Zechariah 1:12

"Then the angel of Jehovah answered and said, O Jehovah of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years."

Our Lord Jesus Christ appeared in his true character in this Christophany, as an intercessor of the people of God, a function now being fulfilled by him for Christians before the throne of God (Hebrews 7:25). It was like a stroke of lightning at midnight. Israel is not deserted, small and weak as they undoubtedly were; for their mighty champion, the Angel of God's Presence, is pleading their case before the God of all creation!

These threescore and ten ..." The basis of this intercession is that the appointed years of their captivity, the enforcement of sabbaths long neglected, had reached the foreordained termination; it was time for God to hear his people's cry. Furthermore, their punishment had been far more than enough, much beyond what God intended, due to the sadistic cruelty of God's enforcement agencies who had far-exceeded their commission, actually trying to exterminate them, which God had never purposed to do.

Hailey pointed out that there were two periods of seventy years associated with the subjugation of Israel: (1) from the year 606-605 when Nebuchadnezzar annexed Judea to the fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great who at once ordered the return of the Jews to their land in 536 B.C.; and (2), from the destruction of the Temple in 586 B.C. to the completion of the rebuilt Temple in 516 B.C.[27] It was this latter period which lacked but a little of having expired when this intercession came.

This cry for mercy from the angel of the Lord also provides the key to understanding just how the world sat still and was at rest, as just reported by the heavenly patrol.

"From this cry, it is clear that the peaceful and untroubled state of the world is bad news to some: to captives who await rescue, to slaves who await freedom, to the downtrodden who look for a helping hand."[28]