Weekly Bible Reading – Week 38
We are getting very close to the end of the Old Testament. The exile has ended. Some of God’s people have returned to Jerusalem. The temple is being rebuilt. But if anyone expected the return from exile to feel like a triumphant return to the glory days of David and Solomon, they were probably disappointed. Jerusalem is still a mess. God’s people are still subjects of a foreign empire. Many Jews remain scattered throughout the nations. There is no son of David sitting on the throne. There is no glorious kingdom stretching across the earth. The promises of the prophets seem so much bigger than what the people can actually see.
Zechariah tells us to keep looking forward because the King is still coming. Esther reminds us that God is working even when we cannot see Him. Ezra reminds the returned exiles that restoration involves more than rebuilding buildings; God is restoring a holy people. And Nehemiah looks at the broken walls of Jerusalem and refuses to believe that brokenness gets the final word. God is still at work.
Daily Readings
Day 263 – Zechariah 1-4: Zechariah begins with a simple call: “Return to me…and I will return to you.” Then the visions begin. Horsemen, horns, craftsmen, a measuring line, Joshua the high priest standing in filthy garments, and a lampstand fed by olive trees. Zechariah can feel like we have wandered back into some of the strangest parts of Ezekiel or Daniel.
But don’t get lost in the imagery. God has not forgotten Jerusalem. He removes Joshua’s filthy garments and clothes him in clean ones. He promises that Jerusalem will again overflow with prosperity. And the rebuilding will happen “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” The restoration of God’s people will ultimately be God’s work.
Day 264 – Zechariah 5-9: The visions continue, but by chapter 9 something begins to sound remarkably familiar. Zechariah tells Jerusalem to rejoice because her King is coming: righteous, bringing salvation, and riding humbly on a donkey.
The returned exiles may be back in the land, but Zechariah wants them to understand that returning to Jerusalem isn’t the end of the story. They are still waiting for a King. Centuries later, Jesus will deliberately ride into Jerusalem in a way that points directly back to this promise. Israel has returned to the land, but God’s great restoration is still coming.
Day 265 – Zechariah 10-14: The final chapters of Zechariah give us several images that will echo loudly in the New Testament: thirty pieces of silver, the rejected shepherd, the one who is pierced, the scattering of the sheep when the shepherd is struck, and finally the LORD reigning as King over all the earth.
Some of these passages are difficult, and Zechariah doesn’t always give us a neat timeline for how everything fits together. But the destination is clear. God’s purposes extend far beyond rebuilding Jerusalem’s temple. A day is coming when the LORD will be King over all the earth. This little post-exilic community is being taught to lift its eyes toward something much greater.
Day 266 – Esther 1-5: Then we leave Jerusalem entirely. Esther takes us into Ancient Persia, where many Jewish people still live scattered throughout the empire. And immediately something unusual happens: God seems to disappear. His name is never explicitly mentioned in the book. Yet His fingerprints are everywhere.
Esther, a Jewish orphan, becomes queen. Mordecai uncovers a plot against the king. Haman’s hatred places the Jewish people in mortal danger. Esther finds herself uniquely positioned to intervene. What appears to be a string of coincidences begins to look suspiciously like providence. Mordecai’s question to Esther hangs over the story: who knows whether you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this?
Day 267 – Esther 6-10: If you enjoy a good reversal, Esther delivers one of the best in Scripture. Haman arrives intending to have Mordecai killed and ends up publicly honoring him. The gallows Haman builds for Mordecai become the place of his own execution. The decree intended to destroy God’s people is answered by another decree that allows them to defend themselves. Mourning turns into celebration.
The entire story turns on events that look almost absurdly ordinary. The king can’t sleep. A book is read. An old act of faithfulness is remembered at exactly the right moment. No sea parts. No fire falls from heaven. No prophet announces, “Thus says the LORD.” And yet God is working.
