Zechariah 1:2

The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Who lived before and at the time of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, and which was manifest by their captivity; all which were

The LORD hath been sore displeased with your fathers. The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers.

The Lord, the holy, the mighty One, your God, the just Governor of the world, hath been sore displeased; so long provoked, that his displeasure at last enkindled within his breast, and broke out into that flame which hath consumed your land, city, and temple. With your fathers; all that were progenitors, forefathers to the returned captives, from their entrance into Canaan, but especially since the apostacy in Jeroboam’ s time; for many hundred years your predecessors have provoked God by their notorious sins, even to the days of their captivity.

Zechariah 1:2 The LORD hath been sore displeased with your fathers.Ver. 2. The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers] Heb. He hath boiled against your fathers with foaming anger, with height of heat. There are degrees of anger, see Matthew 5:22 Deuteronomy 29:28. The Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation. Surgit hic oratio: and the last of those three words is the same here used in the text; noting a higher degree than the two former, even such a fervour and fierceness of God’ s wrath as maketh him ready to kill and cut off, like as he had much ado to forbear killing of Moses, when he met him in the inn, Exodus 4:24, and as Nebuchadnezzar was not only angry, but very furious, and commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon, Daniel 2:12. Now if the wrath of a king be as many messengers of death, Proverbs 16:14, what shall we think of the foaming and frothing wrath of God, which burns unto the lowest hell, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains, Deuteronomy 32:22. After which followeth, in the next verse, "I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them," Deuteronomy 32:23. He had done so upon the ancestors of these refractory Jews, who had been saepius puncti et repuncti, minime tamen ad resipiscentiam compuncti, often punished, but could never be reclaimed; so incorrigibly flagitious, so shamelessly, so prodigiously wicked were they, till there was no remedy. This their vile stubbornness made him sore displeased with them; and put thunderbolts into his hands to destroy them; for though fury be not in God, Isaiah 27:5, to speak properly, he is free from any such passions as we are subject to, yet if briars and thorns set against him in battle, if a rabble of rebels conspire to cast him out of his throne, saying, "We will not have this man to rule over us," &c., "I would go through them, I would burn them together," saith he, in the same breath. Abused mercy turneth into fury. Nothing so cold as lead, and yet nothing so scalding, if molten. Nothing more blunt than iron; and yet nothing so keen, if sharpened. The air is soft and tender; yet out of it are engendered thunder and lightnings. The sea is calm and smooth; but if tossed with tempests, it is rough above measure. The Lord, as he is Father of mercies, so he is God of recompences: and it is a fearful thing to fall into his punishing hands, Hebrews 10:31. If his wrath be kindled, yea, but a little, woe be to all those upon whom it lights, Psalms 2:12 : how much more when he is sore displeased with a people or person, as here!

(2) Your fathers.—This verse contains the word of the Lord addressed directly to and through the prophet, who is included among those addressed in the pronoun “your fathers.” It gives the ground on which the exhortation to repentance is founded.

Verse 2. The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers.] For their ingratitude idolatry, iniquity, and general rebellion.

2–6. The call to Repentance. Zechariah’s first message is one of warning, by the example of their fathers and the earlier prophets. On their fathers, as they well knew, the displeasure of Almighty God had fallen heavily (Zechariah 1:2). Now, for the first time in this new era of their history, God is sending to them, as He did to their fathers of old, His servants the prophets, himself and Haggai, with a call to repentance and a promise of reconciliation, Zechariah 1:3. Let them not be like their fathers, who turned a deaf ear to the remonstrances of the prophets and refused to amend, Zechariah 1:4; lest, being like them in their sin, they should be like them in their punishment also, and should have with them to confess, in the bitter experience of their accomplishment, that God’s unheeded threatenings would surely take effect, Zechariah 1:5-6.

Wroth was the Lord against your fathers with wrath - o, that is, a wrath which was indeed such, whose greatness he does not further express, but leaves to their memories to supply.

2. At the beginning of his message the prophet places the statement that Jehovah was angry with the fathers. Sore displeased — Literally, angry with anger. This should serve as a warning to the present generation.