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Biblical scholars divide Zechariah into three units: the vision sequence in Zechariah 1-6; the prophet’s answer to the Bethel delegation in Zechariah 7-8; and eschatological oracles in Zechariah 9-14. The oracles in Zechariah’s first eight chapters differ from the last six because of a shift in focus and writing style. Zechariah’s focus in the first eight chapters is on the rebuilding of the temple and the return of the exiles. The last six chapters look forward to future blessings, including Messianic prophecies that apply to the New Testament and Christ.
The first eight chapters name Zechariah’s historical contemporaries: Joshua, Zerubbabel, the exiles with their offerings, and the Bethel delegation. However, in Zechariah 9-14, the leadership is unnamed. Instead, these prophecies portray the leaders as either good or corrupt shepherds.
Second Zechariah
The sudden shift in Zechariah 9 leads many scholars to theorize that the book of Zechariah had multiple authors and two different dates of composition. According to this view, Zechariah, the historic postexilic prophet, may have written the first eight chapters, and someone else, perhaps one of his followers, may have added the last oracles. Some scholars refer to the proposed author of Zechariah 9-14 as Second Zechariah.
Three times in the vision sequence, the prophet uses the date and messenger formula in his superscriptions (1:1, 7; 7:1), which follow this pattern: “In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah” (1:1). In Second Zechariah, the writer omits the date and the messenger formula and instead introduces the oracles with the simple title “an oracle: the word of the Lord” (9:1, 12:1).
The historical figure Zechariah is not present in the last six chapters of the narrative. Whereas in the first eight chapters, Zechariah is an active participant in the visions, sign-act, and community appeal, the last six chapters do not mention Zechariah by name at any point.
The possibility of two authors does not discredit Zechariah, especially since the book does not require single authorship to be inspired. What is important is the truth of the teaching, not how many authors contributed. However, I am not yet convinced of the argument for multiple authors of the prophetic book. I believe ancient writers were more capable of changing their styles and themes than scholars give them credit for. If you were to dig up an article that I wrote 10 years ago, you would notice a difference in my style, language, and thought patterns. The most crucial aspect of Zechariah is its theological unity.
Just as scholars can list differences between the first and second parts of Zechariah, they can also make a thorough list of similarities. The last unit of the book may portray the natural progression of a prophet who received divine downloads for many years. In his final oracles, he was thinking on a much higher level. As the situation changed, his message changed. The failures of humanity disappointed him, while the faithfulness of God gave him new hope.
Second Zechariah begins with an oracle of judgment against Israel’s neighboring enemies and a promise of deliverance for Judah (9:1-8). By now in our study, you are probably accustomed to the prophet’s judgment speeches against Gentile nations: Amos gave us the Oracles Against the Nations (1:2-2:16), Zephaniah predicted the ruin of Philistia (2:4-7), and Habakkuk prayed for God’s vengeance on Judah’s enemies (3:1-19).
The sequence of collapse for the nations who are targeted in Zechariah’s prophetic oracle was intentional and not random. Yahweh, as a divine warrior, is depicted marching from Damascus in the north, down through Philistia on the coastal plain, and south to Jerusalem. Over the centuries, Jerusalem’s enemies had always attacked from the north. Yahweh’s military procession had taken the same course as that of the enemy attackers. The nations he had driven into submission—the Arameans, Phoenicians, and Philistines—were enduring enemies of Israel and Judah.
God first conquered Damascus. The Aramean capital (9:1) was a bustling commercial center at this time. Hamath is another Aramean city that continued into the Persian Empire. When the Bible speaks of the Phoenician superpowers, Tyre and Sidon, it is almost always with admiration for their accomplishments (Ezek. 27-28). Zechariah was predicting their fiery destruction and collapse into the sea. Their wisdom had been admired by other nations, and they had thought their wealth was unlimited. As nations fell one after another like dominoes, the people of Philistia began to fear when the battle approached their land.
