"Chanukah" means dedication. The festival that we call Chanukah is really the fourth Chanukah. The first Chanukah dedication was in the desert when Moshe dedicated the Mishkan - the Tent of Meeting.
The second was the dedication of the First Beis Hamikdash (Holy Temple). The third Chanukah is the subject of our Haftorah. It refers to the times of the Second Beis Hamikdash and the inauguration of the Menorah at the time of Yehoshua the Kohen Gadol, and the nation's leader, Zerubavel, who is referred to in "Maoz Tsur," the traditional Chanukah song.
Mother Nature's Father
After a small band of Jews had beaten the might of Greece, one small flask of oil for the Menorah was discovered in the Holy Temple. One small flask, not defiled by the Greeks.
That flask contained enough oil to last just one day. But it burned and burned for eight days. To commemorate that miracle we kindle the lights of Chanukah for eight days.
But if you think about it, really we should only light the lights for seven days, because that first day the lights burned completely naturally. After all, there was enough oil for one day! So why do we light candles for eight nights since one of those nights was no miracle at all?
One answer is that the eighth candle is to remind us of a miracle that is constantly with us. The problem is that a lot of the time we don't see it as a miracle at all. We don't call it a miracle. We call it nature.
In this week's Haftorah, Zechariah is shown a vision of a menorah made entirely of gold, complete with a reservoir, tubes to bring it oil, and two olive trees to bear olives. A complete self-supporting system.
The symbolism is that Hashem provides a system which supports us continuously. However, we have to open our eyes to see where that support is coming from. And that's the reason we light the eighth candle. To remind ourselves that "Mother Nature" has a "Father."
Based on the Beis Yosef and the Artscroll/Stone Chumash
