_CHAPTERS IX.—XIV. OF “ZECHARIAH”_
We saw that the first eight chapters of the Book of Zechariah were,
with the exception of a few verses, from the prophet himself. No one
has ever doubted this. No one could doubt it: they are obviously
from the years of the building of the Temple, 520—516 B.C. They hang
together with a consistency exhibited by few other groups of chapters
in the Old Testament.
But when we pass into chap. ix. we find ourselves in circumstances and
an atmosphere altogether different. Israel is upon a new situation of
history, and the words addressed to her breathe another spirit. There
is not the faintest allusion to the building of the Temple—the subject
from which all the first eight chapters depend. There is not a single
certain reflection of the Persian period, under the shadow of which the
first eight chapters were all evidently written. We have names of
heathen powers mentioned, which not only do not occur in the first
eight chapters, but of which it is not possible to think that they had
any interest whatever for Israel between 520 and 516: Damascus,
Hadrach, Hamath, Assyria, Egypt and Greece. The peace, and the love of
peace, in which Zechariah wrote, has disappeared.[1279] Nearly
everything breathes of war actual or imminent. The heathen are spoken
of with a ferocity which finds few parallels in the Old Testament.
There is a revelling in their blood, of which the student of the
authentic prophecies of Zechariah will at once perceive that gentle
lover of peace could not have been capable. And one passage figures the
imminence of a thorough judgment upon Jerusalem, very different from
Zechariah’s outlook upon his people’s future from the eve of the
completion of the Temple. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of
the earliest efforts of Old Testament criticism should have been to
prove another author than Zechariah for chaps. ix.—xiv. of the book
called by his name.
The very first attempt of this kind was made so far back as 1632 by the
Cambridge theologian Joseph Mede,[1280] who was moved thereto by the
desire to vindicate the correctness of St. Matthew’s ascription[1281]
of “Zech.” xi. 13 to the prophet Jeremiah. Mede’s effort was developed
by other English exegetes. Hammond assigned chaps. x.—xii., Bishop
Kidder[1282] and William Whiston, the translator of Josephus, chaps.
ix.—xiv., to Jeremiah. Archbishop Newcome[1283] divided them, and
sought to prove that while chaps. ix.—xi. must have been written before
721, or a century earlier than Jeremiah, because of the heathen powers
they name, and the divisions between Judah and Israel, chaps. xii.—xiv.
reflect the imminence of the Fall of Jerusalem. In 1784 Flügge[1284]
offered independent proof that chaps. ix.—xiv. were by Jeremiah; and in
1814 Bertholdt[1285] suggested that chaps. ix.—xi. might be by
Zechariah the contemporary of Isaiah,[1286] and on that account
attached to the prophecies of his younger namesake. These opinions gave
the trend to the main volume of criticism, which, till fifteen years
ago, deemed “Zech.” ix.—xiv. to be pre-exilic. So Hitzig, who at first
took the whole to be from one hand, but afterwards placed xii.—xiv. by
a different author under Manasseh. So Ewald, Bleek, Kuenen (at first),
Samuel Davidson, Schrader, Duhm (in 1875), and more recently König and
Orelli, who assign chaps. ix.—xi. to the reign of Ahaz, but xii.—xiv.
to the eve of the Fall of Jerusalem, or even a little later.
Some critics, however, remained unmoved by the evidence offered for a
pre-exilic date. They pointed out in particular that the geographical
references were equally suitable to the centuries after the Exile.
