The Prophet and His Time

The Book of Zechariah opens on a precise date: “In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, son of Berechiah, grandson of Iddo, the prophet.” Zechariah 1:1. That year is 520 before Jesus Christ, and it situates the whole book. The people have been back from the exile of Babylon for some twenty years, but the work for which they returned, the rebuilding of the Temple, is at a standstill. It is in this precise moment that Zechariah receives the word, and his very name already carries the heart of his message: in Hebrew, Zekaryah (זְכַרְיָה) means “the Lord remembers.” To a people who think themselves forgotten on the ruins of their city, the prophet first brings a name that says God has forgotten nothing.

The return from exile

To understand Zechariah, one must go back to the fall of Jerusalem. In 587 before Jesus Christ, the armies of Babylon had taken the city, destroyed the Temple of Solomon and deported the people. The exile lasted nearly fifty years. Then the empire of Babylon fell in its turn before the Persians, and their king Cyrus authorized the exiles to return and rebuild the house of God: “In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, to accomplish the word of the Lord which he had spoken through the mouth of Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, who made this proclamation throughout his kingdom.” Ezra 1:1. The first to return raised the altar again and laid the foundations of the new Temple: “When the workers laid the foundations of the temple of the Lord, the priests were stationed in their vestments, with trumpets, and the Levites to praise the Lord.” Ezra 3:10. But the momentum broke. The opposition of the neighbouring peoples and discouragement halted the work, and it remained interrupted for years: “Then the work of the house of God at Jerusalem ceased, and it was interrupted until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia.” Ezra 4:24. The people had settled into their own houses, and the house of God lay in ruins.

Haggai and Zechariah

It is to break this standstill that God raises up two prophets in the same year. Haggai speaks first, two months before Zechariah, and addresses the two leaders of the returned people, the governor Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua: “In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through Haggai, the prophet, to Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest.” Haggai 1:1. His preaching at once wakes the spirit of the leaders and the people, that is, God revives in them the inner strength, the will and the ardour to set to work again: “The Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the spirit of Joshua, and the spirit of all the rest of the people; and they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God.” Haggai 1:14. Zechariah then comes to join his voice to Haggai’s, to sustain and carry this work over time. The Book of Ezra names the two together as the prophets of the rebuilding: “The prophets Haggai and Zechariah prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel.” Ezra 5:1. Where Haggai presses them to build at once, Zechariah lifts the gaze and shows what this Temple means: the presence of God returning, the purification of the people, and the awaiting of a figure still to come.

“Return to me”

Zechariah’s first oracle is not a call to take up the tools again, but a call to return to God: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Return to me, and I will return to you.” Zechariah 1:3. The word sets a reciprocity, and the order of the two movements matters. God’s return answers the return of the heart: it is by returning to him that the people find him present. To rebuild stones is not enough if the heart stays far off, and the house will truly be the house of God only if the people return to him. To give weight to this call, Zechariah sets before the people the example of their fathers, who had not listened to the prophets before the exile: “Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets preached, saying: Turn now from your evil ways; and who did not listen or pay attention to me.” Zechariah 1:4. Then he asks two questions that dig deep: “Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, could they live forever?” Zechariah 1:5. The fathers are dead, the prophets are dead, but the word held firm: it overtook them, and they came at last to recognize that God had acted as he had said. The lesson is clear for the living: the word of God always reaches its goal, and it is better to be converted to it now than to wait, like the fathers, to verify it in disaster.

The two parts of the book

The book unfolds in two clearly distinct movements. The first part, chapters 1 to 8, is anchored in the present of the building site. It is carried by eight night visions that the angel explains to the prophet, by the oracles on the high priest Joshua and the figure of the Branch, and by the promises of the restoration of Jerusalem; its oracles are dated and turned toward the rebuilding under way. The second part, chapters 9 to 14, changes register. It bears no more dates and looks far ahead: two great oracles announce the humble king who comes, the rejected shepherd, the pierced one toward whom the people will lift their eyes, and the Day when the Lord will be king over all the earth. What unites the two parts is the awaiting: the first raises the Temple of stone, the second announces the one who will come to fulfil it. The work of the prophets was not in vain, for the Temple was finished a few years later: “This house was completed on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.” Ezra 6:15. But the Book of Zechariah already looks further than these walls, toward the one they prepare.