Zechariah Commentary

The people of God who had returned to Judea from exile were being oppressed by neighboring nations. As a result, they were discouraged, and they let their Temple lie in ruins. Zechariah encouraged them with a vision of things to come. God continued to love Jerusalem and the land of Judah, and his unwavering plan was to live there again with his people and establish his rule over all the earth. Zechariah warned Israel not to repeat the sins that had led to exile, and he called those who wavered between God’s truth and human wisdom to return to God, obey the commands of God’s covenant, and practice justice in the land.

Setting

Cyrus, king of Persia, issued a decree in 538 BC permitting conquered peoples who had been deported by the Babylonians to return to their homelands (see Ezra 1:1-11). The first Jewish emigrants to return to Jerusalem were led by Sheshbazzar, the first governor of the restored community (Ezra 1:5-11). During his administration, the returning Jews laid the foundation for a new Temple (538–536 BC; see Ezra 5:16), but soon abandoned the project. The construction site lay neglected for nearly two decades as the people experienced economic hardship, political oppression and harassment, and spiritual barrenness (see Hag 1–2).

In response to their distress, God raised up two prophets to initiate the physical rebuilding and spiritual renewal of Jerusalem. The prophet Haggai, who preached for only four months in late 520 BC, challenged the Hebrew community to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. The people responded favorably to Haggai’s message and began to reconstruct the Lord’s Temple that year (Hag 1:12-15). The prophet Zechariah complemented Haggai’s message by calling for the spiritual renewal of God’s people (1:3-6; 7:8-14). Zechariah’s ministry in Jerusalem lasted for at least two years. The rebuilding of the Temple was completed in March 515 BC during the reign of Persian king Darius I (Ezra 5:2; 6:13-18).

Summary

Zechariah’s task was to prepare the people for proper worship in the Temple once the building project was completed. He did so by rebuking, exhorting, and encouraging them.

The people of Judah were committing blatant social and moral sins; they were passively rebellious and spiritually apathetic. Zechariah called the people to return to God through genuine repentance (Zech 1:3-5). Only spiritual renewal could foster true worship and meaningful service in the Temple, which was under construction. Only obedience to the Lord would usher in the long-awaited blessing, prosperity, and righteousness of the messianic age (6:9-15; 8:13).

God’s plan to do good to Jerusalem was contingent upon the community’s adherence to God’s laws, especially those governing their treatment of one another (7:8-12; 8:14-17). Before the other nations would seek the Lord in Jerusalem, Israel had to seek God’s favor, act justly, and show kindness and mercy to widows, orphans, and foreigners (7:9-10; 14:16-21).

Authorship

The book of Zechariah is silent about its authorship, but Zechariah probably wrote down his own sermons. The superscription (1:1) identifies Zechariah as the son of Berekiah and the grandson of Iddo, as Ezra confirms (Ezra 5:1; 6:14). Nehemiah informs us that Iddo returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon with Zerubbabel and Jeshua (Neh 12:4). Nehemiah also lists Zechariah as the head of the family of priests descended from Iddo (Neh 12:1, 16). This suggests that Zechariah was both a priest and prophet in Jerusalem.

Date

Zechariah’s ministry began just two months after Haggai’s, in 520 BC. Zechariah’s last dated message was delivered in 518 BC. The first portion of the book (chs 1–8) was probably written down between 520 and 515 BC, since Zechariah makes no reference to the completion and dedication of the Jerusalem Temple in 515 BC (see Ezra 6:13-22). Zechariah’s undated messages (chs 9–14) might indicate that his ministry continued well beyond the completion of the Temple and that he composed these chapters later in his life, perhaps as late as 500–470 BC.

Some biblical scholars assign chapters 9–11 to a “Second Zechariah” and chapters 12–14 to a “Third Zechariah.” However, the vocabulary and grammar show remarkable literary continuity throughout the entire book, and archaeological discoveries and socio-political considerations support a unified composition.

Recipients

Zechariah’s messages were intended for the people living in and around Jerusalem after their return from exile (1:3). Within Zechariah’s sermons and visions are words specifically addressed to the governor Zerubbabel, the high priest Jeshua, and the rest of the priests (see 3:8-9; 4:6-7; 7:4-7).

Literary Genre

Zechariah is prophetic literature containing messages that call God’s people to repentance, to renewed corporate worship, and to the practice of social justice.