Damascus, Hadrach and Hamath,[1287] though politically obsolete by 720,
entered history again with the campaigns of Alexander the Great in
332—331, and the establishment of the Seleucid kingdom in Northern
Syria.[1288] Egypt and Assyria[1289] were names used after the Exile
for the kingdom of the Ptolemies, and for those powers which still
threatened Israel from the north, or Assyrian quarter. Judah and Joseph
or Ephraim[1290] were names still used after the Exile to express the
whole of God’s Israel; and in chaps. ix.—xiv. they are presented, not
divided as before 721, but united. None of the chapters give a hint of
any king in Jerusalem; and all of them, while representing the great
Exile of Judah as already begun, show a certain dependence in style and
even in language upon Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah xl.—lxvi. Moreover
the language is post-exilic, sprinkled with Aramaisms and with other
words and phrases used only, or mainly, by Hebrew writers from Jeremiah
onwards.
But though many critics judged these grounds to be sufficient to
prove the post-exilic origin of “Zech.” ix.—xiv., they differed as
to the author and exact date of these chapters. Conservatives like
Hengstenberg,[1291] Delitzsch, Keil, Köhler and Pusey used the evidence
to prove the authorship of Zechariah himself after 516, and interpreted
the references to the Greek period as pure prediction. Pusey says[1292]
that chaps. ix.—xi. extend from the completion of the Temple and its
deliverance during the invasion of Alexander, and from the victories of
the Maccabees, to the rejection of the true shepherd and the curse upon
the false; and chaps. xi.—xii. “from a future repentance for the death
of Christ to the final conversion of the Jews and Gentiles.”[1293]
But on the same grounds Eichhorn[1294] saw in the chapters not a
prediction but a reflection of the Greek period. He assigned chaps. ix.
and x. to an author in the time of Alexander the Great; xi.—xiii. 6 he
placed a little later, and brought down xiii. 7—xiv. to the Maccabean
period. Böttcher[1295] placed the whole in the wars of Ptolemy and
Seleucus after Alexander’s death; and Vatke, who had at first selected
a date in the reign of Artaxerxes Longhand, 464—425, finally decided
for the Maccabean period, 170 ff.[1296]
In recent times the most thorough examination of the chapters has
been that by Stade,[1297] and the conclusion he comes to is that
chaps. ix.—xiv. are all from one author, who must have written during
the early wars between the Ptolemies and Seleucids about 280 B.C.,
but employed, especially in chaps. ix., x., an earlier prophecy. A
criticism and modification of Stade’s theory is given by Kuenen.
He allows that the present form of chaps. ix.—xiv. must be of
post-exilic origin: this is obvious from the mention of the Greeks as
a world-power; the description of a siege of Jerusalem by _all_ the
heathen; the way in which (chaps. ix. 11 f., but especially x. 6-9)
the captivity is presupposed, if not of all Israel, yet of Ephraim;
the fact that the House of David are not represented as governing;
and the thoroughly priestly character of all the chapters. But Kuenen
holds that an ancient prophecy of the eighth century underlies
chaps. ix.—xi., xiii. 7-9, in which several actual phrases of it
survive;[1298] and that in their present form xii.—xiv. are older than
ix.—xi., and probably by a contemporary of Joel, about 400 B.C.
In the main Cheyne,[1299] Cornill,[1300] Wildeboer[1301] and
Staerk[1302] adhere to Stade’s conclusions. Cheyne proves the unity of
the six chapters and their date _before_ the Maccabean period. Staerk
brings down xi. 4-17 and xiii. 7-9 to 171 B.C. Wellhausen argues for
the unity, and assigns it to the Maccabean times. Driver judges
ix.—xi., with its natural continuation xiii. 7-9, as not earlier than
333; and the rest of xii.—xiv. as certainly post-exilic, and probably
from 432—300. Rubinkam[1303] places ix. 1-10 in Alexander’s time, the
rest in that of the Maccabees, but Zeydner[1304] all of it to the
latter. Kirkpatrick,[1305] after showing the post-exilic character of
all the chapters, favours assigning ix.—xi. to a different author from
xii.—xiv. Asserting that to the question of the exact date it is
impossible to give a definite answer, he thinks that the whole may be
with considerable probability assigned to the first sixty or seventy
years of the Exile, and is therefore in its proper place between
Zechariah and “Malachi.” The reference to the sons of Javan he takes to
be a gloss, probably added in Maccabean times.[1306]
It will be seen from this catalogue of conclusions that the prevailing
trend of recent criticism has been to assign “Zech.” ix.—xiv. to
post-exilic times, and to a different author from chaps. i.—viii.; and
that while a few critics maintain a date soon after the Return, the
bulk are divided between the years following Alexander’s campaigns and
the time of the Maccabean struggles.[1307]
There are, in fact, in recent years only two attempts to support the
conservative position of Pusey and Hengstenberg that the whole book is
a genuine work of Zechariah the son of Iddo. One of these is by C. H.
