But He also knew that He they would reject;
God meant it not for the Christ's first time down,
But the next, when His rule He would inject!
This crown was kept in the second temple;
It was there when Jesus, at twelve, was, too;
The elders assumed the boy was simple,
But listened in awe at how much He knew!
I wonder, while there, if He glimpsed His crown,
And, boy-like, wished He could test if it fit;
Not He, but Rome, got it, looting the town;
When Christ returns, He'll have many like it!
Crown Him King of every earth nation,
For such will be the Lord's coronation!
"The word of the Lord came to me [Zechariah]: 'Take silver and gold from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon. Go the same day to the house of Josiah, son of Zephaniah. Take the silver and the gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest, Joshua, son of Jebozadak. Tell him this is what the Lord Almighty says,
The prophet Zechariah lived, preached and wrote in the small colony of Judah among the Jews returning from 70 years captivity in Babylon, 500 years before the birth of Jesus, the Messiah. The high priest at the time was an ordinary man named Joshua, the Hebrew name Jesus. Zechariah's mission was mainly to motivate the returning Jews to rebuild the temple; the Babylonians had destroyed Solomon's magnificent temple in their capture of Jerusalem in 578 B.C. This second temple was Herod;s temple that existed in Jerusalem when Jesus came. It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. The scripture passage cited above gives God's command to Zechariah to have a king's crown made for Jesus, the coming Messiah. It was placed temporarily on the head of Joshua, the current high priest to symbolize that because he had the same name as Jesus, it was for the divine Branch of the line of David coming later that the crown was meant for, It also emphasized to the Jews and Chrisians to follow that the divine ruler would combine the offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, similar to the functions of Moses in earlier times. The crown was also meant to be only one of many, because its true owner would have many crowns and rule all the nations of the world, not just Israel. The "temple" that this ruler would build is probably symbolic rather than real---symbolic of the temple of the new covenant, which is the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and described in His Sermon on the Mount (See Matthew 5-7).
God knew that Jesus would first come as a gentle example of how He wanted His followers to live; they were to spread love to all the world; to be cooperative with their rulers, no matter how harsh. It is perplexing that He had the Jews to make this crown before Jesus came meek and mild, since the crown-making would have the effect of exciting them at the prospect of an unbeatable military leader who would rule the world; how could they reconcile the unaggressive Jesus with their expectation of a Napoleonic leader? Perhaps it was done by God in this fashion because He, in fact, had told them 200 years before, by Isaiah, that their stubborn refusal to adhere to their responsibilities of the Mosaic covenant had caused Him to further dull their calloused spiritual insight (See Isaiah 6:9-10). It seems apparent that God wanted Israel to reject Jesus; by so doing, the Gentile world became eligible for salvation, not just Jews. Of course, it was always like that in God's plan, but the Jews had become insufferably self-important, thinking their God was for them alone. God knew that this crown was not to be awarded to Jesus the Messiah; it was meant for Christ at His Second Coming, which was totally beyond what Jewish theologians could grasp.
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