It is the question of a wife who has lived beside her husband for years and no longer sees what he does for her. God explains it, as if for the first time. He points to Jacob, whom He chose without Jacob deserving it (1:2–3), and further on He says why they still exist: "For I, YHWH, do not change, and you, children of Jacob, are not consumed" (3:6).

The answer lies beneath their feet. Their grandparents built that small temple, on a day when there was little to celebrate. A handful of returnees stood among the foundations, and the old men who had known Solomon's house wept aloud (Ezra 3:12). God knew that look: "Who among you saw this house in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?" (Hag 2:3). He did not make it prettier than it was. He came and stood beside them: "Be strong, all you people of the land, and work, for I am with you, declares YHWH of hosts [...] My Spirit remains in your midst; do not fear" (2:4–5). Haggai has only two chapters, and the sentence "I am with you" sounds in it twice (1:13; 2:4). A small building, a discouraged people, and a God who stayed.

In those same years Zechariah heard what God thought of that heap of rubble: "I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, with great heat I am jealous for her" (Zech 8:2). What that heat wants, God showed him in a picture so ordinary it hardly seems to belong in a prophetic book. Old men and old women will again sit in the squares of Jerusalem, each with a staff in hand because of great age, and the squares will be full of boys and girls playing there (8:4–5). This is what God's jealousy looks like when it gets its way: old people in the sun, and children running and shouting among the stones.

The old men who wept at the foundations had been children when the Babylonians came. A prophet had seen that army approaching and questioned God about it: "How long, YHWH, must I cry for help, and You do not listen?" (Hab 1:2). Why does God let injustice go on, and why does He use a crueler nation to punish His own people? Habakkuk received no airtight explanation. He received an appearance: "God came from Teman [...] His majesty covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise [...] He stood, and made the earth shake; He looked, and scattered the nations; the ancient mountains were shattered, the everlasting hills bowed low" (3:3–6). When it was over, the prophet was still trembling on his feet ("my insides shook [...] rottenness entered my bones, and I trembled where I stood," 3:16). With knocking knees he spoke perhaps the boldest confession of faith in the Old Testament: "Though the fig tree does not blossom and there is no fruit on the vine, though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food, though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in YHWH, I will exult in the God of my salvation" (3:17–18). No figs, no grapes, no flock. Habakkuk had nothing in hand to show how God loved him, and he rejoiced.

Where does a man find such a "yet"? A generation earlier, in the days of King Josiah, Zephaniah had heard what lies beneath it. He too began with the Day, and more heavily than anyone: "that day is a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of darkness and gloom" (Zeph 1:15). The fire of God's jealousy would consume all the earth (3:8). What remains after that fire is a poor and humble people that takes refuge in the Name of YHWH (3:12). Over that remnant a song breaks loose. The people are called to rejoice, but the first to rejoice is God Himself: "YHWH your God is in your midst, a warrior who saves. He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will be silent in His love, He will exult over you with loud singing" (3:17).

The God before Whom the ancient mountains bowed in Habakkuk stands in the midst of His people and sings. The same fire that consumes the earth sings over the remnant. He does not sing about the stars He made or the armies He defeated. He sings about a handful of people who had nothing left, like a father humming over the cradle of his sleeping child. Between the rejoicing and the exulting stands that puzzling middle line: He is silent in His love. There is a love so deep that it stops arguing and stops keeping score, and falls silent from sheer affection, until it bursts into song. The withdrawn god of the philosophers, unmoved and distant, does not sing. This God does. While you sleep, while you doubt, while you are not even thinking of it, a song is sounding over you. You are its subject.

When Malachi's priests carried their lame lambs to the altar and asked "how?", that song had been sounding over Jerusalem for almost two centuries. God does not even point to it. He is patient with the shrugging shoulders, and He says it again. The Old Testament closes with a dawn: "for you who fear My Name the Sun of righteousness will rise, and there will be healing under His wings" (Mal 4:2). Then it falls silent for four centuries, until an angel in the temple tells an old priest that the light is about to break. Four centuries in which no prophet speaks, and in which the last book of the scroll still opens at the same sentence. I have loved you.

A note on the source text. The blind and lame offerings, "what a burden": Malachi 1:8, 13; "I have loved you" and "How?": 1:2–3; "I, YHWH, do not change": 3:6. The old men who wept at the foundations: Ezra 3:12; the second temple "as nothing": Haggai 2:3; "I am with you": Haggai 1:13; 2:4; "My Spirit remains in your midst": 2:5. The jealousy for Zion: Zechariah 8:2; the old people and the playing children in the squares: 8:4–5; the humble King on the donkey: 9:9–10; the pierced one: 12:10. The complaint: Habakkuk 1:2; "the righteous shall live by his faith": 2:4; the theophany: 3:3–16; the joy without harvest: 3:17–18. The Day: Zephaniah 1:15; the fire of jealousy: 1:18; 3:8; the remnant: 3:9–13; the rejoicing God who "is silent in His love": 3:14–17; cf. Isaiah 62:5. The Sun of righteousness: Malachi 4:2; cf. Luke 1:78; the promise of Elijah: 4:5. The divine Name as YHWH; the quotations in a modern working translation.