This question of genuineness is one of some diffi culty, and the arguments on either side are not of preponderant influence. It may certainly be asked in favour of the genuineness, How came these chapters to be connected with the acknowledged writings of Zechariah, especially as the addition must have been made within a brief period of the prophet's death ? No satisfactory answer can be given, and tile suppositions that ix.-xiv. was anony mous, or, being current under the name of Zecha riah, son of Berechiah, was appended to the previ ous oracles, have no historical support whatever. Uriah is called a priest, but Zechariah is not called a prophet (Is. viii. 2). Many of the arguments against the genuineness of this latter portion of Zechariah rcst on peculiar interpretations of his language, making it refer to events that happened prior to the time when be flourished. But this exegesis may not in all points be correct Ephraim is indeed spoken of, though that kingdom was overthrown S6 years before the return of the Jews from Babylon ; and it is inferred that the author of such oracles must have lived when Ephraim was an independent sove reignty. It may be said, in reply, that vast numbers of the ten tribes returned with their brethren of Judah from captivity ; and we find (ch. xii. t) Israel used as a name for all the tribes. In Malachi, too, we find Israel used after the captivity in contrast to Jerusalem. Zechariah never charac terises Ephraim as a separate political confedera tion ; nor, as Henderson remarks, is there any thing, but the contrary, to induce the conclusion that a king reigned in Judah in the days of the author.' The predictions in this latter part, sup posed by some to refer to past events, are by others interpreted to refer to the Egyptian expedition of Alexander, the sufferings of the Messiah, and the final overthrow of Jerusalem. As the prophets before the Babylonian captivity threatened a de portation to Babylon, so Zechariah, living after that event, menaces a Roman invasion and slavery. The exile is supposed to be past in ix. 12, X. 6. The mention of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Gaza, and Ashdod, harmonises with the state of parties in the prophet's age, or after the exile. No seer could have spoken of Jerusalem shortly before the captivity as Zechariah does—predicting for it a striking deliverance and the crowding of strangers to worship in it. Yet there are some difficult points. How could the brotherhood of Israel and Judah be described as broken by the prophet ? But to lay stress on this would carry the composition greatly beyond the time which the opponents of the integrity contend for—would carry it beyond the division of the kingdoms. How could he say, the pride of Assyria shall be brought down' (x. t), if he lived a century after the overthrow of Nineveh and soon after the Persian capture of Babylon ? Perhaps Assyria and Egypt mean not the kingdoms, but only the territories in which many Jews still dwelt. De Wette supposes that the parts which seem to belong to an earlier period were written in reference to the future and in pro phetic form. Little stress can be placed on any argument based on imagined difference of style in the former and latter chapters of this prophecy. The introductory notices to the separate oracles in the early portion of the book, as the word of the Lord came,' or thus saith the Lord of hosts' which occurs forty-one times, or I lifted up mine eyes and saw,' are either not found in the last sec. tion, or are very different in form (comp. i. iv. S, vi. 9 with ix. 1, xi. 4). The writer also in the earlier part mentions his own name and gives dates, but there is a total omission of those chart.tcteristics in the second part. The repetition of 111,1 in suc cessive clauses, as four times in i. t 7, does not occur in the second part. • Lord of the whole earth ' is found in iv. 14, vi. 5, but not in the concluding chapters. Rulers are called • shepherds' and the people ' tbe flock' only in the second part, nor does there occur in it that form of mysterious vision ary representation which gives peculiar colour and style to the first part. In the second part, too, are recurring formuke, as often It shall come to pass' (71'71)), xii. 9 ; xiii. .3, 4, 8 ; xiv• 8, 13, 16 ; • saith the Lord' ti9), xii. 1, 4 ; xiii. 2, 7, S ; and the phrase, Mit Dji;., • in that day,' is used six times in the twelfth chapter, thrice in the thirteenth chapter, and five times in the fourteenth I chapter. The phrase is found rarely in the former part, ii. 15 ; to ; vi. to. But we are too igno rant of many circumstances in the prophet's history to speculate on the causes of such change ; or if we are unable to discover any msthetical or religious reasons for such alterations, it is surely rash to come on such grounds to a decision of diversity of author ship. Introductory formulm as different as those in Zechariah occur in other books whose sameness of style is admitted as proof of identity of authorship, as in Amos, where the application of the same principles of criticism would dismember it,' and assign its composition to three different authors. Nor perhaps is the difference of style of the former and latter portions of Zechariah greater than the different topics treated would lead us to expect. It may also be replied that there are terms and phrases common to both parts of the book, as the peculiar use of the word eye,' iii. 9 ; iv. to ; ix. 1-8 ; the occurrence of the hophel with the signification to remove, iii. 4 ; xiii. 2 ; and the striking idiom nt:;:pti natn2, vii. 14.; ix. 8 (Keil, Einleit. sec. 163). Similar theocratic promise is found in ii. to ; ix. 12 ; Xi. 14 ; and ix. 9. Comp. also ii. 4 with xiv. to ; viii. 20 With XiV. 16. Stahelin (p. 323) insists too on the close similarity which Zechariah presents to the prophets of his own period in those disputed last chapters. Thus he resembles Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and Ezekiel. Compare Zech. xi. 1-3 with Jer. xxv. 34-36 and xii. 5 ; Zech. xiv. 8 with Ezek. xlvii. 1-12 ; Zech.
ix. 12 with xvi. S ; Zech. ix. with Ezek. xxviii.
3 ; Zech. ix. 5 with Zeph. 4 ; Zech. x. 3 with Ezek. xxxiv. 17 ; Zech. xiv. to with Jer. xxxi. 38, etc. etc. Not a few of the passages of this kind usually quoted are found on close examination to be merely accidental coincidences • and such, as a whole, are the resemblances which Hitzig and others find between this latter part of Zechariah and some of the older prophets. Comp. ix. 8 with Joel iii. 17; ix. 13 with Joel iii. 6; xii. 2 with
Joel iii. It; xii. D5 with Amos viii. ; xiii. 5 with Amos vii. 14. That Zechariah should manifest acquaintance with the earlier prophets need occa sion no surprise. Yet the resemblance is not very close between viii. 2o-23 and Is. ii. 3 and Mic. iv. 2. The name Branch,' iii. 8, is found in Jer. xxiii. 5 ; xxxiii. 15. Allusion is also made to his prophetic predecessors before the fall of Jerusalem, vii. 7. No great stress can be laid on peculiar words occurring in the later part. 71)1 is written in full form, but the same spelling is found in Hosea and Amos. CI:tz.1 is used of Jewish chiefs, as in Jer. xiii. 21. While much may be said in favour of the integrity of the book, there are still, as we have seen, some features of difference that are not easily explained : alteration of allusions and formula ; occasional glimpses into the condition of the country which appear to want consistency ; different phases of the Messianic reign, and different standpoints from which it is viewed ; and a change of style from the visions and flatter prose of the first part to the richer and more poetical style of the concluding chapters. The chief argument against the genuine ness of these chapters is that expressed by Mede on Matt. xxvii. : There is no Scripture saith they are Zechariah's, but there is Scripture saith they are Jeremiah's' (Works, p. 786). The quotation in Matthew varies in several points from the pre sent Hebrew text. The evangelist, to serve his immediate object, changes the first person into the third, and for the words, I threw it' (the money), he has, And they gave them.' The Hebrew 5t.; -VD, ,to the potter,' are in the Sept. rendered els r6 xwvetirhptop, into the crucible ;' and in Matt. els ray deypav Kepcuacos. Ewald, Gesenius, and Fiirst, following the Targum, and Kimchi, pro pose to read TON" to the treasury ;' but the word does not occur with this meaning in Scripture. Depke (Hermeneulik, p. 212) and Kuinoel (Comm. in loc.) suppose that Matthew quoted some unpub lished