Zechariah 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Where Chagai the Prophet was all about "action now", a call that was rather more political than it was religious, Zechar-Yah the Seer is about poetic metaphors and visions of a messianic world.
His book, which follows Chagai's as number 11 of the Twelve (Minor) Prophets, dates from precisely the same period as Chagai's, and probably only appears after Chagai because the latter's call to action was fulfilled at the time, where Zechar-Yah's is, shall we say, timeless. It opens "In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius", which was precisely one month after Chagai's first call to action, and we can date the year equally precisely, because we know from Persian records that Darius came to the throne in 521 BCE - a full list of the Medean rulers can be found in my introduction to the Book of Chagai.
Chagai needed only four public statements, spread across two chapters of the book that he compiled with his own hand, and delivered in paper form, to achieve his goal of getting the building of the Temple not just resumed but completed. Zechar-Yah's book has fourteen chapters, though the likelihood is that he only wrote, if he did write, or "spoke spontaneously" and one of his followers wrote down, the first eight. Those followers became a sect or cult, or maybe an officially approved Guild, and the remaining six chapters were attempts by those followers to explain, or simply elaborate, the eschatology of their Master.
That eschatology is rich in poetry, but also thoroughly conventional in its visionary images - almost everything in Zechar-Yah can be found in the books of the Major Prophets, Yesha-Yah (Isaiah), Yirme-Yah (Jeremiah) and Yechezke-El (Ezekiel).
He begins in the most conventional of all Prophetic modes, by calling for repentance (1:1 -1:6) - a contrast with Chagai, who infers a need for repentance, but only ever calls for better behaviour, which is the affirmative side, the actional side, of the same coin.
The eight visions are the substance of the remainder of chapter 1, until verse 15 of chapter 6, as follows:
a) Four horsemen who have patrolled the Earth since the beginning of time, to ensure that it is at rest.
b) Four horns (probably Mitsrayim, Ashur, Bavel and either the Pelishtim or Peras), being symbols of the four nations that at some time conquered Yisra-El and/or Yehudah), all of which are now in the divine strategic plan for imminent destruction.
c) A man with a measuring line, but who will be prohibited from measuring Yeru-Shala'im, because it is the dwelling-place of YHVH.
d) Yehoshu'a ben Yeho-Tsadak the High Priest, in attendance at the heavenly court, facing prosecution from that celebrity lawyer ha-Satan (the celestial adversary - see my notes to Psalm 109:6); Yehoshu'a is eventually acquitted and resumes his duties.
e) A golden lampstand and an olive tree, symbols of the shared authority of (spiritual) Yehoshu'a and (secular) Zeru-Bavel. For the former, which is really the Menorah, cf Exodus 25:31. For the latter, but you will only get a single branch and not the full tree, cf Genesis 8:11; more useful to see my note to Chagai 2:19, and then connect it with g) below - olive oil was the perfume of preference for the anointing of the Mashiyach.
f) A flying scroll (is this the source of all those flying figures in Chagall's paintings?), and a "woman of wickedness", both here to symbolise the expiation of past sin (the call for repentance assumed therefore to have been succesful).
g) Four chariots, Zechar-Yah's vision ending exactly where Chagai's did, in the false confidence that Zeru-Bavel will soon revive the Messianic epoch.
The last two chapters of the "authentic" Zechar-Yah deal with fasting - very Yesha-Yahu, though it is in the Book of Ezra that we find it being undertaken - and the restoration of Yeru-Shala'im.
Of Chagai's life we know absolutely nothing beyond the dates of his book, and his residence in Yeru-Shala'im, and nothing inside the texts yields even a hint of more. Dates and dwelling-place are the same for Zechar-Yah, though tradition claims that he was one of the exiles who returned to Yeru-Shala'im from Babylon with Zeru-Bavel, somewhere in the 530s BCE.
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