Welcome to Bible Fiber where we are encountering the textures and shades of the prophetic tapestry in a year-long study of the twelve minor prophets, one prophet each month. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
I am sorry about the prolonged break between our last episode of Haggai and today. My family made a cross country move this summer from Mississippi to Arizona. Only now is life starting to normalize again. I am thankful to have my commentaries, podcast equipment, and coffee pot all unpacked and part of my daily orbit again.
This week we are starting the book of Zechariah, “son of Berechiah, son of Iddo,” according to the book’s superscription (1:1). Both Ezra (5:1) and Nehemiah (12:16) refer to Zechariah only as the son of Iddo and omit the “son of Berechiah.” Commentators theorize that Berechiah, his father, must have died in exile, leaving Zechariah in the care of his grandfather Iddo. In Nehemiah’s genealogy, he listed Zechariah son of Iddo as one of the heads of the priestly families (12:16).
The name Zechariah was surely common, but it is highly unlikely that among the early waves of returnees were two Zechariahs, sons of Iddo. Assuming Nehemiah’s Zechariah is the same as the literary prophet, we learn a great deal from this otherwise simple introduction in the first verse. Zechariah was both a priest and a prophet, in the same vein as Ezekiel and Jeremiah. He also must have been young when he returned from exile to be serving as priest almost seventy years later in the time of Nehemiah.
Welcome to Bible Fiber where we are encountering the textures and shades of the prophetic tapestry in a year-long study of the twelve minor prophets, one prophet each month. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
I am sorry about the prolonged break between our last episode of Haggai and today. My family made a cross country move this summer from Mississippi to Arizona. Only now is life starting to normalize again. I am thankful to have my commentaries, podcast equipment, and coffee pot all unpacked and part of my daily orbit again.
This week we are starting the book of Zechariah, “son of Berechiah, son of Iddo,” according to the book’s superscription (1:1). Both Ezra (5:1) and Nehemiah (12:16) refer to Zechariah only as the son of Iddo and omit the “son of Berechiah.” Commentators theorize that Berechiah, his father, must have died in exile, leaving Zechariah in the care of his grandfather Iddo. In Nehemiah’s genealogy, he listed Zechariah son of Iddo as one of the heads of the priestly families (12:16).
The name Zechariah was surely common, but it is highly unlikely that among the early waves of returnees were two Zechariahs, sons of Iddo. Assuming Nehemiah’s Zechariah is the same as the literary prophet, we learn a great deal from this otherwise simple introduction in the first verse. Zechariah was both a priest and a prophet, in the same vein as Ezekiel and Jeremiah. He also must have been young when he returned from exile to be serving as priest almost seventy years later in the time of Nehemiah.
Welcome to Bible Fiber where we are encountering the textures and shades of the prophetic tapestry in a year-long study of the twelve minor prophets, one prophet each month. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
I am sorry about the prolonged break between our last episode of Haggai and today. My family made a cross country move this summer from Mississippi to Arizona. Only now is life starting to normalize again. I am thankful to have my commentaries, podcast equipment, and coffee pot all unpacked and part of my daily orbit again.
This week we are starting the book of Zechariah, “son of Berechiah, son of Iddo,” according to the book’s superscription (1:1). Both Ezra (5:1) and Nehemiah (12:16) refer to Zechariah only as the son of Iddo and omit the “son of Berechiah.” Commentators theorize that Berechiah, his father, must have died in exile, leaving Zechariah in the care of his grandfather Iddo. In Nehemiah’s genealogy, he listed Zechariah son of Iddo as one of the heads of the priestly families (12:16).
The name Zechariah was surely common, but it is highly unlikely that among the early waves of returnees were two Zechariahs, sons of Iddo. Assuming Nehemiah’s Zechariah is the same as the literary prophet, we learn a great deal from this otherwise simple introduction in the first verse. Zechariah was both a priest and a prophet, in the same vein as Ezekiel and Jeremiah. He also must have been young when he returned from exile to be serving as priest almost seventy years later in the time of Nehemiah.
Like Haggai, Zechariah received his revelation during the second year of King Darius (1:1), in 520 BCE. Zechariah and Haggai were contemporaries, both ministering to the remnant who returned from exile with lofty dreams of rebuilding their nation. Instead, Jerusalem remained in ruins, inflation was rampant, and the harvest was meager. We know the circumstances of Zechariah’s early audience because of the details in Haggai and Ezra. The people were questioning Yahweh’s commitment to the restoration promises.
When was his universal reign supposed to commence? When would Jerusalem become central to global order and peace? It is obvious from Haggai and Zechariah’s specific words of comfort that the people were in a crisis of faith.