apocryphal Jeremiah, perhaps such a one as that to which Jerome refers, as having found it among the Nazarenes, and of which a portion con taining analogous language is yet extant in a Sahidic lectionary in the Codex Huntingtonianns, 5, in the Bodleian Library, and in the Coptic language in a MS. in the library of St. Germain in Paris. This passage, as given by Dr. Henderson, at once betrays itself to be a clumsy imitation, designed to solve tbe very difficulty on which we are writing. Ewald thinks that the Evangelist quoted a portion of Jeremiah now lost. Augustine, Meyer, and Alford generally hold, as Fritzsche does, that the discre pancy arose on the part of the Evangelist, per memorim errorem' (Continent. in Matt. p. 8o1). Nor is there any extrication from the difficulty in su'pposing, with Elsner, that the reference of the Evangelist is to the transaction recorded in Jer. xxxii. 8, or in hinting, with Eusebius (Hist. Eccles. x. 4), that the oracle cited has been falsified by the Jews. It is another conjecture without warrant that the name Jeremiah was the technical appellation of the third great division of the Hebrew Scriptures, so that any quotation from the minor prophets may be referred to him, not as its author, but as the tide of that collection, from one of the books of which it is taken (Lightfoot's Pf7orks, by Pitman, vol. xi. p. 344). That there is a difference of read ing was a fact early known. Perhaps the proper name was omitted altogether, or rather not inserted at all by the evangelist, and he wrote only Stcl rofi rpoOrrov. Augustine testifies that MSS. were found in his days wanting the word iepektiou. lt is not found either in the most ancient and faithful ver sion, the Syriac, nor in the Verona and Vercelli Latin MSS. It is wanting also in MSS. 33, 157, and in the Polyglott Persic, in the modern Greek, and in a Latin NIS. of Luc. Brug. Other codices and versions read Zaxapiov, such as NIS. 22, and the Philoxenian Syriac in the margin—a reading which was approved of by Origen and Eusebius. Morus, Le Moyne, Griesbach, Henderson, and others, believing that Matthew wrote in Hebrew or Syro-Chaldaie, think the original was simply 142 Klmn, by the prophet,' and that the Greek trans lator, mistaking the '1 for "1 in the word 142, read and thinking it a contraction for rendered it Salepeiklou TOO rporkrou. If the au thmity of MSS. be now in favour of lepel.tiou, then the error may have arisen on the part of some early copyist meeting with the contracted form Zptou, and mistaking it for buoy. The various opinions of the fathers, and the different lections in MSS. and ver sions, seem to point to some such change and error in the course of early transcription. Hengstenberg imagines that Matthew names Jeremiah, and,not Zechariah, on purpose to turn the attention of his readers to the fact that Zechariah's prophecy was but a reiteration of a fearful oracle in Jer. xviii. xix. ; 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. This theory, adopted by M`Caul, is at least preferable to that of such critics as Glassius and Frischmuth, and virtually of Hofmann (IVeisag. und Erfid. p. 128), who hold that the quotation in Matthew is made up of a mixture of oracles from Jeremiah and Zechariah, while Jeremiah only is named as the earlier and more illustrious of the two—the primarius (vector. Theophylact's explanation is clumsy, for Ile proposes to inscrt Kal—` by Jeremiah and the prophet, to wit Zechariah.' The notion of Wordsworth is peculiar, as he holds that the oracle had in the first instance been delivered by Jeremiah, and that though it is now in Zechariah, it is quoted as Jeremiah's, because the spirit intends to teach us not to regard the pro phets as the authors of their prophecies,' they being only channels,' not sources (New Test. in loc.) Calvin says, as to the introduction of the name Jeremiah, me nescire pteor 11CC anxie labor°. Our space is so limited that we have only found room to indicate the various points of discussion, and on this account we need not enter into the hypercritical question as to the different authorships of chaps. ix. x. xi. and of chaps. xii. xiii. xiv. This division, with various proposed subdivisions, rests to a great extent on subjective grounds, which are easily shifted or variously moulded.