words of Yahweh. Like the first prophetic formula in verse 1, “the word of Yahweh came” (see NOTE), the stereotyped language used to announce a message from God is derived from the context of the Divine Council. The prophet is a courier who authenticates his oral delivery of a message by citing its source. In this case, the expression is often expanded by the addition of divine epithets to the name Yahweh. In Haggai-Zechariah 1–8, the embellishment nearly always takes the form of “of Hosts”; see
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