The prophet describes the Philistines, who were eating bloody animal sacrifices to their pagan gods. Because the Israelites were accustomed to draining the blood of their sacrifices, they found the Philistine practice revolting. God was removing the forbidden meat from their mouth, ending the Philistines’ pagan rituals. The prophet likened the Philistines of Ekron to the Jebusites (9:7). He was alluding to the historical precedent of King David, who had conquered the Jebusite city of Jerusalem and then incorporated the Jebusites into his new kingdom. Zechariah’s prediction of the Philistines’ conversion was consistent with his recurring theme of Gentiles submitting to Yahweh.
One at a time, Yahweh was breaking each neighboring enemy and establishing his sovereignty and rule over the land. Why was Zechariah focused on Israel’s already weakened neighbors instead of on the Persian Empire or Egypt? The prophecy depicted the expansion of Israel’s borders to the territory once promised to Abraham (Gen. 15:18). Never in Israel’s history has she occupied the entirety of the land from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates River. Moses had hoped that an expanded Israel would be the people’s reward if they were faithful to the covenant (Deut. 19:8-9). Zechariah prophesied that in the messianic kingdom, Israel’s borders would be greater than during the time of David or Solomon. This would happen as a result of their defeating the Arameans, the Phoenicians, and the Philistines, whose land they would claim and control.
Alexander the Great
For every prophetic description of a military campaign, biblical enthusiasts try to pinpoint a historical event corresponding to the prophecy. The Assyrian and Babylonian attacks are easily identified in preexilic prophetic writings. However, Zechariah was writing after the exile. The next big empire shift was still almost two centuries away, when the army of Alexander the Great would defeat the Persian Empire and conquer much of the known world.
There are noticeable similarities between the military campaign described in Zechariah and Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Mediterranean coast in 332 BCE. For example, Alexander’s forces burned down Tyre, which Zechariah predicted would be “devoured by fire” (9:4). Ashkelon and Ekron surrendered to the Macedonians without a fight, and event to which Zechariah alluded when he proclaimed that they “shall see it and be afraid” (9:5). Gaza was a hilltop fortress that withstood Alexander’s siege for five months before collapsing. Zechariah may have been referencing this siege when he wrote, Gaza would “writhe in anguish” (9:5).
Israel would eliminate its historic enemies from the Holy Land and then emerge unharmed from the cascade of destruction. God promised, “I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that no one shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again overrun them” (9:8).
According to Josephus, Alexander the Great had a dream early in his career, in which a man in white had encouraged him to fight the Persian Empire. When Alexander saw Jerusalem’s High Priest Jaddua in his white linen vestments, he recognized him as the man in the dream. As a result, he adopted a favorable position toward Jerusalem. While in the company of the priests, he entered the holy city peacefully and sacrificed to Israel’s God.
The correlation between Zechariah’s prophecy and Alexander’s conquests is intriguing, but the prophecy is too ambiguous to establish a conclusive link between the oracle and a historical event. Even if the human agent behind all the destruction was Greece, the prophet deliberately gave the credit to God and not to Alexander.
There is one strange anachronistic reference to Greece: “I will arouse your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece” (9:13). Greece was not a superpower during Zechariah’s era and held no importance to the people of Jerusalem other than in commerce. Either Second Zechariah should be dated later than the first eight chapters, or Zechariah was doing the supernatural work of a predictive prophet, foretelling the day when Greece and Jerusalem would come to blows during the time of the Maccabees. The reference to Greece is perplexing but not troubling.
King riding on a donkey
Once Yahweh had subdued the threat from Israel’s neighbors, a messianic king would peacefully emerge. God was poetically calling on his people to rejoice at the news: “See, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (9:9). This king would choose to ride a donkey instead of a war horse or chariot. The action is symbolic of the universal peace that would be launched with his reign and resulting from Yahweh’s militaristic march south to Jerusalem.
