The Book Of Zechariah

Who is the Author?

The author of this prophetic book is Zechariah. The name Zechariah means one whom Jehovah remembers. It was a common name, and four people of the same name are found in the Old Testament. Like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Zechariah was a priest as well as a prophet, which sets him up for the sacerdotal character of some of his prophecies (Zec 6:13). He is called “the son of Berechiah the son of Iddo” in 1:1, but simply “the son of Iddo” in Ezra 5:1 and 6:14. It’s likely that his father died when he was young, and thus, as sometimes occurs in Jewish genealogies, he is called “the son of Iddo,” his grandfather. Iddo was one of the priests who returned to Zerubbabel and Joshua from Babylon (Ne 12:4).1 Zechariah was a colleague of the prophet Haggai, a worker together with him in encouraging the building of the second temple (Ezra 5:1); two are better than one. Zechariah began to prophesy sometime after Haggai. But he continued longer, soared higher in visions and revelations, wrote more, and prophesied more particularly concerning Christ.2 Zechariah was also a contemporary Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest (Ezra 5:1–2; Zech. 3:1; 4:6;6:11). Zechariah returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, along with almost 50,000 other Jewish exiles. He was probably a relatively young man at the beginning of his prophetic ministry (cf. 2:4),while Haggai might have been considerably older.3 Haggai’s focus was on the rebuilding of the temple and the reinstitution of the sacrificial system, and Zechariah’s was on the people’s spiritual transformation.4