Zechariah 9:9-12
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Zechariah 9:11
In the latter portion of Zechariah, most likely a later addition written under the threat or rule of the Greeks, we see a clear portrait of the “demilitarized dominion” of God (David L. Petersen’s words from the New Oxford Annotated Bible). Presented is a common image in prophetic literature of God destroying the weapons of war used to govern the present age and pronounce God’s rule in the age to come. Matthew later connects this specific passage to the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, linking this newly disarmed world to the purposes of his ministry.
Zechariah rejects a few critical things in this passage: weapons of war (chariots, war horses, battle bows) and incarceration. The specific form of incarceration referenced here is likely related to military prisoners given the references to war. Freedom for these captives of opposing nations from imperial powers represents liberation for the whole of Zechariah’s people. At the same time, the prisoners could refer to exiles as deportation was a repeated trauma of the Jewish people at the hands of larger Ancient Near Eastern empires.
For our purposes, we need not see Zechariah’s promise of an end to incarceration so narrowly. The prison industrial complex of the United States specifically is a mechanism of these same dominating powers that plagued Zechariah’s time. Our systems of incarceration wield deportation as a weapon just as ancient empires did. The internal policing of Americans often looks like militarized occupation, especially in times of protest and resistance to police brutality. Prisons are very much the “waterless pit” (v. 11, NRSV) of the country, resulting in intense pain and future marginalization in our social structures.
God promises freedom from these powers and we ought to declare that freedom from our pulpits. We must declare God’s intentions for these institutions to pass away and be replaced by the kingdom of peace promised in Zechariah.
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.