Bible Strands
Zechariah 4:7
What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain. Then he will bring forth the capstone accompanied by shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD speaks to Zerubbabel, the governor overseeing the temple's rebuilding, in direct continuation of v.6's declaration that the work proceeds by Spirit, not might. The "great mountain" is the obstacle opposing that work.
The words — מִי (mi-) is a bare interrogative "who?" thrown at an inanimate obstacle, as though the mountain were a person to be called to account. לְ/מִישֹׁר (le-mishor) means "into level ground," the specific result: not destruction but flattening into usable terrain.
The thread — Jeremiah 51:25 uses the same "against you, O mountain" formula against Babylon, leveling a political power; here the formula is turned on an unnamed obstacle to the temple. Zechariah 4:9 confirms the trajectory: the same hands that laid the foundation will complete it.
Why it lands — The verse asks the reader to stop treating the obstacle as the protagonist and to see that the one who appears great is actually the one being interrogated and reduced. It also ties completion to public joy ("Grace, grace to it!"), not to solitary endurance.
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
Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 51:25 “Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, you who devastate the whole earth, declares the LORD. I will stretch out My hand against you; I will roll you over the cliffs and turn you into a charred mountain.
- Zechariah 4:9 “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house, and his hands will complete it. Then you will know that the LORD of Hosts has sent me to you.
- Micah 4:1 In the last days the mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief of the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and the peoples will stream to it.
- Psalms 118:22 The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
- Psalms 114:4 the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs.
- Isaiah 41:15 Behold, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.
- Haggai 2:21 “Tell Zerubbabel governor of Judah that I am about to shake the heavens and the earth:
- 1 Peter 2:7 To you who believe, then, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”
- Psalms 114:6 O mountains, that you skipped like rams, O hills, like lambs?
- Isaiah 28:16 So this is what the Lord GOD says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will never be shaken.