Mining the Minors: Zechariah (28)

The New Testament writers quote, allude to, or possibly allude to Zechariah more often than any other Minor Prophet. Given the sheer number of passages that reference his writing, I will only attempt to deal in any depth with direct quotations or obvious repurposings of the prophetic word.

It seems as the time grew shorter for Messiah to enter the world, the Holy Spirit was all the more eager to testify to his coming at every possible opportunity.

Zechariah in the New Testament

Let’s deal with these in the order we find them in Zechariah:

1/ Paul quotes Zechariah 8:16

Ephesians 4:25	Zechariah 8:16
“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”	“These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another.”

The command from God in Zechariah 8 comes in response to a query to the priesthood from the leaders of Bethel in chapter 7 concerning the practice of fasting and mourning adopted by diaspora Jews and carried on even after their return to the land. The question seems to be a genuine expression of the desire to know God’s will for their conduct and behavior. God responds with a promise to re-establish Zion and dwell in her midst, and then goes on to command that the returned exiles live and behave in ways that are consistent with the future glory of their people. Making it a regular practice to speak truthfully to fellow citizens of Zion is one of a series of instructions that make sense for a people on their way to a glorious future, even if that future is more distant than they might have then imagined.

The parallels to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians are obvious. Like the Jews, Christians have a glorious future to which we look forward. It is appropriate for us to behave consistently with our calling in Christ, not just because he will dwell among us in the future as he will in Zion among the millennial Jews, but because he dwells with us right now (“I am with you always”). In both Ephesians and Zechariah, speaking the truth to one another comes before any other command. It is obviously a priority among devout believers. In both cases, it is one of a longer list of directions.

The “quotation” is only three words, so we must concede it’s possible Paul used it coincidentally. I think, given the circumstances in which he gives the instruction and the parallels between the two occasions, that the words of Zechariah seemed appropriate to the apostle on the occasion.

2/ Matthew and John quote Zechariah 9:9

Matthew 21:5	John 12:14-15	Zechariah 9:9
“This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, ‘Say to the daughter of Zion, “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.” ’ ”	“And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, ‘Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!’ ”	“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Anything useful I currently have to say concerning the NT use of this verse may be found in this earlier MtM post dedicated to the subject and its sequel, which deals with attacks by a critic on the accuracy of Matthew’s gospel.

3/ Matthew repurposes Zechariah 11:13

Matthew 27:9-10	Zechariah 11:13
“Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.’ ”	“Then I said to them, ‘If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.’ And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’ — the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter.”

How Judas ended up betraying the Lord Jesus for exactly thirty pieces of silver is no mystery. He went to the chief priests to negotiate a deal, and thirty pieces of silver was the “lordly price” at which they priced their Shepherd, the price required under the law to compensate the owner of a slave gored by an ox. Was the insult intentional? Probably.

If we compare the shepherd in Zechariah’s parable to the actual events described in the gospels, we see that Zechariah really foreshadows Matthew 26-27 rather than Judas “fulfilling” a prophecy in any strictly literal sense. There are differences between parable and fulfillment sufficient enough to make Matthew’s definition of “fulfilled” a little broader than a Western mindset might expect in interpreting an oracle, as discussed in detail here. The shepherd throws the coins in Zechariah, not the betrayer, and Matthew has no actual potter in the temple. All the same, there is way too much equivalence to be mere coincidence: the exact price, the reference to the potter (Judas was buried in a potter’s field purchased by the chief priests with his blood money), and the fact that Judas even threw the money into the temple precisely as Zechariah describes having done himself.

The question arises whether any of the participants in the Lord’s betrayal were conscious of the association between their actions and the words of Zechariah. It seems unlikely. Had the connections to OT prophecy been too obvious to the participants, they “would not have crucified the Lord of glory”.