H. Wright in his Bampton Lectures. The other is by George L. Robinson,
now Professor at Toronto, in a reprint (1896) from the _American
Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures_, which offers a valuable
history of the discussion of the whole question from the days of Mede,
with a careful argument of all the evidence on both sides. The very
original conclusion is reached that the chapters reflect the history of
the years 518—516 B.C.
In discussing the question, for which our treatment of other prophets
has left us too little space, we need not open that part of it which
lies between a pre-exilic and a post-exilic date. Recent criticism of
all schools and at both extremes has tended to establish the latter
upon reasons which we have already stated,[1308] and for further
details of which the student may be referred to Stade’s and Eckardt’s
investigations in the _Zeitschrift für A. T. Wissenschaft_ and to
Kirkpatrick’s impartial summary. There remain the questions of the
unity of chaps. ix.—xiv.; their exact date or dates after the Exile,
and as a consequence of this their relation to the authentic prophecies
of Zechariah in chaps. i.—viii.
On the question of unity we take first chaps. ix.—xi., to which must be
added (as by most critics since Ewald) xiii. 7-9, which has got out of
its place as the natural continuation and conclusion of chap. xi.
Chap. ix. 1-8 predicts the overthrow of heathen neighbours of Israel,
their possession by Jehovah and His safeguard of Jerusalem. Vv. 9-12
follow with a prediction of the Messianic King as the Prince of Peace;
but then come vv. 13-17, with no mention of the King, but Jehovah
appears alone as the hero of His people against the Greeks, and there
is indeed sufficiency of war and blood. Chap. x. makes a new start: the
people are warned to seek their blessings from Jehovah, and not from
Teraphim and diviners, whom their false shepherds follow. Jehovah,
visiting His flock, shall punish these, give proper rulers, make the
people strong and gather in their exiles to fill Gilead and Lebanon.
Chap. xi. opens with a burst of war on Lebanon and Bashan and the
overthrow of the heathen (vv. 1-3), and follows with an allegory, in
which the prophet first takes charge from Jehovah of the people as
their shepherd, but is contemptuously treated by them (4-14), and then
taking the guise of an evil shepherd represents what they must suffer
from their next ruler (15-17). This tyrant, however, shall receive
punishment, two-thirds of the nation shall be scattered, but the rest,
further purified, shall be God’s own people (xiii. 7-9).
In the course of this prophesying there is no conclusive proof of a
double authorship. The only passage which offers strong evidence for
this is chap. ix. The verses predicting the peaceful coming of Messiah
(9-12) do not accord in spirit with those which follow predicting the
appearance of Jehovah with war and great shedding of blood. Nor is the
difference altogether explained, as Stade thinks, by the similar order
of events in chap. x., where Judah and Joseph are first represented as
saved and brought back in ver. 6, and then we have the process of their
redemption and return described in vv. 7 ff. Why did the same writer
give statements of such very different temper as chap. ix. 9-12 and
13-17? Or, if these be from different hands, why were they ever put
together? Otherwise there is no reason for breaking up chaps. ix.—xi.,
xiii. 7-9. Rubinkam, who separates ix. 1-10 by a hundred and fifty
years from the rest; Bleek, who divides ix. from x.; and Staerk, who
separates ix.—xi. 3 from the rest, have been answered by Robinson and
others.[1309] On the ground of language, grammar and syntax, Eckardt
has fully proved that ix.—xi. are from the same author of a late date,
who, however, may have occasionally followed earlier models and even
introduced their very phrases.[1310]
More supporters have been found for a division of authorship between
chaps. ix.—xi., xiii. 7-9, and chaps. xii.—xiv. (less xiii. 7-9). Chap.
