Zechariah

Richard D. Phillips

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781596384644
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Zechariah called the people to a return to the Lord. A book with an eschatological perspective of special value to Christians today who labor for revival.

PART 1

The Eight Night Visions

1

RETURN TO ME

Zechariah 1:1–6

The LORD was very angry with your fathers. Therefore say to them, “Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts.”

(Zech. 1:2–3)

One of the great questions of life is “How do we start again?” It is a question every sinner faces at one time or another. Broken marriages face the question, as do broken friendships and broken dreams. It was a question pressing hard upon the people of Judah in the time of the postexilic prophet Zechariah, who was charged with speaking for God to a people trying to start over again. Theirs was a broken relationship with God, a broken covenant. Having returned from bondage in far-off Babylon, their generation was asking, “How do we start again?”

The opening passage of this book clues us into the approach this prophet takes. Beginning in verse 2 of chapter 1, Zechariah points the people to the Lord. Three times in two verses he confronts them with the name “the Lord Almighty.” In order to deal with the past, and therefore with the present and the future, he says, the people would have to turn to God. That is always true. The power to heal what is broken, to start again what is ended, and to raise up what is cast down is always and only found with the Lord. “How do we get right with God, and what will it mean to us if we do?” That is where Zechariah begins, and that was the issue facing those who had come back to the Lord to start over again.

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF ZECHARIAH

We should begin our study of Zechariah by specifying the approaches that will enable us to interpret this book of Scripture rightly. First, we will approach Zechariah historically. We should always be historical in our study of Scripture, since the books of the Bible were given by God through actual men in the context of real circumstances and settings. As a result, our study of Zechariah will increase our knowledge of Old Testament history. We will become familiar with important figures unknown to many Christians: Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah; Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel of the house of David and ancestor to our Lord Jesus; the high priest Joshua, of the line of Zadok; as well as Zechariah and his prophetic colleague Haggai.

Second, we will consider this book doctrinally. While this and every book of Scripture comes to us out of a historical setting, it also is part of the whole Bible given by God for our instruction in salvation. The book of Zechariah has a great many truths to set before us, doctrines of our faith that were at a particular stage of development in the progress of God’s redemptive work. We want to take stock of its teaching both in light of how it was then presented and how the various subjects would ultimately be rounded out in the completed canon of Scripture.

Third—and this is a strong emphasis in the book of Zechariah—we will approach this material christologically. We will trace the line of thought as it leads to Jesus Christ, the Messiah anticipated by the Old Testament, and the Savior who fulfills its promises and answers its questions. So frequent and dramatic are the pointers to Christ in Zechariah that the book might be dubbed The Gospel according to Zechariah. It is sometimes said that the gospel is in the Old Testament concealed and in the New Testament revealed. When we get to the book of Zechariah, Christ is barely concealed but often blatantly revealed to the eyes of those trained by the later revelations of the New Testament.

Fourth, we will approach this book from a practical perspective, applying its message to our own setting and lives so as to derive its full benefit. Though we are separated by time and circumstances from the prophet and his generation, the issues of faith and godliness have not ultimately changed. Everything God revealed in this book for individuals and for Israel as a whole finds a contemporary application for Christians and the church.

THE HISTORICAL SETTING OF ZECHARIAH

First, let us consider the historical setting from which this book of Scripture comes to us. A good place to start is in the year 586 BC, when the Babylonian conqueror Nebuchadnezzar seized and destroyed the Israelite capital, Jerusalem. This was an event long portended in the prophetic writings, most nearly by the prophet Jeremiah, whose title,“the weeping prophet,” was earned from his participation in those horrible events. At the beginning of his prophecy, Jeremiah explained all that was going to take place, and why:

The LORD said to me, “Out of the north disaster shall be let loose upon all the inhabitants of the land. For behold, I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, declares the LORD, and they shall come, and every one shall set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its walls all around and against all the cities of Judah. And I will declare my judgments against them, for all their evil in forsaking me. They have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands.” (Jer. 1:14–16)

Despite warning after warning, from prophet after prophet, the day finally came when the Lord brought judgment upon his people for their sins, and especially the sin of idolatry to which they were so addicted. At the end, the situation was as described in Jeremiah’s brokenhearted book of Lamentations: “How lonely sits the city that was full of people! . . . The LORD has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe” (Lam. 1:1, 5).