The Lord told Zechariah to throw the silver “to the potter”. He responds by throwing the silver into the house of the Lord, where the potter apparently resides. Why would there be a potter in the temple? All the temple vessels were made of gold, and had been returned to Jerusalem by the Persians. Over a century earlier, Jeremiah wrote about the same subject, the judgment of the kingdom, under the metaphor of a potter (God) and clay (Israel). The potter reworks the clay spoiled in his hand into another vessel as the Lord sees fit. So was there a literal potter in the temple, or was Zechariah simply riffing on Jeremiah? If God is the potter, where else would he be found but in his temple?

4/ John quotes Zechariah 12:10

John 19:37

Zechariah 12:10

“One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness — his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth — that you also may believe. For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken.’ And again another Scripture says, ‘They will look on him whom they have pierced.’ ”

“ ‘And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child.”

The word translated “pierced” means to stab or impale. It is a different word than David used in Psalm 22 (“They have pierced my hands and my feet”), though they certainly did that too. John explicitly tells us the Lord’s impalement with a Roman spear to confirm his death fulfilled these words of Zechariah. The Romans pierced the Lord Jesus, but without the persistent demands of the Jews for his crucifixion, our Lord would never have been in that position. Zechariah attributes the crime to “the inhabitants of Jerusalem”. Peter did not blame the Romans for their treatment of Christ when he preached to the crowd at Pentecost, calling his Lord “this Jesus whom you [Jews] crucified”. The moment Messiah is revealed, Israel will finally recognize Jesus of Nazareth, the one they rejected.

5/ Matthew and Mark have Jesus quoting Zechariah 13:7

Matthew 26:31	Mark 14:27	Zechariah 13:7
“Then Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” ’ ”	“And Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away, for it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” ’ ”	“ ‘Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me,’ declares the Lord of hosts. ‘Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones.’ ”

We might well ask if there is a sense in which Zechariah’s prophecy also applies to the coming day of the Lord. I believe there must be, because the Lord goes on from this verse to describe the people of Judah fleeing from the invading armies of the nations in the final attack on Jerusalem, as the Lord Jesus is returning in glory to the Mount of Olives. The Israel of the end times are the “scattered sheep” of whom Zechariah spoke, not just the disciples 500 years later. All the consequences unleashed when the leaders of Israel poured out their envy and hatred on Messiah during his first advent will be visited on their unbelieving descendants at the time of the end.

The sad, familiar story of Peter’s denial of Christ begins with the Lord quoting verse 8. In response to hearing it, Peter insists, “I will never fall away.” Of course, he did just as Zechariah prophesied, and in doing so fulfilled the scriptures, along with the other fleeing disciples. But surely nobody who heard Zechariah prophesy that Messiah would be attacked made the connection to the Gospels that we make today, and it’s not because they were ignorant.

Nevertheless, the Lord himself quotes Zechariah’s prophecy as the sort of thing one might expect when the Shepherd is stricken. Although their conduct was cowardly, it was not the least bit unexpected, and the Lord freely forgave his disciples for abandoning him in accordance with the scriptures.

6/ Allusions and Possible Allusions

In addition to the five obvious connections to the New Testament quoted above, the NT writers also make numerous allusions and possible allusions to Zechariah, something we should expect from devout Jews who knew the prophets. This is especially the case in Revelation. John saw what he saw, but the language he uses is full of prophetic reference points. The following list may be worth further study.

Allusions
Matthew 21:44 Luke 20:18	Zechariah 12:3
John 7:38	Zechariah 13:1, 14:8
Revelation 11:4	Zechariah 4:3, 11
Revelation 21:15	Zechariah 2:1
Revelation 22:1-2	Zechariah 14:8 — see also Ezekiel 47:1, 7, 12
Possible Allusions
Revelation 1:7	Zechariah 12:10-14
Revelation 1:12	Zechariah 4:2
Revelation 5:6	Zechariah 4:10
Revelation 16:14-16	Zechariah 14:2
Revelation 22:3	Zechariah 14:11

Next week: Malachi