We learned in our study of Haggai that the prophet was likely an old man at the time of his ministry, which only lasted three months. Zechariah started prophesying after Haggai, after the people had already renewed their work on the Temple. Though the prophetic careers of Haggai and Zechariah closely aligned, the two prophets had different emphases. Haggai urged the returnees to obey, and Zechariah encouraged them to repent.
Haggai was the prophet God sent to highlight the failures of the postexilic community. He informed them God was withholding his blessing because of the peoples neglect of his former Temple. Remember after an initial enthusiastic laying of the Temple foundations, they stopped all work on the Temple for the next sixteen years, until Haggai’s pronouncements shook them. Zechariah does not even mention the Temple in his first eight chapters, instead emphasizing repentance and a spiritual return to Yahweh. They had returned to the land physically but had not fully returned to the Lord spiritually.
Zechariah’s prophetic book begins on a pessimistic note. He reminds the people of the sins of their ancestors. Their rebellion brought on God’s wrath, culminating in their exile and the destruction of Jerusalem. Their lack of repentance forced God’s hand to teach them the hard way. God had sent them prophets to warn them about the destructive path they were on but they continued in their wicked ways. Zechariah’s warning is straightforward: “Do not be like your ancestors” (1:4) who ignored the prophets and refused to turn from their evil deeds and evil ways. Do not repeat their mistakes.
Zechariah then reiterates the unifying theme of the prophets: “Return to me…and I will return to you” (1:3). This message was the constant refrain of the major and minor prophets, beginning with the earliest recorded prophecies in Hosea and continuing through the exile and into the period of return.
Zechariah rhetorically asks, “Your ancestors, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?” (1:5). He is highlighting the mortality of both their ancestors and even the prophets in contrasts to the words and statutes of Yahweh that live on forever (1:6). Like Haggai, Zechariah’s message prompts a positive response from the people. They immediately repent. Zechariah is one of the rare prophets that includes the response of his audience. Every day that the returnees walk among Jerusalem’s ruins and live under Persian subjugation, the words of the preexilic prophets ring in their ears. Still paying the price of the sins of their fathers, they are keen to listen to their own messengers from the Lord.
Three months after Zechariah’s repentance sermon, he experienced a series of eight visions. According to Zechariah’s precise dating formula, the visions occurred on February 15, 519 BCE (1:7). The text does not specify if the visions were dreams, only that the visions occurred at night. Without any additional date reference, it follows that all eight visions happened in one night.
In the first vision, Zechariah saw a man on a red horse “standing among the myrtle trees in the shadows, and behind him were red, sorrel, and white horses” (1:8). The vision is bathed in moonlight and secrecy. The focus is the man on the red horse. At first, it is unclear if there are riders on the other three horses, but verse eleven uses a plural pronoun for the speakers indicating all the horses had riders (1:11).
Bible enthusiasts consider the meaning of the myrtle tree and the colors of the horses. Those excited by the eschatological connect Zechariah’s multicolored horses with the four horsemen of Revelation 6. Certainly, I enjoy pontificating the meanings of all the details in the visions. However, I tend to believe that if the myrtle tree and horse colors were deeply significant, beyond colorful narrative devices, the biblical author would give us the meaning, and not keep it hidden.
In fact, not even the prophet has to interpret the symbols of his vision. Zechariah asks, “What are these, my lord?” (1:9). A divine intercessor, the Angel of the Lord, answers him. The Angel of the Lord serves as mediator, relaying the word of Yahweh to the prophet throughout his vision sequence. The Angel of the Lord appears earlier times in scripture, most often in Genesis and Exodus. For example, the Angel spoke with Hagar in the desert (Gen. 16), wrestled with Jacob at night (Gen. 32), and spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Ex. 3). In fact, because sometimes the Angel seems to speak as God and other times for God, a whole theology has built up around the divine nature of the Angel of the Lord. In Zechariah, the angel is clearly separate in being from Yahweh.
The angel tells the prophet that the horsemen are scouts sent by God “to patrol the earth” (1:10). The resulting intelligence from the horsemen’s secret reconnaissance mission is that “the whole earth remains at peace” (1:11). The peace referenced here is true to the historical reality at the end of the Persian King Darius’s second year. Conflict marred the first two years of his reign as the empire transitioned from the dynastic family of Cyrus to that of Darius. Darius acquired the throne through internal revolt. The thing about coups is that they inspire more coups. By 519 BCE, however, all was quiet in the empire. The horsemen, without naming King Darius, seem to be reflecting this point in Persia’s history.