xii. opens with a title of its own. A strange element is introduced
into the historical relation. Jerusalem is assaulted not by the heathen
only, but by Judah, who, however, turns on finding that Jehovah fights
for Jerusalem, and is saved by Jehovah before Jerusalem in order that
the latter may not boast over it (xii. 1-9). A spirit of grace and
supplication is poured upon the guilty city, a fountain opened for
uncleanness, idols abolished, and the prophets, who are put on a level
with them, abolished too, where they do not disown their profession
(xii. 10—xiii. 6). Another assault of the heathen on Jerusalem is
described, half of the people being taken captive. Jehovah appears, and
by a great earthquake saves the rest. The land is transformed. And then
the prophet goes back to the defeat of the heathen assault on the city,
in which Judah is again described as taking part; and the surviving
heathen are converted, or, if they refuse to be, punished by the
withholding of rain. Jerusalem is holy to the Lord (xiv.). In all this
there is more that differs from chaps. ix.—xi., xiii. 7-9, than the
strange opposition of Judah and Jerusalem. Ephraim, or Joseph, is not
mentioned, nor any return of exiles, nor punishment of the shepherds,
nor coming of the Messiah,[1311] the latter’s place being taken by
Jehovah. But in answer to this we may remember that the Messiah, after
being described in ix. 9-12, is immediately lost behind the warlike
coming of Jehovah. Both sections speak of idolatry, and of the heathen,
their punishment and conversion, and do so in the same apocalyptic
style. Nor does the language of the two differ in any decisive fashion.
On the contrary, as Eckardt[1312] and Kuiper have shown, the language
is on the whole an argument for unity of authorship.[1313] There is,
then, nothing conclusive against the position, which Stade so clearly
laid down and strongly fortified, that chaps. ix.—xiv. are from the
same hand, although, as he admits, this cannot be proved with absolute
certainty. So also Cheyne: “With perhaps one or two exceptions, chaps.
ix.—xi. and xii.—xiv. are so closely welded together that even analysis
is impossible.”[1314]
The next questions we have to decide are whether chaps. ix.—xiv. offer
any evidence of being by Zechariah, the author of chaps. i.—viii., and
if not to what other post-exilic date they may be assigned.
It must be admitted that in language and in style the two parts of the
Book of Zechariah have features in common. But that these have been
exaggerated by defenders of the unity there can be no doubt. We cannot
infer anything from the fact[1315] that both parts contain specimens of
clumsy diction, of the repetition of the same word, of phrases (not the
same phrases) unused by other writers;[1316] or that each is lavish in
vocatives; or that each is variable in his spelling. Resemblances of
that kind they share with other books: some of them are due to the fact
that both sections are post-exilic. On the other hand, as Eckardt has
clearly shown, there exists a still greater number of differences
between the two sections, both in language and in style.[1317] Not only
do characteristic words occur in each which are not found in the other,
not only do chaps. ix.—xiv. contain many more Aramaisms than chaps.
i.—viii., and therefore symptoms of a later date; but both parts use
the same words with more or less different meanings, and apply
different terms to the same objects. There are also differences of
grammar, of favourite formulas, and of other features of the
phraseology, which, if there be any need, complete the proof of a
distinction of dialect so great as to require to account for it
distinction of authorship.