In addition, Zechariah contains elements of apocalyptic literature. This genre of writing interprets current events and predicts future events by means of symbolic language, ciphers, and codes. Such writing is often cast in the form of visions that are explained by an angelic mediator (see 1:9). The settings, characters, and events of apocalyptic literature tend to go beyond ordinary reality. Apocalyptic literature announces an end to the status quo and opens up alternative possibilities as a result of God’s impending intervention in human affairs.

Later Jewish apocalyptic literature placed heavy emphasis on the future restoration of Israel in the day of the Lord. Zechariah’s prophecy was more concerned with social justice in the present. Three types of messages are usually associated with apocalyptic literature in the Bible: (1) encouragement for the oppressed, (2) warnings to the oppressor, and (3) calls to faith for those wavering between God’s truth and human wisdom.

Meaning and Message

The book of Zechariah calls for repentance, spiritual renewal, and a return to right relationship with God (1:1-6). Zechariah’s duty was to comfort and strengthen a small, discouraged remnant of God’s people (1:13; 8:6-15). Zechariah also reinforced Haggai’s summons to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple (8:9, 13).

Zechariah’s messages came to him as visions of the future that promised peace to Israel, judgment of the nations, restoration of Jerusalem, responsible government by God’s appointed leadership, and righteousness among God’s people (1:7–6:15). Zechariah emphasized that social justice was Israel’s right response to God (7:8-12; 8:14-17).

Zechariah’s last two messages instill hope in God by focusing on the future restoration of Israel (chs 9–14). The prophet forecasts the Lord’s return to his Temple (9:8-10), Israel’s rescue from her enemies (12:1-14), and the establishment of God’s Kingdom in Jerusalem (14:9-11). Zechariah also points to the Messiah, who would be a suffering shepherd (13:7) and a righteous king (9:9), bringing salvation to Israel and peace to the nations (9:10, 16).

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Prophecy of Zechariah

This prophet was colleague with the prophet Haggai, and a worker together with him in forwarding the building of the second temple (Ezr 5:1); for two are better than one. Christ sent forth his disciples two and two. Zechariah began to prophesy some time after Haggai. But he continued longer, soared higher in visions and revelations, wrote more, and prophesied more particularly concerning Christ, than Haggai had done; so the last shall be first: the last in time sometimes proves first in dignity. He begins with a plain practical sermon, expressive of that which was the scope of his prophesying, in the first five verses; but afterwards, to the end of Zac 6:1-15, he relates the visions he saw, and the instructions he received immediately from heaven by them. At Zac 7:1-14, from an enquiry made by the Jews concerning fasting, he takes occasion to show them the duty of their present day, and to encourage them to hope for God's favour, to the end of ch. 8, after which there are two sermons, which are both called burdens of the word of the Lord (one begins with ch. 9, the other with Zac 12:1-14), which probably were preached some time after; the scope of them is to reprove for sin, and threaten God's judgments against the impenitent, and to encourage those that feared God with assurances of the mercy God had in store for his church, and especially of the coming of the Messiah and the setting up of his kingdom in the world.

THE name Zechariah means one whom Jehovah remembers: a common name, four others of the same name occurring in the Old Testament. Like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, he was a priest as well as a prophet, which adapts him for the sacerdotal character of some of his prophecies (Zac 6:13). He is called "the son of Berechiah the son of Iddo" (Zac 1:1); but simply "the son of Iddo" in Ezr 5:1; Ezr 6:14. Probably his father died when he was young; and hence, as sometimes occurs in Jewish genealogies, he is called "the son of Iddo," his grandfather. Iddo was one of the priests who returned to Zerubbabel and Joshua from Babylon (Neh 12:4).

