every family apart (zechariah 12:9-14)

This message, the THIRD in a 5-part series on the Advent of Messiah, was preached in 2016. Part 3 is an interesting study concerning the significance of the four houses mentioned in Zechariah 12:9-14 with regard to the Messianic genealogies, the announcements of Messiah’s First Advent, the salvation of Israel at Messiah’s Second Advent, and the identity of the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night.

*Disclaimer Concerning Part 3: The name Shimei was a very popular Hebrew name, being especially common in Levitical circles and at the time of the return from the Babylonian Captivity. Ezra 10 alone mentions three Shimei’s who had taken strange wives and put them away at Ezra’s exhortation in the 7th year of Artaxerxes. The author’s suggestion in this message that the Shimei of Ezra 10:23 was also the brother of Zerubbabel and that he put away his strange wife to take a wife of the daughters of Levi and thereby father Rhesa, the son-in-law of Zerubbabel (cf. Luke 3:27) is possible (especially considering the miracles of age that can be demonstrated elsewhere in the Messianic genealogy), though probably untenable when one considers that Ezra 10 takes place chronologically almost 50 years after the completion of the Second Temple in 516 BC. Notwithstanding, as Shimei was a common Levitical name at the time in question and as this name is connected with both Judah and Levi in the prophecy of Zechariah 12:12, it makes sense that the Tribe of Levi came near to the Messianic line in Zerubbabel’s day (i.e. as it does at the time of Christ) through his much-younger brother Shimei (cf. I Chronicles 3:19) and that this Shimei fathered Rhesa (Luke 3:27) by way of Zerubbabel’s daughter Shelomith (I Chronicles 3:19). The author believes that the Shimei of Zechariah 12:12 is none other than the brother of Zerubbabel (i.e son by blood of Pedaiah yet the legal son of Salathiel via Levirate marriage) and the legal son of Pedaiah, the adopted son of Jeconias descended biologically from the Levites. Whether or not this is the same Shimei mentioned in Ezra 10:23 is ultimately a matter of conjecture. The time of Zerubbabel, Shimei, Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, et. al. was a very difficult and confusing time in Israel’s history when many strange things happened. Yet the Lord, notwithstanding, preserved the Jewish people and the Messianic bloodline from King David just as He said He would do.