Modern readers naturally assume that regional peace must be a positive development for the people of Judah. To be sure, even though they were not independent, Darius allowed for the rebuilding of the Temple and the free worship of their God. However, the peaceful state of things was discouraging to the Judeans. In their imaginations, fueled by centuries of prophecy, peace in the new world order was supposed to come through Israel, not Persia. The prophets had predicted a great shaking of the nations that would upend world order, giving Jerusalem and therefore Yahweh primacy of place. Peace across the empire was not the world the prophets predicted. It seemed to the Jews that God’s favor might be on Persia rather than Judah.
The Angel of the Lord asks the question on all the people’s mind: “O Lord of hosts, how long will you withhold mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which you have been angry these seventy years?” (1:12). Seventy years reflects the prophecy of Jeremiah (25:11-12) and Daniel (9:2) who promised only a seventy-year exile. The seventy-year span fits the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE to the completion of the Temple rebuilding project around 516 BCE.
Yahweh answered the angel and the angel told Zechariah, “Proclaim this message: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am very zealous for Jerusalem and for Zion (1:14). The direction to “proclaim” is a reminder that Zechariah may be experiencing these visions in solitude but they are intended to be shared. Yahweh is still protective of his people, even if his response seems delayed.
God adds that he is angry with the “nations that are at ease” (1:15). The preexilic prophets made it clear that Assyria and Babylon were instruments of God’s anger, used to deliver his punishment on his disloyal people. However, Assyria and Babylon took it too far. God says, “while I was only a little angry, they made the disaster worse” (1:15). Most likely, the audience was eager to see Babylon devastated. The Jewish remnant longed for Yahweh’s vengeance.
God continues, “I have returned to Jerusalem with compassion; my house shall be built in it, says the Lord of hosts, and a measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem” (1:16). The measuring line is a metaphor for Jerusalem’s reconstruction. The message of compassion delivered through the Angel of the Lord extends outward from Jerusalem, declaring prosperity for all of Judah (1:17). At this point, the people were confined to Jerusalem, but the mediating angel is telling them that full restoration applies to all of Judah’s cities.
Zechariah’s second vision, starting in verse eighteen, connects to the first. This is the shortest, and simplest, of all his visions. Zechariah looks up and sees four horns. The horns stand alone, unattached to the bodies of animals. Zechariah’s mediating angel is apparently still with him in the second vision. The prophet asks the angel for the meaning of the horns. The angel responds, “These are the horns that scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem” (1:18). The horns represent the strength of the imperial powers responsible for the scattering of Israel and Judah. In the Ancient Near East, horns symbolized power, like the horns of an animal that assist in attacking its prey. Daniel had a similar vision of unattached horns, only one of his horns had eyes and a mouth (Dan. 7-8). The number four represent the totality of Israel’s oppression, coming from all four cardinal directions. Or possibly, like in Daniel’s vision, the horns symbolize Judah’s historic enemies: Assyria, Babylon, the Medes and the Persians.
Without introduction, Yahweh suddenly enters the scene and directly speaks to the prophet, no longer using the angelic mediator. The Lord shows Zechariah four craftsmen, or blacksmiths, depending on the translation. Zechariah asks about the purpose of the blacksmiths and Yahweh answers, they are “to strike down the horns of the nations that lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter its people” (1:20). Thus, the blacksmiths are to fight the horns on behalf of Judah. Yahweh does not explain the identity of the blacksmiths. They likely represent the supernatural force of Yahweh’s judgement enacted on Judah’s oppressors. However, if we want to place this vision in a historical context, the blacksmiths could also be Yahweh’s purposing of the Persian army under Darius to deliver the final blow on Babylon. It was around this time that Darius decided to obliterate the continuous Babylonian threat.
The meaning of the second vision is a continuation of the first vision, as indicated by the repetition of the number four: four horsemen, four horns, and four blacksmiths.
Zechariah is speaking to a desperate people. He has the tall task of redefining Yahwism for a people stripped of their independence. The expectation of the postexilic community was that after their miraculous return from exile, there would be a domino effect of blessing. They would rebuild the Temple, restore the Davidic dynasty, and all nations would recognize the superiority of Yahweh. But why is God delaying?
Zechariah’s eight visions all point to the restoration of Judah. The prophet is trying to tamp down the people’s negative perspectives. If they repent and return to God, they have permission to hope in their future. Yahweh has not and will not abandon them. Their hardships are only temporary. Judgement is coming for the nations responsible for Judah’s downfall. Those nations might seem at peace for the present, but that does not mean God is giving them a pass.
For next week, read chapter three for Zechariah’s third night vision. Thank you for listening and please continue to participate in this Bible Reading Challenge. For all of the Biblical references each week, please see the show transcript on our blog or by signing up for our emails at www.thejerusalemconnection.us/
I don’t say all the references in the podcast but they are all in the transcript.
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Shabbat Shalom