ZECHARIAH. zkk ( Heb. Zaaryah, o• ZaargahR, remembers). A frequent Old Testament name. The most notable of those bearing it are: (1) ZECHARIAH, the son of Jehoiada. Ile was high priest in the first part of the reign of Joash (q.v.). King of Israel. The Chronicler represents Joash as straying from the true religion upon. the death of his mentor Jehoinda ; Zechariah rebukes the apostasy, where he is stoned to death in the temple. The Talmud has traditions upon the subject. It has been supposed that Jesus referred to this mar tyr in Matt. xxiii. 35, Luke xi. 51. hut these pass ages clearly refer to another Zechariah, son of Be•echiah, who was put to death in the manner indicated immediately before the siege of Jerusa lem by the Romans. (2) ZECHARIAH, KING OF ISRAEL. He was the son of Jeroboam TI. (q.v.) and last of Jelm's dynasty. After six months' reign he was assassinated by Shallum. who usurped the kingdom (II. Kings xv. 8-12). (3) ZE.CTIARIAII THE PROPHET. He was the son of Dereehiah, son of lddo, and one of the prophets who stimulated the rebuilding of the Temple after the return of the Jews from the Exile. He is mentioned along with Haggai in Ezra v. 1, vi. 14, as in citing to the work upon the Temple. The books of Haggai and Zechariah place this prophetic ac tivity in the second year of Darius, B.C. 520 (Hag. i. 1; Zech. i. 1), while Zech. vii. I indi eates a further activity of the prophet in the fourth year of Darius (B.C. 5181. The mes sage of these prophets was effective, but we know nothing further concerning their careers.
As for the hook ascribed to Zechariah, there is no doubt concerning the authenticity of the first eight chapters. These well illustrate the condition of the returned exiles. The prophecies of the second year (chap. i.-vi.) begin with a call to repentance (i. 1-G). There follows a series of eight visions (i. 7-vi. 8), fraught with messages of promise and consolation. The first (i. 7-17) represents God's arousing for the build ing of the Temple and the wall of Jerusalem. The second (i. 18-21) foretells the destruction of Israel's enemies. The third (chap. ii.) reveals the future wonderful growth of the city. The fourth (chap. iii.) presents dramatically the legal rehabilitation of Israel in God's favor in the person of Joshua the high priest, accom panied with a promise of a king. The fifth (chap. iv.) mystically figures the divine grace that is to come through the two anointed men, Joshua and Zerubbabel, the respective priestly and royal leaders of the people. The sixth (v. 1-4) pictures the curse which will miraculously purge the restored community of its sinners. The sev enth (v. 5-11) exhibits the removal of the wickedness of the land to Babylonia. The eighth (vi. 1-8) shows the divine accomplishment, of judgment upon Babylonia. In the prophecies of the fourth year (chap. vii.-viii.) we have some utterances concerning the observance of fasts. In the ancient prophetic spirit, in reply to an in quiry from certain people concerning the neces sity of the fasts connected with the anniversaries of Jerusalem's destruction, Zechariah condemns the godless kind of fasting. and requires instead
justice and mercy between man and man (chap. vii.). The prophet took a notable place in the revival of the hopes anti work of the Jewish com munity. His thought was Messianic, over-hope ful indeed in its anticipation of the nearness of the new order of things. But it was the sanguine temperament of these prophets (vii. 3) which reelstahlished the new state. Over against a certain erabhedness of imagery in the visions. we find some of the noblest notes of evangelical prophecy in the call to repentance and the dis cussion of the fasts. The prophet stood under the influence of Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah. See Chapters ix.-xiv. breathe a different spirit and exhibit another historical environment ; accordingly their authorship hy the prophet Zechariah is now generally denied. The Ode( reasons for this are as follows: Chapters despite occasional obscurities, reproduce the his torical circumstanees of the Return; chapters ix. xiv, bear no reference to this epoch, but on the contrary indicate periods of very different ciremnstanees. whose details are in general as ob senre as those of the genuine Zechariah are clear. There are referenees to Assyria (a name applied in later times to Syria), Egypt. the Ara mean States, and especially to the Greeks ( ix. 13) as the militant foes of Judaism, whieh point to later period than that of the Persian Empire. The Levites receive a leading Idace aIongside the house of David, and there is a stress laid upon ceremonial holiness, which is rather typical of the reform of Ezra. The prophets are de preciated, a phenomenon characteristic of the later ages, when spiritual activity was in the hands of the scribes and prophets wrote anony mously; in fact, there is a scrupulous anonymity preserved throughout these chapters. An oppo sition between Jerusalem and Judah is repre sented, indicating a period when Jerusalem had regained its original political supremacy, a condition which did not ensue until the time of Nehemiah. The last chapters are apocalyptic, a characteristic of thought obtaining from the time of the Exile, to be sure, although chapters i.-viii. are devoid of it. The genuine Zechariah is prosaic in style; the subsequent chapters move in poetic diction. Finally, there• is little argu ment for their authenticity from their present in clusion in the Book of Zechariah, because (as in the ease of the Deutero-Isaiah) the simple facts of anonymity and accidental collocation after a work of a known author would tend to their ad dition to the preceding book. Indeed a compari son of the identical titles of ix. 1, xii. 1, and Malachi i. 1(which is properly anonymous; see _11.1L-1( III) forces the conclusion that these sev eral prophetic sections were so many anonymous publications once grouped together for this very reason; but the third came to be ascribed by mis take to a prophet Malachi. and the first two were then absorbed by Zechariah.