Jerusalem lay in ruins, empty, her walls torn down, and her buildings scorched with fire. Thus concluded a key stage in the history of God’s people, one brilliantly begun in the exodus, gloriously advanced under King David, but brought to ruin by the sins of his hardhearted people. Despite their status as God’s people, despite God’s presence in their midst, despite the institutions of the theocracy, the temple and the royal palace, and despite the holy hill of Zion where Israel worshiped, even the Israelites were not spared the judgment for their sins. The fall of Jerusalem stands as a lasting testimony to the folly of presumption and the wages of sin.

The Israelites went into exile, to weep by the waters of Babylon while the Promised Land was inhabited by other people (Ps. 137:1). Yet God promised grace to his people in their sorrow. Through Jeremiah he said:

For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you. (Jer. 29:10–14)¹

Other prophecies of hope came from the latter chapters of Isaiah, written about two hundred years beforehand. So specific were Isaiah’s predictions that he even named the ruler who would restore the fortunes of Israel: “I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness: I will make all his ways straight. He will rebuild my city and set my exiles free” (Isa. 45:13 NIV).

Liberal critics of Scripture use this prediction to claim a postexilic dating for the latter chapters of Isaiah, presupposing that actual foretelling is impossible. But God’s expressed purpose was to give confidence to his people at a time when many would have wondered about his ability to save. When this specific prediction was fulfilled, it was a staggering proof of God’s sovereignty. “I am God,” he insisted, “and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose’ ” (Isa. 46:9–10).

Cyrus the Great was the Medo-Persian emperor who overthrew Babylon and gave the orders for the Israelites to return to their land (see Ezra 1:1–4). Accordingly, in 538 BC, forty-eight years after the fall of Jerusalem, Sheshbazzar received the temple articles from Cyrus and led the return of the first party to the ruins of Jerusalem. It was a moment of epochal significance and great drama.

Sheshbazzar, the son of Jehoiachin, the last legitimate king of Judah before and during the exile, would have been fairly aged by this time. We do not read a great deal about him in Scripture, except to learn that he succeeded in laying the foundation for a rebuilt temple on Mount Zion (Ezra 5:16).

The second chapter of Ezra, which along with Nehemiah is the main historical record of this period, tells us that the initial party returning to Jerusalem consisted of 42,360 Israelites. Although Cyrus had placed Sheshbazzar in command, it seems clear that from the start the acting leader was the younger and presumably more able Zerubbabel, the son of Sheshbazzar’s older brother Shealtiel, along with Joshua the high priest. These two represented the kingly and priestly lines going back to David and Zadok his faithful priest.

One of this multitude was Zechariah, who must have been a young man or boy at the time of the return. He is named in verse 1 as son of Berechiah, and grandson of Iddo. In the record of Nehemiah 12, Zechariah is listed as the head of the house of Iddo, so many commentators reasonably suggest that Zechariah’s father must have died young, leaving him as the principal heir of Iddo’s house. His was a priestly family, something Zechariah held in common with both the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

The New Testament provides one additional piece of biographical information having to do with Zechariah’s death. In Matthew 23, as Jesus was speaking his woes upon the Pharisees and upon Jerusalem, he recounted the people’s record of killing the prophets. “On you,” he cried, “may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (v. 35). Liberal commentators consider this an error in the Bible, since 2 Chronicles 24:20–22 records a different Zechariah being slain in the temple courtyard, long before the time of our prophet. This assumes that there could not have been two different prophets of this name (and Zechariah is a fairly common name in Scripture) so that Jesus was therefore in error. Rather than presupposing Jesus’ fallibility, we do better to accept his word and conclude that our Zechariah, the postexilic prophet, had his own life ended at the hands of the people in the very temple God used him so mightily to see to completion. As such he was the last of the prophets slain in the Old Testament, a line started outside the gates of the Garden with the murder of Abel by his brother Cain.

