Introduction to Zechariah

Title and authorship

The book names its prophet three generations deep: Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo Zechariah 1:1 Zechariah 1:7. A grandfather is rarely given, and the reason is likely that Iddo's line was priestly — which would make Zechariah a priest as well as a prophet, and would explain a book so occupied with a high priest, a temple, and clean and unclean things.

He is called the prophet in the same breath as his name, and the phrase Yahweh's word came to introduces each of the book's three dated sections.

Two men dominate the first half and neither is the prophet. Joshua the high priest is named six times Zechariah 3:1 Zechariah 6:11, Zerubbabel four times and all of them in one chapter Zechariah 4:6–10 — the priest and the governor, the two offices the restoration had to rebuild.

The book falls into three clearly marked parts. Chapters 1 to 6 are eight night visions with an interpreting angel. Chapters 7 and 8 answer a question about fasting. Then chapters 9 and 12 each open with the same single word — rendered a revelation Zechariah 9:1 Zechariah 12:1 — which marks two burdens running to the end.

The voice changes across that seam. The visions are dated, local, and full of named men; the burdens carry no dates and no names, and reach to all the nations of the earth Zechariah 12:3. Whether one hand wrote both has been argued for centuries, and nothing in the text answers it. What the text does establish is that the two halves were transmitted together and share a vocabulary — Yahweh of Armies, the shepherd, the day that is coming — so they can be read as one book whoever assembled it.

Date

This is one of the most precisely dated books in the Old Testament, and all three of its dates are given by the regnal year of a Persian king rather than a Judean one — which is itself the situation the book is about.

The eighth month, in the second year of Darius opens it Zechariah 1:1. The twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius dates the night visions Zechariah 1:7. And the fourth year of King Darius... the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Chislev dates the question about fasting Zechariah 7:1.

Darius is named exactly three times, once at the head of each section. Judah has no king; the calendar belongs to the empire.

That places the opening two months after the temple work resumed under Haggai, whose own oracles are dated to the second year of the same king Haggai 1:1. The two prophets are working the same site at the same time, and the division of labor is visible: Haggai presses the building, Zechariah asks what the building is for.

The seventy years of exile are twice spoken of as complete or nearly so Zechariah 1:12 Zechariah 7:5, and the second reference is decisive for the setting — the people are still keeping fasts they began when the temple fell, in a city where the temple is going back up. The book is written to people whose grief has outlived its occasion.

The two undated burdens of chapters 9 to 14 supply no anchor of their own, and none is invented here.

Backgrounds

The community in view is small, poor, and disappointed. It has returned, and what it returned to is a building site.

The economics are stated plainly: before the work resumed there was no wages for man nor any wages for an animal, and no safety going out or coming in Zechariah 8:10. The rebuilt house is dismissed by those old enough to remember the first one — who despises the day of small things? Zechariah 4:10 — a question that only makes sense if somebody was despising it.

Jerusalem is unwalled and undermanned. The measuring line is taken out of the surveyor's hand with the news that the city will be inhabited as villages without walls, because there will be too many people for walls Zechariah 2:4, and the defense offered is not masonry: I will be to her a wall of fire around it Zechariah 2:5.

The religious life is functioning and self-absorbed. Four annual fasts are being kept — the fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth months Zechariah 8:19 — commemorating stages of the city's fall, and the question brought to the priests is whether to keep observing them Zechariah 7:3.

Beyond the province the imperial world is intact. The nations are at ease while Jerusalem waits Zechariah 1:15, which is the political fact underneath the whole book: the world is calm, and calm is exactly the problem.

One title carries the answer to that. Yahweh of Armies falls in 46 of the book's 211 verses — better than one verse in five. A community with no army is addressed, again and again, by the God who has one.

Theology and purpose

The organizing promise is stated in the third verse and everything after it unfolds from there: Return to me, and I will return to you Zechariah 1:3. Two returns, and the second is the one the book spends fourteen chapters describing.

