Zechariah 1:15

"And I am very sore displeased with the nations that are at ease; for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction."

This is the second basis of the Covenant Angel's intercession, here being relayed to Zechariah by the interpreting angel. God always used pagan nations to punish his people, but in the wretched destruction of Israel, the Assyrians and Babylonians had gone much too far.

I am sore displeased ..." This in itself was the best of good news to the Israelites. From anything they had been able to see, the hostile powers oppressing them were getting away with it; but here is the assurance that they shall receive merited punishment. (See further comment on this clause under Zechariah 1:3, above.)

The nations that are at ease ..." Here is heavenly comment on those nations "at rest" (Zechariah 1:11). Their condition was one of carnal security, confidently asserting itself over the groanings of the enslaved and oppressed. God was displeased with it, to the point of a burning and continual anger, which before long would erupt in the punishment of wicked states.

For I was but a little displeased ..." This is one of the most astounding statements in God's Word. The punishment which God inflicted upon Israel for their rebellion against him was as tragic as anything that can be imagined. Their kings and princes were ruthlessly murdered; tens of thousands of the population were uprooted, deported, enslaved and destroyed; their temple was razed; their possessions parceled out to the conquerors, their women ravished, their little ones dashed to pieces, and their every treasure looted. Why? God was a "little displeased!"

Is not this the same thing that God meant when he compared the utmost agony of the crucifixion of Christ to be but the "bruising of the heel" of the seed of woman? (Genesis 3:15). Contrasted with such a heel-bruise will be the "bruising of the head" of Satan when he and his followers are overwhelmed in the lake of fire; and the same analogy holds here. Severely as God's children were punished, it is but a "little thing" compared to the destruction of the wicked yet to take place. Something far more terrible was laid up in store for those godless states which had ravished God's people. Not only would their peoples and cities be utterly destroyed, but the final rendezvous in hell yet awaits them.

And they helped forward the affliction ..." The inhumanity of the punishing nations God brought against Israel was marked by their efforts utterly to exterminate them. An example of this horrible attitude is to be observed in the Biblical account of Jehu's excessive ruthlessness in the destruction he visited (at God's commandment) upon the house of Ahab and Jezebel. As a result of his greedy and insatiable blood-lust, God destroyed his dynasty.