The Prophet and his Message. 

        Zechariah was the grandson of Iddo (1:1), a priest who returned from Babylonia with Zerubbabel (Neh. 12 : 4, cf. 12:16). The non-mention of his father Berechiah in Neh. 12:16; Ezra 5:1; 6:14 suggests that he may have died young. Nothing more is known or can be inferred from his prophecies about Zechariah, except that he was evidently a student of his prophetic predecessors. The suggestion on the basis of 2:4 that he was young depends on what is almost certainly a false interpretation.

        Chs. 1-8 present many difficulties in interpretation mainly because of the apocalyptic visions they contain (see p. 115) in which the prophet’s own time and the final crisis of the Day of the Lord tend to become blended.

            Chs. 9-14 are also apocalyptic, but in the general style of the older apocalyptic passages. The background and some­times even the foreground are vague, and exact interpretation is at times impossible. The difficulty is increased by the chapters consisting of a considerable number of non-connected shorter prophecies bound together merely by an inner spiritual link.

        Just as in Ezek. 40-48 God does not appear, and in the visions He does not speak directly to Zechariah. His place is taken by that mysterious figure from the earlier books of the Old Testament, the Angel of Jehovah. In numerous passages the angel of Jehovah means no more than the angel, any angel, already introduced. In such cases the context makes it clear, and this is true of the only passage where the term is used of a man (Mal. 2:7, q.v.); for Hag. 1:13 see p. 120f. But in other passages the context demands that the Angel of Jehovah should be an exalted and unique figure. Davidson defines Him excellently, “The Angel of the Lord is Jehovah present in definite time and particular place” (The Theology of the Old Testament, p. 297f.). The tra­ditional Christian interpretation of  the Angel of Jehovah as the preincarnate Son is, we believe, correct, but this is based on general analogies rather than on any definite Scriptural proof. The use of the term in Zechariah stresses that though God is transcendent, far above His creation, yet He finds means of keeping in touch with His own people, and that personally and not through some mere angelic intermediary.

        In the former section of the book the transcendent power of God is particularly stressed by the constant use of Jehovah of hosts (Jehovah Zeba’oth). In these eight chapters, if we omit a couple of cases where Jehovah means the Angel of Jehovah, we have Jehovah of hosts used 48 times, Jehovah only 33. This is unique in the Old Testament, the nearest comparable case being Haggai ( — there is nothing comparable in chs. 9-14, where the figures are 8 and 39, surely a very strong argument against authorship by Zechariah of these chapters).

        Whether the name Jehovah of hosts may have meant merely Jehovah of the armies of Israel, when we first find it used at the end of the period of the Judges (cf. ISam. 1:3), we cannot know for certain, though we doubt it. In the mouth of the great prophets the hosts are the hosts of heaven, and that is the meaning for Zechariah too. With him it has an even deeper meaning, for in exile the Jews had become familiar with the Babylonian worship of the heavenly bodies and later with the new Iranian teaching of Zoroaster with its concept of hosts of warring angels. Zechariah affirms that Jehovah is the God of whatever powers and hosts there may be. The LXX has understood his meaning very well. Normally it simply transliterates Zeba’oth as Sebaoth, but in Zechariah it renders Pantokrator, All-Sovereign.

        Though the object of the first eight chapters is to encourage the builders of the Temple in their difficulties, the message is shot through with that deep moral earnestness that is never far distant from the true prophets; it also looks forward all the time to the Day of the Lord.

The Call to Repentance (1:1-6).

        This opening section strikes the underlying assumption behind all the future encouragement. God mil bless, but only a people that have returned to Him and that do His will. Zechariah reinforces his appeal by recalling the past.