God's own movement is the subject. I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy Zechariah 1:16; I have returned to Zion, and will dwell in the middle of Jerusalem Zechariah 8:3; behold, I come and I will dwell within you Zechariah 2:10. The exile's real loss was not the walls but the presence, and the restoration is measured by whether the presence comes back.

Three things run through the book and hold it together.

Sight. The night visions are seen rather than heard, and the prophet does not understand them. What are these, my lord? is asked repeatedly, and an interpreting angel — the angel who talked with me, a phrase in 11 verses — explains. This is a book in which revelation arrives as a picture that has to be read, and the reader is shown a prophet who needs help reading it.

Cleansing. Iniquity is removed rather than compensated. Filthy garments come off a high priest and rich clothing goes on Zechariah 3:4; iniquity is removed in one day Zechariah 3:9; a fountain is opened for sin and for uncleanness Zechariah 13:1. In every case the initiative and the supply are God's.

A coming man. The title the Branch is used exactly twice Zechariah 3:8 Zechariah 6:12, and the second passage joins two offices the law kept apart: he will be a priest on his throne Zechariah 6:13. The book then adds a king arriving on a donkey Zechariah 9:9, a shepherd valued at thirty pieces of silver Zechariah 11:12–13, a pierced one who is mourned Zechariah 12:10, and a shepherd struck by God's own sword Zechariah 13:7 — four figures the New Testament writers took up and applied to one person.

The closing movement is governed by a phrase used in 20 verses, 16 of them in the last three chapters: in that day. What began as a message about a building site ends with Yahweh will be King over all the earth Zechariah 14:9, and with the ordinary cooking pots of Jerusalem marked holy to Yahweh Zechariah 14:20–21. The distinction the book cares about most is not finally between sacred and common but between clean and unclean, and it ends by abolishing the first while keeping the second.

Additional notes

Note — the heavenly court of chapter 3. The scene is a trial, and the details are exact. Joshua the high priest stands before Yahweh's angel, with Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary Zechariah 3:1 — the accuser's position in a court. Joshua is clothed with filthy garments Zechariah 3:3, so the accusation is not false.

What happens next is that the charge is never argued. The accuser is rebuked, and the ground given is God's prior choice: Yahweh who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you Zechariah 3:2. Then the filthy garments are taken off by order, iniquity is caused to pass from him, and rich clothing is put on Zechariah 3:4. Every verb is done to Joshua; he speaks no word in his own defense and performs no act of his own cleansing.

And the conditions in verse 7 come after the reclothing, not before it — if you will walk in my ways... then you also shall judge my house. Standing is given first and service follows; the order is not reversible without contradicting the verse.

Note — the pierced one, and a shift of person. They will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him Zechariah 12:10. The first person and the third stand in one sentence: the one pierced says me, and the mourning is for him. The reading is not a translator's choice — the same shift is in every English version. When the New Testament quotes the verse it resolves toward the third person, they will look on him whom they pierced John 19:37, and elsewhere joins the piercing and the mourning as the book does Revelation 1:7.

Note — the quotation attributed to Jeremiah. The thirty pieces of silver thrown to the potter Zechariah 11:12–13 is quoted in the New Testament as spoken through Jeremiah the prophet Matthew 27:9–10, while the wording is Zechariah's. That is simply the state of the evidence. Alongside it stands a second fact: the potter and the purchased field are both Jeremiah's images — a potter's house and a potter's vessel Jeremiah 18:2–6 Jeremiah 19:1, and a field bought and weighed out in silver Jeremiah 32:9 — so the material of the citation is drawn from both prophets even where the sentence is from one.

Note — how far chapter 14 reaches. The chapter is read both as describing a siege within history and as describing the end, and the text itself supplies the reason for the disagreement: it gives vivid events and no timetable. What it does give are markers that outrun any past event — all nations gathered Zechariah 14:2, the Mount of Olives split Zechariah 14:4, a day that is not day, and not night Zechariah 14:7, Yahweh will be King over all the earth Zechariah 14:9, and there will be no more curse Zechariah 14:11. Nothing in Judah's recorded history answers to the last two, which is the strongest reason to take the chapter as reaching past its own generation. How far past, and by what sequence, the chapter does not say.

Outline

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