Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF

The 11th book among the Minor Prophets. Zechariah is typically divided into two or three sections. Chs. 1–8 contain the preaching of the prophet Zechariah from the late 6th century b.c.e. Chs. 9–14 taken together may be called Second or Deutero-Zechariah. The fact that 9:1; 12:1 bear nearly identical superscriptions, however, has led many scholars to divide chs. 9–14 into Deutero-Zechariah (chs. 9–11) and Trito-Zechariah (chs. 12–14).

The view that Zech. 9–14 arose separately from Zech. 1–8 goes back at least to the 16th-century scholar Joseph Mede, who observed that Zech. 11:12-13 is attributed to Jeremiah in Matt. 27:9-10. Further, Zech. 12–14 exhibits stylistic features very different from Zech. 1–8, and nothing in Zech. 9–14 addresses the 6th-century conditions or persons prominent in Zech. 1–8.

Zechariah 1–8

Author and Date

Three superscriptions (1:1, 7; 7:1) attribute chs. 1–8 to Zechariah. He was a contemporary of Haggai, whose preaching seems to have undergone editing by the same hand as Zech. 1–8. The superscriptions all date between 520 and 518. Since these dates are redactional, a few scholars have questioned them, arguing that some of the visions between 1:7 and 6:15 actually arose a few years earlier.

Historical Setting

When in 538 Cyrus the Great issued his edict allowing exiles to return to Judah, few accepted the offer. According to Ezra 1:11 Sheshbazzar led a group back (Ezra 1:11) and began to rebuild the temple (5:16). That work ceased before the death of Cyrus in 530 and did not resume until 520, under the urging of Haggai and Zechariah upon the arrival in Jerusalem of Zerubbabel, the grandson of King Jehoiachin. Haggai called him God’s signet right (Hag. 2:23), a title clearly reversing Jer. 22:24, where Jehoiachin is compared to a signet ring that God tore from his finger and threw away. Haggai apparently considered Zerubbabel to be the new Davidic king. Likewise, Zech. 4:9 attributes to Zerubbabel the kingly task of founding the new temple.

Message

Proto-Zechariah falls into three sections, each with its own superscription.

1:1-6. The first section, dated mid-October to mid-November 520, was probably a composition of the redactor. It contains a general admonition for the readers to avoid the mistakes of their preexilic forebears.

1:7–6:15. The second section, dated in early 519, contains eight visions, interspersed with two exhortations.

1:7-17. In the first vision Zechariah reports that God would become merciful toward Jerusalem. This vision might presuppose a Babylonian audience prior to their return to Jerusalem, just before 539 or, more likely, close to 520.

1:18-21(MT 2:1-4). The second vision reports the appearance of four horns and four blacksmiths. The horns represent the nations that had oppressed Israel, and the smiths represent God’s agents who would strike them down.

2:1-5(2:5-9). In the third vision Zechariah sees a young man (angel?) measuring Jerusalem to see how many inhabitants it would hold. He is told not to worry. Since God would be its wall, there would be no limit to its growth.

2:6-13(2:10-17). The first exhortation calls the exiles in Babylon to return home. That exhortation suggests a date after 539, when such a journey was possible.

3:1-10. The fourth vision is sufficiently different from the others that some scholars think it is secondary, though written by Zechariah nonetheless. It shows God ordaining or installing Joshua as high priest for Jerusalem. The reference to the Branch in 3:8 and the picture of messianic peace in 3:10 perhaps referred to Zerubbabel originally.

4:1-14. The next vision depicts God’s presence among his people. It is interrupted in 4:6b-10a with two short prophetic announcements about the role of Zerubbabel in rebuilding the temple where God would be present.

5:1-4. The sixth vision is of a huge, flying scroll that would purge the land of thieves and liars.

5:5-11. The seventh vision portrays wickedness being bottled up and sent to Babylon, where it would be worshipped.

6:1-8. The last vision depicts the future Jerusalem, where life would be good again and God could take a sabbath rest.

6:9-15. In view of what God was about to do among his people, a second exhortation also calls for the exiles to return to Jerusalem. An original injunction for Zechariah to have (four?) crowns made and placed in the temple as a memorial was changed into an injunction to set “crowns” on Joshua (6:11). The name Joshua is so unexpected here that many scholars suggest his name replaced that of Zerubbabel.

