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Zechariah 1. A Call to Repentance. ( Jeremiah 3:11–25; Hosea 14:1–3) 1 In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, saying: 2 “The LORD was very angry with your fathers. 3 So tell the people that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Return to Me ...
Jun 15, 2004 · 1. Zechariah was a Levite who was born in Babylon (Neh 12:1, 16) 2. He was the son of Berekiah and the grandson of Iddo the priest ( Zech 1:1; cf. 12:4, 16; Ezra 5:1; 6:14 ), therefore, although the name was a common one, it is possible that he was a priest 2. 3. Zechariah was a prophet ( Zech 1:1) 4.
Zechariah, a young man, especially when compared to his contemporary Haggai, came alongside the older prophet to deliver messages from the Lord to the Jewish remnant recently returned from Babylon.
Like Jeremiah ( 1:1) and Ezekiel ( 1:3 ), Zechariah was not only a prophet ( 1:1) but also a member of a priestly family. He was born in Babylonia and was among those who returned to Judah in 538/537 b.c. under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua (his grandfather Iddo is named among the returnees in Ne 12:4 ).
Most modern scholars believe the Book of Zechariah was written by at least two different people. Zechariah 1–8, sometimes referred to as First Zechariah, was written in the 6th century BC and contains oracles from the historical prophet Zechariah, who lived in the Achaemenid Empire during the kingdom of Darius the Great.
Author and Date. Zechariah was a prophet and a priest. He began his ministry in 520 B.C., shortly after Haggai had begun his prophetic work. Background. Nearly 20 years after returning from the Babylonian exile in the time of Cyrus (538 B.C. ), God’s people were discouraged.
The most striking feature of First Zechariah is a series of visions in which the prophet describes the centrality of Jerusalem, its Temple, and its leaders, who function both in the politics of the region and of the Persian empire and in God’s universal rule. These visions clearly relate to the Temple restoration begun in 520 B.C.
