Summary: Bible - Book of Zechariah

The GIST

Zechariah, a book of the Bible, is one of the twelve Minor Prophets, and one of the strangest. It is attributed to Zechariah, son of Berechiah and grandson of Iddo, who began to prophesy in the second year of the Persian king Darius, in the late sixth century BC. His name means "God remembered". The Jews who had come back from exile in Babylon were living in a half-ruined Jerusalem, and the Temple had still to be rebuilt. Zechariah's task, shared with his contemporary Haggai, was to convince a tired people that God had come back with them.

He does it through a sequence of dreamlike visions: horsemen among myrtle trees, a flying scroll, a woman sealed in a basket, a golden lampstand fed by two olive trees. The second half of the book, chapters 9 to 14, is different in style and has no dates. Most modern scholars think it was written later by another hand, and it is often called Second Zechariah. It contains some of the Old Testament's most quoted pictures of the future, including a king who comes riding on a donkey. The gospel writers drew heavily on these chapters when they told the story of Jesus's last days.

What It Says

A call to return (chapter 1, verses 1 to 6). The book opens with a short sermon. The ancestors ignored the earlier prophets and paid for it. "Your fathers, where are they?" God's word outlasted them all. The lesson for the new generation fits in one line: "Turn ye unto me, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you".

Eight visions in one night (chapters 1 to 6). Three months later Zechariah sees a series of visions, each explained by an angel who talks with him.

In the first, a rider on a red horse stands among myrtle trees with other horses behind him. They are God's patrol, back from walking the earth, and they report that all is quiet. That is the problem. The nations are at ease while Jerusalem lies waste, and the angel cries, "how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem"? The reply is given in "good words and comfortable words": "I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies: my house shall be built in it".

Next come four horns, the powers that scattered Judah, and four craftsmen sent to cast them down. Third, a man goes out with a measuring line to measure Jerusalem, and is stopped. The city will overflow any walls, and God himself "will be unto her a wall of fire round about". Exiles still in Babylon are urged to come home, for whoever touches God's people "toucheth the apple of his eye".

The fourth vision is a courtroom. Joshua the high priest stands before the angel of the Lord in filthy clothes, with Satan at his right hand to accuse him. The accuser is silenced: "is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" The dirty garments are taken off and clean ones put on, a sign that guilt has been removed, and Joshua is promised a coming servant called "the BRANCH".

The fifth is the best known. Zechariah sees a golden lampstand with seven lamps and an olive tree on either side supplying it with oil. The message is for Zerubbabel, the governor who must finish the Temple: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts." The mountain of obstacles will become a plain. The hands that laid the foundation will complete it, and nobody should despise "the day of small things". The two olive trees are "the two anointed ones, that stand by the LORD of the whole earth."

The sixth and seventh visions deal with evil in the community. A huge flying scroll carries a curse into the house of every thief and perjurer. Then a woman called Wickedness is pushed down into a measuring basket, the lid of lead is slammed on, and two winged women carry it off to the land of Shinar. In the eighth, four chariots with horses of different colours ride out between two bronze mountains to patrol the earth, and God's spirit is set at rest.

The visions end with an action. Zechariah is told to take silver and gold from returned exiles, make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua the high priest, announcing "the man whose name is The BRANCH", who will build the Temple and "be a priest upon his throne". Priest and ruler are brought together in one figure.

The question about fasting (chapters 7 and 8). Two years later a delegation asks whether they should go on keeping the fast that mourned the Temple's destruction. The answer starts with a counter-question: "did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?" What God asked for through the earlier prophets was never ritual. It was this: "Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother", and "oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor". The ancestors refused, made their hearts hard as flint, and were scattered.

Then the mood lifts into a string of short promises. God has returned to Zion. "There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem", leaning on their sticks, "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing". If that seems too wonderful to the survivors, should it seem so to God? So, "let your hands be strong." They are to speak the truth to one another and judge fairly. The fasts will become feasts. And the nations will come, ten foreigners taking hold of the robe of one Jew and saying, "We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you."

The first oracle (chapters 9 to 11). The style now changes. Judgment sweeps down through Syria, the Phoenician cities and the Philistine coast, and then comes one of the most famous verses in the prophets: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass". This king does away with chariots and war horses, speaks peace to the nations, and rules "from sea even to sea". The captives are called "prisoners of hope".

Chapter 10 promises that the scattered people, Judah and Ephraim alike, will be gathered from Egypt and Assyria, because their leaders failed and "there was no shepherd". That image takes over in chapter 11, a dark and difficult allegory. The prophet is told to shepherd a flock marked for slaughter. He takes two staffs, named Beauty and Bands, and tends the sheep, but the relationship breaks down. He snaps the first staff, ending a covenant. He asks for his wages, and they weigh out "thirty pieces of silver", which he is told to throw to the potter in the house of the Lord. He breaks the second staff, the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. A worthless shepherd will follow, one who devours the flock.

The second oracle (chapters 12 to 14). The last three chapters look to "that day". All nations gather against Jerusalem, and the city becomes a cup that makes them stagger and a stone too heavy to lift. God defends it, so that the weakest inhabitant is like David. Then, in the middle of victory, comes grief. God pours out "the spirit of grace and of supplications", and "they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son". The whole land mourns, family by family. A fountain is opened "for sin and for uncleanness". Idols and false prophets are swept away.

A brief poem returns to the shepherd: "smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered". Two thirds of the people perish, and the remaining third is refined like silver until God says, "It is my people", and they answer, "The LORD is my God."

The final chapter is the most sweeping. Jerusalem is captured and plundered. Then the Lord goes out to fight, and "his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives", which splits in two. It is a day unlike any other: "at evening time it shall be light." Living waters flow from Jerusalem east and west, summer and winter. "And the LORD shall be king over all the earth". The survivors of the nations come up every year to worship and keep the feast of tabernacles. Holiness spreads to everything, so that even the bells on the horses are inscribed "HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD" and every cooking pot in the city is as sacred as the vessels of the altar.

Why It Matters

For its first hearers Zechariah was encouragement with a practical aim: finish the Temple, and trust that God is at work in small beginnings. Its central conviction, that God's purposes are accomplished by his spirit and not by force, has outlived the building it was written for. The book also shows a shift in emphasis, noted by scholars, from the governor toward the high priest, and its interest in purity runs from the sanctuary to the kitchen.

Its later chapters are an early form of apocalyptic writing, sober about the present and confident of God's final victory, and they shaped later books, including Revelation. Christian readers have long taken them as messianic prophecy. These chapters helped the writers of the gospels to understand the suffering and death of Jesus, and they quoted them when they wrote of his final days. In the Hebrew Bible the book stands within the Twelve, in the second division of the scriptures, the Prophets.

Scholars generally divide it between a First Zechariah of the sixth century (chapters 1 to 8) and a later Second Zechariah, which some split again into two. Others have argued that linking passages give the last six chapters a unity of their own.

Who Should Read It

Zechariah is for readers who have finished the better-known prophets and want something richer and stranger, and for anyone curious about the Old Testament background of the gospel stories. It will also speak to people doing slow rebuilding work who need to hear that small beginnings count. It is not easy. Read the first eight chapters for their encouragement, and take the last six slowly, as poetry.