7:1–8:23. The third section of Proto-Zechariah is a collection of injunctions, not all perhaps authentic to Zechariah, within the framework of a question asked of him by emissaries from Bethel in 7:1-7 and answered in 8:18-19.

Zechariah 9–14

Date and Historical Setting

Various dates have been assigned to Zech. 9–14. The mention of Hadrach in 9:1 is said to require a date before 738, when that city lost its independent status. Also, the mention of Gaza is said to point to the defeat of that city by Sargon II in 720, and 10:10 is said to presuppose the Assyrian period after 660, probably in the time of Josiah. The majority thinks the campaign of Alexander the Great is reflected in 9:1-8, and the mention of “Greece” in 9:13 is said to clinch a date during the Greek period. Actually, the cities mentioned do not, in fact, represent Alexander’s path to or from Egypt, and Judah had contact with Greece long before the 4th century. Dates as late as the Hasmoneans have been adduced from the reference to three deposed shepherds in 11:8 and the one who had been “pierced” mentioned in 12:10.

The Persian period seems a better date than any of these suggestions for several reasons. First, Zech. 9:8 presupposes both the destruction and the rebuilding of the temple, so both ch. 9 and the redaction of chs. 9–14 date after 515. Further, Zech. 14 is widely held to be the latest part of Deutero-Zechariah, and 14:10 describes the boundaries of the future Jerusalem. In doing so, it mentions gates known from preexilic times (the Benjamin Gate and the Corner Gate), but not repaired by Nehemiah. That might suggest that the redactor worked before Nehemiah’s mission to repair the walls and used the only boundaries known to him and his contemporaries. If so, Zech. 14 was written before 445, and the redaction of Zech. 9–14 could have occurred any time after that.

Life in the tiny subprovince of Judah in the first half of the 5th century would have been characterized by several tensions that Deutero-Zechariah addresses. The first was the division between those people who had experienced the Exile and those who had not. The most obvious areas of competition were over land ownership and control of offices, especially the priesthood. Even the repatriated exiles, coming in waves for different reasons, may well have competed among each other for the perquisites of the postexilic community. A second division that shows itself in Neh. 13 is the struggle between the inhabitants of Jerusalem and some of those who lived elsewhere, particularly landed nobles in Judah. The third division was geographic, north versus south, over control of Judah and Jerusalem, as Nehemiah’s troubles with Sanballat and Tobiah make clear.

Author

Deutero-Zechariah was anonymous. It was attached to Proto-Zechariah, perhaps because it seems to explain why the joyful feasts and contagious spirituality and prosperity envisioned in 8:18-23 had not yet come about. Two schools of thought have emerged to locate the social setting of the author and his group. One suggestion is that Zech. 9–14 is the product of nonpriestly, disenfranchised persons, more or less apocalyptic. The opposing view is that the chapters are the product of priests, who nevertheless were no longer in power. Either way, the group and its spokesperson perceived themselves as outside the real power structure in postexilic Judah and having written a program for a better future.

Message

In that program, Deutero-Zechariah dealt with the problem of unfulfilled expectations in postexilic Israel by using, with modifications, traditional hopes of the community.

9:1-17. Deutero-Zechariah envisioned the future restoration of the monarchy over the old Davidic Empire.

10:1-12. In the process Israel and Judah would be reunited.

11:1-17. Unfortunately, these hopes were nowhere near fruition, because the shepherds, the leaders of the people, were more interested in personal gain than in being good shepherds.

12:1-9. The redactor used the image of a future attack against Jerusalem to warn that the city would not outrank Judah when God set things right.

12:10-13:9. Indeed, what was needed before God could bring about full restoration was for him to send compassion and contrition on the haughty leading families in Jerusalem and to make false prophets ashamed of what they were doing.

14:1-21. When the city was purged of its sin, God could turn it into the place of blessing God intended it to be.

Bibliography. C. L. Meyers and E. M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1–8. AB 25B (Garden City, 1987); Zechariah 9–14. AB 25C (Garden City, 1993); R. F. Person, Jr., Second Zechariah and the Deuteronomic School. JSOTSup 167 (Sheffield, 1993); D. L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1–8. OTL (Philadelphia, 1984); Zechariah 9–14 and Malachi. OTL (Louisville, 1995); P. L. Redditt, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. NCBC (Grand Rapids, 1995); J. E. Tollington, Tradition and Innovation in Haggai and Zechariah 1–8. JSOTSup 150 (Sheffield, 1993).

Paul L. Redditt

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)