Day 268 – Ezra 7-10: We return to Jerusalem and meet Ezra, a priest and scribe who has devoted himself to studying, obeying, and teaching the Law of the LORD. The final chapters become difficult because Ezra discovers widespread intermarriage with the surrounding peoples. We should read carefully here. The fundamental issue is not ethnicity; God’s concern throughout Scripture is the covenant faithfulness of His people and the danger of being drawn into idolatry.
The painful response in Ezra reflects the seriousness with which the returned community understands its calling to be holy after the very sins that led Judah into exile. They have rebuilt the temple. But having a temple again means very little if they simply return to the same unfaithfulness that destroyed Jerusalem in the first place.
Day 269 – Nehemiah 1-5: Nehemiah receives terrible news: Jerusalem’s walls remain broken and its gates burned, and his first response isn’t construction. It’s prayer. He weeps, fasts, confesses Israel’s sin, remembers God’s promises, and asks the LORD for favor. Only then does he approach the king. Soon Nehemiah is standing among the ruins, surveying the damage and calling God’s people to rebuild.
Opposition quickly follows, but so does another problem. Nehemiah discovers injustice among the Jews themselves. Some wealthy Jews are exploiting their poorer brothers and sisters. Once again we discover that rebuilding Jerusalem requires more than stones and mortar. God isn’t merely rebuilding a city. He is restoring a people.
Deep Dive – When God Seems Missing
There is something almost unsettling about the book of Esther. God never speaks. There are no prophets. There are no miracles. Nobody calls fire from heaven. Nobody walks through a divided sea. In fact, God’s name isn’t even explicitly mentioned. And somehow, God is everywhere. That may make Esther one of the most relatable books in the Bible.
Most of us don’t live at the Red Sea. We don’t wake up every morning and discover manna outside. Angels don’t normally knock on our doors to explain what God is doing. Most of our lives look much more like Esther. We go to work. We have conversations. Plans change. People disappoint us. Somebody can’t sleep. A phone call comes at an unexpected moment. We meet someone we weren’t planning to meet. A door closes. Another opens.
And we wonder where God is. Esther teaches us that God does not have to be visible to be active. Think about how fragile the entire story is. What if Esther had not become queen? What if Mordecai had not overheard the assassination plot? What if his act had been immediately rewarded instead of forgotten? What if the king had slept soundly that night? What if the servant had opened a different section of the royal records?
Individually, each event looks insignificant. Together, they form a tapestry of providence. That doesn’t mean every inconvenience in our lives contains a secret code that we need to decipher. Providence isn’t an invitation to become superstitious about every green light or parking space. It is something much more comforting than that. Providence means that the God who rules creation is never absent from His creation. Nothing catches Him by surprise, and nothing can finally derail His purposes.
And that truth runs underneath everything else we’re reading this week. The returned exiles look around Jerusalem and see a tiny community surrounded by enormous empires. God tells Zechariah that His purposes will be accomplished “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” Esther sees a death sentence hanging over her people and discovers that God has already placed her in exactly the position where she can act. Ezra sees a people repeating old patterns of unfaithfulness and calls them again to holiness. Nehemiah hears that Jerusalem is still lying in ruins and begins praying to the God of heaven.
None of them can see the whole story, and neither can we.
We have an advantage, of course. We can turn the page. We know that Haman loses. We know Jerusalem’s walls will rise. We know the promised King of Zechariah really will come riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. But the people living through these events didn’t know that yet. They had promises. And they had to trust the God who made them.
That is where many of us live right now. We are somewhere in the middle of the chapter. We can see enough to know that things are broken, but not enough to understand what God is doing about it. We pray, and sometimes nothing obvious happens. We obey, and circumstances don’t immediately improve. We look for God and find no pillar of fire, only ordinary providences that may not make sense until much later.
But the God of Esther is still God when His name isn’t printed on the page. The God of Zechariah is still working when His people are small and the empire is enormous. The God of Nehemiah is still faithful when the walls are rubble. And the God who promised a coming King was quietly moving history toward a little town called Bethlehem. So if you cannot see what God is doing right now, don’t confuse hiddenness with absence. You may simply be living in the middle of the story.