There would be sixteen years between Israel’s initial return with the laying of the temple’s foundation in 536 BC and the beginning of Zechariah’s ministry. His prophecy, we are told, begins “in the eighth month, in the second year of Darius” (1:1)—that is, in the year 520 BC. Darius was a general who assumed the Persian throne after a plot resulted in the apparent suicide of Cambyses, the son and successor of Cyrus, who had been away effecting his conquest of Egypt. By this time a dispirited restoration community in Jerusalem had become bogged down both spiritually and materially. One commentator explains:

If the returned exiles expected the dawn of Yahweh’s universal reign, with Jews and Gentiles flocking to Jerusalem, their hopes soon faded. Jews did not leave the population centers of [Babylonia] in vast numbers, and interference from the longtime inhabitants of the land frustrated the building efforts, bringing the work on the temple to a halt.²

Two months before Zechariah’s first vision from God, the prophet Haggai had broken the silence and called the people into action: “Go up to the hills,” he cried, “and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD” (Hag. 1:8). While Haggai focused the people on building the temple for the Lord, God came to Zechariah and focused him on rebuilding the people and their faith.

RETURN TO ME!

The opening lines of Zechariah highlight a doctrinal theme that will be important throughout the book: repentance. Zechariah explains the situation: “The LORD was very angry with your fathers. Therefore say to them, Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts” (Zech. 1:2–3). We are reminded here of the Lord Jesus’ teaching as he started his gospel ministry five hundred years after the prophet: “Repent,” Jesus cried, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17).

There are at least four points to be made about repentance from this passage. First is the need for repentance. This need is established by the fact that God judges all sin. The problem with the Israelites’ forefathers was that they doubted God’s judgment and therefore denied the need for their own repentance. Since they were God’s chosen people, and since they possessed such divinely ordained institutions as the temple, they thought God would never punish them. This is why they ignored and often persecuted the prophets God sent to them. The fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity were God’s telling response to their hardness of heart in refusing to repent. Zechariah’s generation asked, “How do we start again, when our relationship with God is damaged by sin?” This is a question many people ask today. The answer is that we begin with repentance.

Zechariah pressed the need for repentance upon his own generation by recalling their nation’s recent history. He warned,“Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out,‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the LORD” (Zech. 1:4). Then he asked leading questions designed to make his point: “Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?” (Zech. 1:5). The answer was obvious as they stood amidst the ruins of the once magnificent city. Their fathers had gone into slavery and exile, and even the prophets were gone. Finally, Zechariah drove home the reality of God’s prophetic Word: “But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers?” (Zech. 1:6).

Though these events were in the past, the Word of the Lord had prevailed and come forward into the present. As Isaiah had said, “All flesh is grass. . . . The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:6–8). The one thing that could never fail was God’s Word, and Zechariah was bringing it forward into this new generation. Zechariah’s name means “the Lord remembers”; on the one hand God remembered his people, but on the other he remembered his words and decrees, which must always be reckoned with, then as now.

Verse 1 says, “The word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah.” If any one message characterized the prophetic mission—any one “word of the LORD”—it was this call to repentance. Although the prophets of old were gone, God had raised up a new prophet to perform the same task and bring the same message. The forefathers had realized this in exile, once it was too late, repenting and saying, “As the LORD of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us” (Zech. 1:6). A clear expression of repentant prayer among at least some of the exiles is found in Daniel 9, where that prophet-in-exile expounded upon these very words. His and others’ willingness to repent left this later gene...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Preface
• Part 1: The Eight Night Visions
• Part 2: The Delegation from Bethel
• Part 3: The Oracles of Zechariah
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Subjects and Names