The opening address of the prophet (chapter i: 1-6) forms an excellent introduction to the visions of comfort and warning which he had and revealed to the people. It is a very pointed and earnest call to repentance: _The Lord has been sore displeased with your fathers._ They were disobedient and stiff-necked. The former prophets, Jeremiah and Isaiah, had called them to turn from their evil ways, but they did not hear. And now, where are the fathers? They had passed away like the disobedient ones in the wilderness; God's judgment and displeasure had overtaken them. But the faithful God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose gifts and calling are without repentance, comes once more to His chosen people, the seed of Abraham, and the Spirit, through Zechariah, speaks a direct message to return, and utters the promise that the Lord will also return unto them. _Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: Return unto me saith the Lord of Hosts, and I will return unto you saith the Lord of Hosts._ The name Jehovah appears three times in this short exhortation. Each time the name is in another connection. Jehovah speaks, they are to return to Jehovah, and Jehovah will return to them. Surely in profane literature such a repetition would be rejected as useless and superfluous, but in the Book where every word and phrase is God-given, we cannot pass it by as having no significance. Like in many other passages in the Old Testament we have here a revelation of the one God as Father, Son and Spirit. This revelation was often made in divine history, and when the measure of Israel's apostacy was at last filled up, they had indeed rejected Jehovah in rejecting Jehovah-Jesus, and also Jehovah, the Spirit. And while this exhortation was one for Zechariah's contemporaries, it is the great exhortation to the Jewish remnant for all times. The nation having forsaken Jehovah in His revelations as Father, Son and Spirit, will have to return and listen to Jehovah who speaks, to Jehovah whom they rejected, and Jehovah in His merciful and loving manifestations will return to them as a nation and to their land.