Prophet Zechariah casts his mind back to the earthquake during the reign of king Uzziah

by Damien F. Mackey “Yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah”. Zechariah 14:5 The writings of the prophet Zechariah are conventionally dated to c. 520-518 BC. King Uzziah of Judah’s reign is thought to have terminated with his death in c. 740 BC. That would mean that Zechariah was retrospecting back over 200 years. A long time. It is as if someone today would refer back to the Battle of Waterloo (1815) as a reference point disaster for our own era. Neither we, nor the narrator, would have had first-hand experience of that distant event. https://prophecytoday.uk/comment/editorial/item/2291-amos-and-zechariah-in-the-news.html Amos and Zechariah in the News! 13 Aug 2021 Editorial Evidence found for past and future biblically prophesied earthquakes Last week, there were surprising headlines in UK media which spoke of corroborating biblical facts, with the Daily Mail writing of the “Evidence of a 2,800-year-old biblical earthquake” being found in Israel1. Even the Sun wrote of the archaeology that “helped to substantiate the Biblical account.”2 Multiple news agencies in Israel also had picked up the recent discovery of evidence corroborating biblical history from the 8th century BC on the eastern slope of the ancient city of Jerusalem. The remains of several houses dating from that period had been under investigation. Joe Uziel and Ortal Chalaf, excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said “When we excavated the structure and uncovered an 8th century BCE layer of destruction, we were very surprised, because we know that Jerusalem continued to exist in succession until the Babylonian destruction, which occurred about 200 years later”.3 In a forthcoming research paper, they reported that in one particular house the destruction layer did not show signs of fire, yet other factors suggested the building had been damaged in a traumatic event, apparently an earthquake. “This was most notable on the earliest floor of the southernmost room,” they write, “In this room, a row of smashed vessels was uncovered along its northern wall, above which fallen stones had been found. It appears that these stones were the upper part of the walls of the room, which had collapsed, destroying the vessels which had been set along the wall.”4 The vessels ranged from small jugs to large storage jars. There seems to have been little hesitation in the experts themselves attributing the damage to the earthquake foretold in Amos and recalled in Zechariah 14:5. Building upon other evidence Though this is the first time that such evidence has been found in the ancient city of Jerusalem, evidence of the ‘Amos’ earthquake had been building for some time. Originally predicted two years in advance (Amos 1:1) in the eighth verse of chapter 8, “Shall not the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells in it? All of it shall swell like the river, heave and subside like the River of Egypt”, its actual occurrence appears in Josephus’ much later description of the events surrounding King Uzziah’s usurping of the priestly burning of incense recorded in 2 Chronicles 26: “… a great earthquake shook the ground, and a rent was made in the temple, and the bright rays of the sun shone through it, and fell upon the king's face, insomuch that the leprosy seized upon him immediately; and before the city, at a place called Eroge [En Rogel], half the mountain broke off from the rest on the west, and rolled itself four furlongs, and stood still at the east mountain, till the roads, as well as the king's garden, were spoiled by the obstruction.”5 This dates the earthquake’s effects at about 750 BC in Biblical chronology, the point at which Jotham had to assume the monarchy, following his father’s isolation due to leprosy. Biblical description fits modern understanding Remarkably, the second part of the predictive verse from Amos 8 accurately fits our modern understanding of earthquakes: seismic waves, “also called ground roll, are surface waves that travel as ripples with motions that are similar to those of waves on the surface of water”.6 Furthermore, early in the 20th century, the geographer Sir George Adam Smith identified landslip debris on the south-western slope of the Mount of Olives, corresponding to the location in Zechariah 14, which was confirmed as earthquake debris by Israeli geologists in 1984.7 Elsewhere in Israel, since 1955 archaeologists have been finding evidence of tilted walls, leaning pillars and fractured masonry associated with mid-8th-century ruins, from Hazor in the North, through Gezer in the centre, to En Hazeva in the South. Estimates of the quake’s magnitude range from 7.8 to 8.2 on the Richter scale, with its epicentre located northwest of Damascus.8 Additionally, a sediment core from the Dead Sea has revealed seismically-disturbed layers dated to 750 BC,10 confirming not only the archaeological dating, but also the Biblical chronology. Evidence for future earthquake at Jesus’ return Zechariah’s 14th-chapter reference to the ‘Amos’ earthquake is in the context of a further prophecy, as yet unfulfilled. That earthquake is used in verse 5 as an illustration of a larger one that is still to come. In verses 3 to 5 the Lord reveals that at a time when all nations are gathered to fight against Jerusalem, “His feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south”. Significantly, during excavations for the then Jordanian government in 1964 to prepare for a new hotel to be built on the Mount of Olives, an east-west geological fault-line was discovered, as shown below, resulting in the planned hotel’s relocation (now the ‘Seven Arches Hotel).Zechariah 14:4 map of fault line As an offset from the main north/south Rift Valley boundary between the African and Arabian Plates, this fault is under northward strain, as the Arabian Plate (east of the Rift) moves north at an estimated rate of about 4.5 millimetres per year, relative to the African Plate.11 ….