ZECHARIAH, the eleventh in order of the "minor proph ets" of the Old Testament. He was associated with Haggai (q.v.) in stimulating the re-building of the temple at Jerusa lem, begun in 52o (Ezra iv. 24) and completed in 516 (Ezra vi. 15). A previous attempt made by returned exiles in 537 (Ezra i. I seq., iii. i sqq.) seems to have been checked by local opposition and not renewed owing to economic pressure. In 52o, however, the political disturbances of the Persian empire (of which the Jewish community in Palestine was a negligible part) were interpreted by these two prophets as a sign that the Messianic expectations were now to be realized, and that the "Day of Yahweh" was at hand. Haggai gave the first im pulse to the new attempt ; two months later, Zechariah joined him in encouraging the faint-hearted. His prophecies, exactly dated in 520 (i. I, 7) and 518 (vii. 1), are to be found in the first eight chapters of the book now bearing his name. Their central feature is a series of "night-visions" (i. 8, iv. I), in tended to show Yahweh's immediate and effective intervention on behalf of His people. They are arranged with literary art in connected sequence, beginning with the vision of horsemen who report that the expected Messianic crisis has not yet come (i. 11, cf. Hagg. ii. 21 seq.), and culminating in the vision of Yah weh's war-chariots despatched to execute His vengeance upon the heathen, especially on Babylonia (vi. 8). The six interven ing visions (all the eight are ascribed to a single night) reveal in succession four horns, representing the heathen powers of the four quarters of the earth, cast down by four craftsmen (i. 18-21), a man with a measuring line, whose narrow ideas of the future city are replaced by the conception of a city with out walls because of its great extent, to which Yahweh's protec tion will be a wall of fire (ii. 1-5), the formal acquittal and restoration of Joshua the high-priest, representing the com munity (iii. I seq.), the seven-branched lampstand, represent ing Yahweh's watchful eyes, with two olive-trees, representing Joshua and Zerubbabel (iv. 1-14, but see the commentaries), the flying roll which brings its ubiquitous curse on evil-doers (thieves and false-swearers), and so cleanses the land of moral evil (v. 1-4), the woman carried off in an ephah, representing the removal of guilt (v. 5-11). These visions are now prefaced by a call to repentance and the promise of forgiveness (i. 2-6), in which Zechariah's appeal to "the former prophets" (like the detail of an interpreting angel in the visions themselves) reminds us that the great prophetic period (8th-6th centuries) lies in the past, and that the conception of revelation itself has lost something of its original simplicity and spontaneity.
The "night-visions" are followed, two years later (vii. I), by a divine oracle which directs that the fasts kept throughout the exile should now become festivals (viii. 18 seq.). The enquiry which led to the oracle (vii. 3) is made the occasion of warn ing against the externality of fasting, of appeal for true conduct, and of an idyllic picture of the happiness of the coming Mes sianic age (note especially viii. 4, 5). In this happy future the prophet expected that Zerubbabel would be the Messiah, and the bringing of an offering of gold and silver from Jews in Babylon led Zechariah to crown him symbolically in the name of Yahweh (vi. 9-15; see the commentaries for the original
text). The darkness that falls on Jewish history with the com pletion of the second temple suggests that these words and deeds may have thrust Zerubbabel into a dangerous political prominence, leading to his removal by the Persian authorities, and the eclipse of Messianic expectations.
The remainder of the present book of Zechariah (ix.—xiv.) is of an altogether different character, and is now generally ad mitted to belong to a period later than the Persian (as indeed the direct reference to Greece in ix. 13 implies). This portion of the book is divided by the titles in ix. 1, xii. 1. ("The burden of the word of Yahweh"), into two distinct collections, each of which it seems necessary to divide again, so that we have four groups of prophecies, distinguished by their subject-matter. The first (ix.—xi. 3) deals with the recovery of Palestine by Yahweh's victories over Syria, Phoenicia and Philistia (ix. 1-8), the coming of the Messianic king to the restored and vic torious Israel (ix. 9-17), the overthrow of the (foreign) "shep herds" or rulers, and the gathering of exiled Israelites (x. 1-12), closing with a figurative dirge over the fall of these "shepherds" (xi. 1-3). The second group (xi. 4-17, with the misplaced xiii. 7-9) describes the rejection of the prophet, representing a worthy shepherd, and the accursed doom of a worthless one, a purified third of the people alone remaining. The third (xii., xiii. 1-6) pictures an attack of the nations upon Jerusalem, in which Judah is first a foe and then a victorious friend to the mother city; this is followed by elaborate mourn ing for an unnamed martyr (xii. 1 o, R. V. mg.), and the cleans ing of Jerusalem from idolatry and prophecy. The fourth divi sion (xiv.) describes the delivery of Jerusalem from the hea then, that it may become the metropolis of religion for all the world. The last two of these divisions are of a markedly eschatological character, and even the first two could be so re garded (so Sellin). These writings are perhaps the most ob scure of the Old Testament, chiefly because we have no suffi cient clue to the historical allusions, such as the cutting off of three shepherds in one month (xi. 8), the pierced martyr (xii. 1o) and the antagonism of Judah and Jerusalem (xii. 2, xiv. 14). By some scholars these chapters have been brought down as late as the Maccabean age, the events of which are supposed to explain these and other allusions. But the fact is that we are almost wholly ignorant of Jewish history during the earlier part of the Greek period (from 331 B.c.), to which these writings might equally well belong.
commentaries see W. Nowack, Handkommentar zum alten Test. iii. 4 (1897, 1904) ; J. Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten (1898) ; G. A. Smith, Book of Twelve Prophets, v. 2. (1898, 1927), Expositor's Bible; K. Marti, Des Dodekapropheton (1904) ; A. van Hoonacker, Les douze petits prophetes (1908) ; S. R. Driver in Century Bible (1906) ; H. G. Mitchell in Internet. Crit. Comment. (1912) ; W. E. Barnes in Cambridge Bible, (1917) ; R. H. Kennett in Peake's Commentary (1919) ; E. Sellin, Das Zwolfprophetenbuch (1922). (H. W. R.)