Zechariah entered early on his prophetic functions (Zac 2:4); only two months later than Haggai, in the second year of Darius' reign, 520 B.C. The design of both prophets was to encourage the people and their religious and civil leaders, Joshua and Zerubbabel, in their work of rebuilding the temple, after the interruption caused by the Samaritans (see Introduction to Haggai). Zechariah does so especially by unfolding in detail the glorious future in connection with the present depressed appearance of the theocracy, and its visible symbol, the temple. He must have been very young in leaving Babylonia, where he was born. The Zechariah, son of Barachias, mentioned by our Lord (Mat 23:35) as slain between the porch and the altar, must have been the one called the son of Jehoiada in Ch2 24:21, who so perished: the same person often had two names; and our Lord, in referring to the Hebrew Bible, of which Second Chronicles is the last book, would naturally mention the last martyr in the Hebrew order of the canon, as He had instanced Abel as the first. Owing to Mat 27:9 quoting Zac 11:12-13 as the words of Jeremiah, MEDE doubts the authenticity of the ninth through the fourteenth chapters, and ascribes them to Jeremiah: he thinks that these chapters were not found till after the return from the captivity, and being approved by Zechariah, were added to his prophecies, as Agur's Proverbs were added to those of Solomon. All the oldest authorities, except two manuscripts of the old Italian or Pre-Vulgate version, read Jeremiah in Mat 27:9. The quotation there is not to the letter copied from Zechariah, Jer 18:1-2; Jer 32:6-12, may also have been in the mind of Matthew, and perhaps in the mind of Zechariah, whence the former mentions Jeremiah. HENGSTENBERG similarly thinks that Matthew names Jeremiah, rather than Zechariah, to turn attention to the fact that Zechariah's prophecy is but a reiteration of the fearful oracle in Jer. 18:1-19:15, to be fulfilled in the destruction of the Jewish nation. Jeremiah had already, by the image of a potter's vessel, portrayed their ruin in Nebuchadnezzar's invasion; and as Zechariah virtually repeats this threat, to be inflicted again under Messiah for the nation's rejection of Him, Matthew, virtually, by mentioning Jeremiah, implies that the "field of blood" (Mat 27:8-9), now bought by "the reward of iniquity" (Act 1:18) in the valley of Hinnom, was long ago a scene of prophetic doom in which awful disaster had been symbolically predicted: that the present purchase of that field with the traitor's price renewed the prophecy and revived the curse—a curse pronounced of old by Jeremiah, and once fulfilled in the Babylonian siege—a curse reiterated by Zechariah, and again to be verified in the Roman desolation. LIGHTFOOT (referring to B. BATHRA and KIMCHI) less probably thinks the third division of Scripture, the prophets, began with Jeremiah, and that the whole body of prophets is thus quoted by the name "Jeremiah." The mention of "Ephraim" and "Israel" in these chapters as distinct from Judah, does not prove that the prophecy was written while the ten tribes existed as a separate kingdom. It rather implies that hereafter not only Judah, but the ten tribes also, shall be restored, the earnest of which was given in the numbers out of the ten tribes who returned with their brethren the Jews from captivity under Cyrus. There is nothing in these characters to imply that a king reigned in Judah at that time. The editor of the Hebrew canon joined these chapters to Zechariah, not to Jeremiah; the Septuagint, three hundred years B.C., confirms this.

The prophecy consists of four parts: (1) Introductory, Zac 1:1-6. (2) Symbolical, Zac 1:7, to the end of the sixth chapter, containing nine visions; all these were vouchsafed in one night, and are of a symbolical character. (3) Didactic, the seventh and eighth chapters containing an answer to a query of the Beth-elites concerning a certain feast. And (4) Prophetic, the ninth chapter to the end. These six last chapters predict Alexander's expedition along the west coast of Palestine to Egypt; God's protection of the Jews, both at that time and under the Maccabees; the advent, sufferings, and reign of Messiah; the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome, and dissolution of the Jews' polity; their conversion and restoration; the overthrow of the wicked confederacy which assailed them in Canaan; and the Gentiles' joining in their holy worship [HENDERSON]. The difference in style between the former and the latter chapters is due to the difference of subject; the first six chapters being of a symbolical and peculiar character, while the poetical style of the concluding chapters is adapted admirably to the subjects treated. The titles (Zac 9:1; Zac 12:1) accord with the prophetic matter which follows; nor is it necessary for unity of authorship that the introductory formulas occurring in the first eight chapters should occur in the last six. The non-reference in the last six chapters to the completion of the temple and the Jews' restoration after the captivity is just what we should expect, if, as seems likely, these chapters were written long after the completion of the temple and the restoration of the Jews polity after the captivity, in circumstances different from those which engaged the prophet when he wrote the earlier chapters.

The style varies with the subject: at one time conversational, at another poetical. His symbols are enigmatical and are therefore accompanied with explanations. His prose is like that of Ezekiel—diffuse, uniform, and repetitious. The rhythm is somewhat unequal, and the parallelisms are not altogether symmetrical. Still, there is found often much of the elevation met with in the earlier prophets, and a general congruity between the style and the subjects. Graphic vividness is his peculiar merit. ChaldÃ&brvbrisms occur occasionally. Another special characteristic of Zechariah is his introduction of spiritual beings into his prophetic scenes.

Next: Zechariah Chapter 1