- Name 46 of 70A Wall of Fire
- HebrewChomat esh
- In plain wordsGod's own protection all the way around
- Where to find itZechariah 2:5, Jerusalem after the exile
A wall of fire is what God promised to be for Jerusalem when the city had no real walls at all: For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her
(Zechariah 2:5). The name means God's own protection on every side, with His presence living right in the middle of His people.
A city of ruins and a man with a measuring line
To see why this promise was so bold, picture Jerusalem around 520 BC. The Babylonians had burned the city and its temple decades earlier. Now the Persian Empire ruled, and groups of Jewish exiles had been allowed to go home. They found rubble. They laid the foundation for a new temple, but enemies around them made trouble, and the work stopped. The Bible says it ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia
(Ezra 4:24).
Times were hard. The prophet Haggai, who preached in the same years, described it this way: Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough
(Haggai 1:6). Few people lived in the city, and its walls were still broken down.
In that second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah. He saw a series of visions in one night (Zechariah 1:7 to 6:8). In the third one, he saw a man going out to survey the city:
I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand. Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof.
Zechariah 2:1-2
Whither goest thou?
means "Where are you going?" The man's plan made perfect sense. If you want to build a wall, you measure first. But before he got far, one angel sent another running with a message:
And said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein:
Zechariah 2:4
In other words: do not measure too small. Jerusalem is going to be so full of people and animals that no wall could hold them. In the ancient world, that sounded almost crazy. A city with no wall was an easy target for any raider. The broken walls were the people's shame. And then God gave the reason they did not need to fear.
For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her.
Zechariah 2:5
Chomat esh: what the Hebrew says
The Hebrew phrase is chomat esh. Chomah is the regular word for a city wall, the kind built of heavy stones to keep enemies out. Strong's dictionary calls it a wall of protection. Esh is the everyday word for fire. The verse adds sabib, which means "round about," on every side.
Think about the difference between the two kinds of walls. A stone wall has gates that can be forced and low spots that can be climbed. Armies can dig under it or wait outside until the people inside run out of food. A wall of fire has no gate to break and no top to climb. Nobody gets through it.
Israel already remembered God standing between them and danger. When Pharaoh's army chased them to the Red Sea, the pillar of cloud moved between the two camps, dark on the Egyptian side and giving light to Israel, so that the one came not near the other all the night
(Exodus 14:20). Later the prophet Elisha's servant woke up to see an enemy army surrounding their town. Elisha prayed, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha
(2 Kings 6:17).
The second half of Zechariah 2:5 matters just as much. God would be the glory in the midst of her
. The Hebrew word for glory, kabod, has a root sense of weight, the heavy, shining presence of God. So the name has two parts: fire around the outside, and God Himself at the center.
The apple of His eye and other key verses
A few verses later Zechariah adds one of the tenderest lines in the prophets:
For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.
Zechariah 2:8
"Spoiled you" means robbed you. The apple of the eye is the pupil. If something flies toward your eye, your hand comes up and you blink before you even think. God says that is how He feels about His people. An attack on them is an attack on the most sensitive part of Him.
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.
Psalm 125:2
Jerusalem sits among hills that rise on several sides. The psalm uses that view as a picture: God surrounds His people the way those hills surround the city.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.
Zechariah 4:6
Zerubbabel was the governor leading the rebuilding. God's message to him matches the wall of fire: the work would not succeed because of soldiers or stone, but because of God's Spirit.
About seventy-five years later a man named Nehemiah did come and rebuild the stone walls, with workers who held a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other (Nehemiah 4:17). That was not a lack of faith. God's protection and human work go together in the Bible. But the stones were never the final safety. God was.
When your walls are down
It is easy to understand the man with the measuring line. He was being responsible. He looked at the site, counted what he had and made a plan based on what he could see. Many of us do the same with our lives, our families, our churches or our businesses. God's word to him still speaks: your measuring line may be too small. Keep planning, but do not let your numbers decide what God can do.
This name also speaks to anyone who feels exposed. Maybe you lost the job that made you feel secure, or a parent who always had your back, or your health. Maybe it feels like anything could walk right into your life now. God's word to a city with broken walls was, "I will be your wall, and I will live in the middle of you."
And some of us have the opposite problem. We have built so many walls, around our hearts, our time and our money, that no one can get close. God's picture is a city so full of life that it spills past any wall. Some of the walls you built may have been needed once. It might be time to ask what they are keeping out.
- Read Zechariah 2 in one sitting. It is only thirteen verses.
- Write down one place where your plan is based only on what you can see, and pray about it.
- Say Zechariah 2:8 to yourself on a hard day: you are the apple of His eye.
A Wall of Fire is name 46 of the 70 in the book. It follows A Strength to the Poor, a Refuge from the Storm, and the next name, A Sun and Shield, again pairs light with protection. You can also see more Hebrew names of God.
