ZECHARIAH 1 — A CALL TO RETURN, THE HORSEMAN AMONG THE MYRTLES, AND THE FOUR HORNS

Zechariah is the eleventh of the twelve Minor Prophets and the longest of them. His name means "the LORD remembers," and the book is about God's remembering His covenant with His people. He was the son of Berechiah and the grandson of Iddo (1:1). Iddo is listed among the priests who returned from exile with Zerubbabel and Joshua (Nehemiah 12:4), and in the books of Ezra, Zechariah is called simply "the son of Iddo" (Ezra 5:1; 6:14), which indicates that Iddo was the head of the family and that Zechariah belonged to the priestly line. This makes him, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, a prophet who was also a priest, and this background is reflected in the book's concern with the temple, the priesthood, and cleansing. He was a younger contemporary of Haggai, and the two prophets worked together to encourage the community to complete the temple (Ezra 5:1–2; 6:14–15). The book is dated precisely. The opening message came in the eighth month of the second year of Darius (October–November 520 BC), about two months after Haggai's first message. The night visions are dated to the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month of the same year (about February 519 BC), exactly five months after the building began (Haggai 1:14–15) and two months after Haggai's promise of blessing (Haggai 2:18–19). A third date appears in 7:1, in the fourth year of Darius (December 518 BC). The book can be divided into three main parts. Chapters 1–6 contain a call to repentance (1:1–6) and eight night visions (1:7–6:8), concluded by the symbolic crowning of Joshua (6:9–15). Chapters 7–8 answer a question about fasting. Chapters 9–14 consist of two oracles, one in chapters 9–11 and one in chapters 12–14, which look far beyond the days of Zechariah to the coming of the Messiah and the final events of history. Many critical scholars argue that chapters 9–14 were written by a different author at a later date, and they call them "Second Zechariah" or "Deutero-Zechariah." The arguments are based on differences in style, historical setting, and subject matter. This commentary treats the book as a unity, written by the prophet Zechariah, and notes that the New Testament quotes both halves of the book as the word of God (for example, Matthew 21:4–5 and 27:9–10; John 12:14–15 and 19:37). The differences can be explained by the change from visions to oracles and the more eschatological character of the later chapters. The visions of the first part are given with the help of an interpreting angel, the "angel that talked with me," and they use the imagery of apocalyptic literature, which makes Zechariah a bridge between the earlier prophets and the books of Daniel and Revelation. The community that first heard Zechariah had returned from exile with high hopes, but it was small, poor, and struggling. The temple, begun in the days of Cyrus, had stood unfinished for sixteen years. Haggai had challenged them to work, and they were working, but the building was modest, and the surrounding world seemed unaffected by the promises of the prophets. The empire was at peace, and there was no sign of God's kingdom. Zechariah's message addresses this discouragement by showing, through visions, that God is active, that He is jealous for Jerusalem, and that He will complete what He has started. A note on versification: in the Hebrew Bible, the last four verses of English chapter 1 (1:18–21) are numbered as 2:1–4, and the thirteen verses of English chapter 2 are numbered as 2:5–17. This commentary follows the English numbering.

The historical context of Zechariah's opening chapter fits what is known of the early reign of Darius I. The Behistun Inscription, carved into a cliff in western Iran, records how Darius defeated a series of rebels in 522–521 BC, including a pretender in Babylon and others in Persia, Media, and elsewhere. By 520–519 BC, the empire was largely at peace, which agrees with the report of the patrols that the whole earth was at rest. The Persian empire also had a well-developed system of couriers, roads, and royal agents, which the Greek historian Herodotus describes in some detail. The prophet's use of the image of patrols reflects this administrative reality. The details of the prophet's identification are also supported by other sources. The book of Nehemiah lists Iddo as a priestly family head and names a Zechariah as the head of that household in the days of the high priest Joiakim (Nehemiah 12:4, 16), and Ezra mentions the prophets Haggai and Zechariah together (Ezra 5:1; 6:14), which shows that both books agree about the prophet's role. The mention of the date, the second year of Darius, is consistent with Persian chronology. The Dead Sea Scrolls include copies of Zechariah in the Twelve Prophets scroll from Qumran, and fragments of a Greek scroll from Nahal Hever, and these show that the book was widely read and carefully copied in the Second Temple period. The use of Zechariah by the New Testament writers, especially in the accounts of the passion, indicates that the early church regarded it as authoritative prophecy about Christ. The myrtle tree is native to the Mediterranean region, and in Palestine it grows in the hills and valleys, usually in moist places. The "hollow" or "bottom" may refer to a ravine near Jerusalem. Archaeological and literary evidence indicates that the myrtle was used in the Second Temple period at the Feast of Tabernacles, and it is mentioned in Nehemiah 8:15. The use of such local details gives the vision a recognizable setting and shows the prophet's familiarity with the world in which he lived.