The same impression is sustained by the contrast of the historical
circumstances reflected in each of the two sections. Zech. i.—viii.
were written during the building of the Temple. There is no echo of the
latter in “Zech.” ix.—xiv. Zech. i.—viii. picture the whole earth as at
peace, which was true at least of all Syria: they portend no danger to
Jerusalem from the heathen, but describe her peace and fruitful
expansion in terms most suitable to the circumstances imposed upon her
by the solid and clement policy of the earlier Persian kings. This is
all changed in “Zech.” ix.—xiv. The nations are restless; a siege of
Jerusalem is imminent, and her salvation is to be assured only by much
war and a terrible shedding of blood. We know exactly how Israel fared
and felt in the early sections of the Persian period: her interests in
the politics of the world, her feelings towards her governors and her
whole attitude to the heathen were not at that time those which are
reflected in “Zech.” ix.—xiv.
Nor is there any such resemblance between the religious principles
of the two sections of the Book of Zechariah as could prove identity
of origin. That both are spiritual, or that they have a similar
expectation of the ultimate position of Israel in the history of
the world, proves only that both were late offshoots from the same
religious development, and worked upon the same ancient models. Within
these outlines, there are not a few divergences. Zech. i.—viii. were
written before Ezra and Nehemiah had imposed the Levitical legislation
upon Israel; but Eckardt has shown the dependence on the latter of
“Zech.” ix.—xiv.
We may, therefore, adhere to Canon Driver’s assertion, that Zechariah
in chaps. i.—viii. “uses a different phraseology, evinces different
interests and moves in a different circle of ideas from those which
prevail in chaps. ix.—xiv.”[1318] Criticism has indeed been justified
in separating, by the vast and growing majority of its opinions, the
two sections from each other. This was one of the earliest results
which modern criticism achieved, and the latest researches have but
established it on a firmer basis.
If, then, chaps. ix.—xiv. be not Zechariah’s, to what date may we
assign them? We have already seen that they bear evidence of being
upon the whole later than Zechariah, though they appear to contain
fragments from an earlier period. Perhaps this is all we can with
certainty affirm. Yet something more definite is at least probable.
The mention of the Greeks, not as Joel mentions them about 400, the
most distant nation to which Jewish slaves could be carried, but as
the chief of the heathen powers, and a foe with whom the Jews are in
touch and must soon cross swords,[1319] appears to imply that the
Syrian campaign of Alexander is happening or has happened, or even
that the Greek kingdoms of Syria and Egypt are already contending for
the possession of Palestine. With this agrees the mention of Damascus,
Hadrach and Hamath, the localities where the Seleucids had their chief
seats.[1320] In that case Asshur would signify the Seleucids and Egypt
the Ptolemies:[1321] it is these, and not Greece itself, from whom the
Jewish exiles have still to be redeemed. All this makes probable the
date which Stade has proposed for the chapters, between 300 and 280
B.C. To bring them further down, to the time of the Maccabees, as some
have tried to do, would not be impossible so far as the historical
allusions are concerned; but had they been of so late a date as that,
viz. 170 or 160, we may assert that they could not have found a place
in the prophetic canon, which was closed by 200, but must have fallen
along with Daniel into the Hagiographa.
The appearance of these prophecies at the close of the Book of
Zechariah has been explained, not quite satisfactorily, as follows.
With the Book of “Malachi” they formed originally three anonymous
pieces,[1322] which because of their anonymity were set at the end of
the Book of the Twelve. The first of them begins with the very peculiar
construction “Massa’ Dĕbar Jehovah,” _oracle of the word of Jehovah_,
which, though partly belonging to the text, the editor read as a title,
and attached as a title to each of the others. It occurs nowhere else.
The Book of “Malachi” was too distinct in character to be attached to
another book, and soon came to have the supposed name of its author
added to its title.[1323] But the other two pieces fell, like all
anonymous works, to the nearest writing with an author’s name. Perhaps
the attachment was hastened by the desire to make the round number of
Twelve Prophets.
ADDENDA.