For Christians, this king-on-a-donkey passage is highly significant. Both Matthew and John reference Zechariah’s messianic prophecy in their recordings of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:5; John 12:14-15). From the gospel accounts, it is clear that Jesus was intentionally invoking Zechariah’s prophecy. He told two of his disciples to bring him a donkey and a colt, “to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet” (Matt. 21:4). He was giving his followers the interpretation of Zechariah’s vision through his own actions.
In Zechariah, the description of the messianic king on a donkey stressed that he was simultaneously victorious and humble. In Matthew, Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem was just that. Even if the first oracle pertains to Alexander the Great’s conquest, Alexander could not possibly be the humble, righteous, messianic king who ruled in peace. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, the gospel records that a crowd gathered, laid branches on the road for his processional, and shouted, “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Matt. 21:6). Their familiarity with messianic prophecies aided in their understanding. There is something tender about this scene, in which Jesus’s closest followers are announcing his identity as Messiah, despite how the events over the next week would unfold. His followers had hoped the Messiah would deliver them from Roman oppression, but a week after Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, the Romans crucified him on a cross.
Both Matthew and John quoted Zechariah’s verse of the messiah on a donkey, but they both left out the next verse, in which the messianic king cuts off from his people—both Judah and Ephraim—their reliance on war weapons: chariots, war horses, and battle bows. He rids the earth of unnecessary bloodshed and establishes universal peace. Zechariah prophesied, “his dominion shall be from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth” (9:10).
Zechariah’s audience would not have heard this messianic prophecy the same way that Christians read it today through the lens of the New Testament. The restoration process would require the return of the exiles and the completion of the temple, but they were desperately awaiting the restoration of the Davidic royal line.
According to Christian eschatology, Jesus fulfilled the first part of Zechariah’s prophecy with his entry into Jerusalem and the announcement of his Messiahship. He did not take the throne or defeat the Roman oppressor at his first coming. Jesus will accomplish the second stage of this prophecy at his second coming. He will establish his rule over a new heaven and earth. In the meantime, the global spread of the news of Jesus’s saving grace has brought spiritual peace to millions who wouldn’t have found it otherwise. The Jewish Messiah has also brought about the submission of vast numbers of Gentiles to the God of Abraham. Universal peace awaits the coming of the kingdom.
Rescue from the pit
In the last section, Zechariah returns to his deliverance oracles. He metaphorically refers to the Babylonian captivity as “the waterless pit” from which he would set the prisoners free (9:11). This is the same terminology used to refer to the waterless pit into which Joseph’s brothers threw him (Gen. 37:24). Zechariah might have intended to connect the story of the remnant to Joseph’s story. Although Joseph had been helpless at the hands of his brothers and his Egyptian captors, God’s constant intervention had allowed Joseph to survive captivity and become his people’s salvation.
Likewise, those who had survived the Babylonian captivity held the keys to Israel’s salvation. Without them, the Jewish people likely would have gone extinct, but Yahweh reminded them that “because of the blood of my covenant,” he would rescue them from the pit (9:11). At Sinai, God had inaugurated the covenant with Moses with a sacrifice, and God has stayed true to his promises made at Sinai (Ex. 24:1-8). If the Jews had disappeared from history, the Jewish Messiah would not have been able to save the world from their spiritual exile from Yahweh.
Zechariah declared, “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double” (9:12). Like Joseph, the exiles were once actual prisoners of a foreign nation. At that time, despair had replaced hope, but one aspect of being God’s people included accepting the discipline and waiting for deliverance. They were held captive by hope.
The chapter ends with Yahweh back on the offensive, taking control of hostile nations but shielding Jerusalem from the threats. The victory would belong only to Yahweh, the storm-riding and lightning-throwing warrior. He would be like a cosmic banner above them during battle. This section puts all of God’s might on display (9:14). The object of his protection was “the flock of his people” (9:16). They were the “jewels of a crown” (9:17).