Mining the Minors: Zechariah (1)

Zechariah is the second of three post-exilic Minor Prophets and the eleventh of the Twelve. Like Haggai, he had a tendency to date at least some of his prophecies, which enables us to map them against events described in Ezra and Nehemiah. It also means we can date the beginning of his recorded ministry to a mere two months after Haggai began his, in the second year of the reign of Darius the Great in 520 BC, just after the people of Judah began a serious second effort at rebuilding the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.

Like Haggai, Zechariah encouraged the people in their work, but his messages, imagery, and the spiritual subject matter they touch on, range from the immediate to the remote future. Most importantly, Zechariah is the most Christ-centered of all the Minor Prophets, and possibly of all the prophets other than Isaiah.

Zechariah was a priest as well as a prophet. His grandfather Iddo was the head of a priestly house listed in Nehemiah. Some suggest he had a preoccupation with worship and priests, but when you get your sermons direct from YHWH, you don’t choose your subject matter.

Overview of Zechariah

Structure of the Book

The book of Zechariah has three obvious major divisions: I. Visions (1:1 to 6:8), II. Messages (6:9 to 8:23) and III. Oracles (9:1 to 14:21).

I. Eight visions and explanations:

Introduction (1:1-6)

1. The man on the red horse (1:7-17)
2. Four horns and four craftsmen (1:18-20)
3. The man with the measuring line (2:1-13)
4. Clothing the high priest (3:1-10)
5. The golden lampstand (4:1-14)
6. The flying scroll curse (5:1-4)
7. A woman in a basket (5:5-10)
8. Four chariots (6:1-8)

II. Four messages:

1. Object lesson — The future king will be a priest (6:9-15)
2. Worship in truth (7:1-7)
3. Show kindness and mercy (7:8-14)
4. The future restoration of Zion (8:1-23)

III. Two oracles:

1. Against the nations

1. Introduction (9:1-8)
2. The coming king (9:9-13)
3. Salvation of Israel’s remnant (9:14-17)
4. The restoration of millennial Israel and destruction of its enemies (10:1-11:3)
5. Two shepherds (11:4-17)

2. Concerning Israel

1. The siege of Jerusalem (12:1-9)
2. Repentance of Israel (12:10-13:1)
3. The end of the false prophets and idols (13:2-6)
4. The stricken shepherd (13:7-9)
5. The gathering of nations, the second coming and reign (14:1-21)

The visions of chapters 1-6 and the messages of chapters 7-8 are all dated to a two-year period between 520 and 518 BC. Because the oracles of chapters 9-14 are undated, some believe these came as many as fifty years afterward. That conclusion turns on the use of the word translated into English as “Greece” [yāvān, or “Ionia”] in 9:13, long prior to the historical rise of Greece or its final conquest of Persia almost 200 years later.

Now, it may indeed be the case that the prophecies of chapters 9-14 date to much later than the first eight chapters, but that is not at all a necessary conclusion. The word yāvān is used in Genesis, Chronicles, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, most written decades or even centuries earlier than Zechariah. Moreover, the Jews edited many of the historical books of the Old Testament for present and future generations long after the writing of their original drafts, so the appearance of relatively recent terminology in later copies of an older manuscript for the sake of clarity should not bother us in the slightest. Our English translators have done something similar when converting Greek and Hebrew place names into recognizable locations.

Christ in Zechariah

Zechariah touches on Christ’s ministry, character and roles in both his first and second comings, starting with his “undercover” assignment throughout the Old Testament as the angel of the Lord, and ending in his millennial reign as king over all the earth. There are at least eleven prophetic pictures of Christ in his various aspects in Zechariah, some of them repeated:

Chapter 1: The angel of the Lord (1:11-12)
Chapter 2: The glory of Zion (2:5, 10) and the Lord of the nations (2:11)
Chapter 3: My servant the Branch (3:8-9)
Chapter 6: The priest on his throne (6:9-13)
Chapter 8: The Lord of hosts in future Jerusalem (8:22)
Chapter 9: The humble king who rides a colt (9:9)
Chapter 11: The one whose price was thirty pieces of silver (11:13)
Chapter 12: The one whom Israel has pierced (12:10-11)
Chapter 13: The stricken shepherd of scattered sheep (13:7)
Chapter 14: The millennial king over all the earth (14:9)

There may well be more.

Theme of Zechariah

Boiling down fourteen chapters to a single theme leaves out far more than it clarifies, but the first six verses of chapter 1 suggest the Lord was looking for a response from the first generation to hear Zechariah’s message as well as from all those who would read it in later centuries, where it still has considerable application. To Zechariah’s original audience, the Lord says, “Return to me, and I will return to you.” All fourteen chapters that follow this statement seem designed to aid in producing that desirable result. Verse 6 of chapter 1 records the response of the original generation to the Lord’s call: they repented and acknowledged the Lord’s dealings with them. To that degree, Zechariah’s ministry was at least initially successful.

An Ongoing Need for Repentance

In the end, however, Zechariah may well have died in the very temple about which he prophesied. The Lord Jesus condemned the religious authorities of his day for the murder of righteous Zechariah, in context a prophet, “between the sanctuary and the altar”. Matthew’s disambiguator “the son of Barachiah”, though omitted from some Greek manuscripts, strongly suggests at least some first century Jewish authorities regarded the Lord’s words as a reference to the Minor Prophet. If the Lord was indeed referring to the same Zechariah, that would make him the last recorded martyr in the Old Testament.

However his life may have ended, Zechariah’s call to return to the Lord remains applicable to Jews today, who have rejected a far greater testimony than that of the penultimate Old Testament prophet. Though there have been many times the remnant of Israel heard and obeyed such appeals over the centuries, the Lord’s call to return still awaits a response on a national scale.

As long as we live in a fallen world and history rolls on, it’s never enough to repent only once. No generation can repent on behalf of its children.