Bible Strands
Zechariah 1:2
“The LORD was very angry with your fathers.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Yahweh speaks through the prophet Zechariah to the post-exilic community in the eighth month of the second year of King Darius. The declaration confronts the listeners with divine judgment directed at their ancestors.
The words — The Hebrew קָצַף (ka.Tzaf) indicates active anger, paired with קָצֶף (Ka.tzef) as the concrete state of wrath. These terms frame the divine response as a settled, directed hostility rather than a transient reaction.
The thread — This motif of sustained divine anger runs through Jeremiah 44:6, Psalm 79:5, and Lamentations 5:7, where it is consistently tied to ancestral transgression and its ongoing impact on the community.
Why it lands — The text requires the reader to acknowledge inherited guilt before the call to return in Zechariah 1:3 can function. It demands a clear-eyed assessment of historical judgment as the necessary precondition for restoration.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 44:6 Therefore My wrath and anger poured out and burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, so that they have become the desolate ruin they are today.
- Psalms 79:5 How long, O LORD? Will You be angry forever? Will Your jealousy burn like fire?
- Lamentations 5:7 Our fathers sinned and are no more, but we bear their punishment.
- Ezekiel 22:31 So I have poured out My indignation upon them and consumed them with the fire of My fury. I have brought their ways down upon their own heads, declares the Lord GOD.”
- Zephaniah 2:1 Gather yourselves, gather together, O shameful nation,
- Matthew 23:30 And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’
- Acts 7:52 Which of the prophets did your fathers fail to persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One. And now you are His betrayers and murderers—
- 2 Kings 22:16 that this is what the LORD says: I am about to bring calamity on this place and on its people, according to all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read,
- 2 Kings 22:19 because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its people, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and because you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I have heard you,’ declares the LORD.
- 2 Kings 23:26 Nevertheless, the LORD did not turn away from the fury of His burning anger, which was kindled against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke Him to anger.