Does Zechariah 14:4 Teach the Trinity or Deity of Christ?


Zechariah 14:1-5

1 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.
2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
5 And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.

Argument

Of the Lord (Yahweh), the passage says "his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives". This is the mount from which Jesus ascended (Acts 1:12), and the passage refers to Him at His Second Coming.

Response

This passage is not applied to Jesus in Acts chapter 1, or anywhere in the New Testament. Additionally, the account in Acts chapter 1 does not actually say that Jesus will return on the Mount of Olives. Instead, it says He will return from Heaven in a similar way to how He ascended:

Acts 1:11

11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

The Bible says elsewhere that when Jesus returns, everyone is going to see Him (Matthew 24:23-30, Revelation 1:7), which indicates something more universal than a local return to any particular location. So, in addition to the passage in question not being applied to Him in the New Testament, there is no explicit statement in Scripture that He will return on the Mount of Olives where He ascended from, either.

However, although this text is not applied to Jesus in the New Testament, suppose that it was, for the sake of argument. In that case, as with other Yahweh texts which some Trinitarians argue apply to Jesus, there is always the problem that Yahweh can be legitimately said to "do" something, even if that action is performed through one of His agents that He has ordained for a particular purpose. There is no logical way to eliminate the possibility that the text is being applied to Jesus agentively or representationally, wherein a text about Yahweh is being fulfilled through Jesus, or one of Yahweh's other agents, who are not themselves Yahweh. As a result, an Old Testament Yahweh text applied to Jesus does not secure a case for Jesus being Yahweh. What would be required for that would be an explicit statement that Jesus is Yahweh, which is found nowhere in the New Testament.