A leading interpretive principle of prophecy is: all prophecy has an ethical purpose. That is, God does not grant knowledge of the future as a supernatural version of "Trivial Pursuit." He grants glimpses of the flow of future history so that His people might be moved to serve Him more diligently and faithfully.

In this chapter we come upon the second portion of the prophetic answer to the question of the Jews from Bethel, which is recorded in Zechariah 7:3. In our last message we noted that the first part of the answer was in the form of rebuke for their sinfulness in attempting to gain God's favor through mechanical, ritualistic worship. But in this section, he moves beyond the rebuke, to offer a much more cheering answer to the inquiry.