Whiston’s work (p. 450) is _An Essay towards restoring the True Text
of the O. T. and for vindicating the Citations made thence in the
N. T._, 1722, pp. 93 ff. (not seen). Besides those mentioned on p.
452 (see n. 1293) as supporting the unity of Zechariah there ought
to be named De Wette, Umbreit, von Hoffmann, Ebrard, etc. Kuiper’s
work (p. 458) is _Zacharia_ 9-14, Utrecht, 1894 (not seen). Nowack’s
conclusions are: ix.—xi. 3 date from the Greek period (we cannot
date them more exactly, unless ix. 8 refers to Ptolemy’s capture of
Jerusalem in 320); xi., xiii. 7-9, are post-exilic; xii.—xiii. 6 long
after Exile; xiv. long after Exile, later than “Malachi.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1279] Except in the passage ix. 10-12, which seems strangely out of
place in the rest of ix.—xiv.
[1280] _Works_, 4th ed. 1677, pp. 786 ff. (1632), 834. Mede died 1638.
[1281] Matt. xxvii. 9.
[1282] _Demonstration of the Messias_, 1700.
[1283] _An Attempt towards an Improved Version of the Twelve Minor
Prophets_, 1785 (not seen). See also Wright on Archbishop Seeker.
[1284] _Die Weissagungen, welche bei den Schriften des Proph. Sacharja
beygebogen sind, übersetzt_, etc., Hamburg (not seen).
[1285] _Einleitung in A. u. N. T._ (not seen).
[1286] Isa. viii. 2. See above, p. 265.
[1287] ix. 1.
[1288] See above, Chap. XXXI.
[1289] x. 10.
[1290] ix. 10, 13, etc.
[1291] _Dan. u. Sacharja._
[1292] Page 503.
[1293] See Addenda, p. 462.
[1294] _Einl._ in the beginning of the century.
[1295] _Neue Exeg. krit. Aehrenlese z. A. T._, 1864.
[1296] _Einl._, 1882, p. 709.
[1297] _Z.A.T.W._, 1881, 1882. See further proof of the late character
of language and style, and of the unity, by Eckardt, _Z.A.T.W._, 1893,
pp. 76 ff.
[1298] § 81, n. 3, 10. See p. 457, end of note 1310.
[1299] _Jewish Quart. Review_, 1889.
[1300] _Einl._⁴
[1301] _A. T. Litt._
[1302] _Untersuchung über die Komposition u. Abfassungszeit von Zach._
9-14, etc. Halle, 1891 (not seen).
[1303] 1892: quoted by Wildeboer.
[1304] 1893: quoted by Wildeboer.
[1305] _Doctrine of the Prophets_, 438 ff., in which the English reader
will find a singularly lucid and fair treatment of the question. See,
too, Wright.
[1306] Page 472, Note A.
[1307] Kautzsch—the Greek period.
[1308] Above, pp. 451 f.
[1309] Robinson, pp. 76 ff.
[1310] _Z.A.T.W._, 1893, 76 ff. See also the summaries of linguistic
evidence given by Robinson. Kuenen finds in ix.—xi. the following
pre-exilic elements: ix. 1-5, 8-10, 13_a_ (?); x. 1 f., 10 f.; xi. 4-14
or 17.
[1311] Kuenen.
[1312] See above, p. 453, n. 1297.
[1313] See also Robinson.
[1314] _Jewish Quarterly Review_, 1889, p. 81.
[1315] As Robinson, _e.g._, does.
[1316] E.g. _holy land_, ii. 16, and _Mount of Olives_, xiv. 4.
[1317] _Op. cit._, 103-109: cf. Driver, _Introd._⁶, 354.
[1318] _Introd._⁶, p. 354.
[1319] ix. 13.
[1320] ix. 1 f.
[1321] x. 11. See above, p. 451.
[1322] See above, pp. 331 ff., for proof of the original anonymity of
the Book of “Malachi.”
[1323] Above, p. 331.