The historical contextual information associated with Zechariah, whose name means whom Jehovah remembers is identified (1:1) as the son of Berechiah, which means Jehovah blesses, and his father was the son of Iddo, which means the appointed time. Certainly this cluster of names with such rich meanings is suggestive of the encouragement given to the remnant. God remembers and blesses in the appointed time. The Jewish Targum states that Zechariah was slain in the sanctuary and that this Zechariah was both prophet and priest. In Nehemiah 12:4 Iddo is mentioned as one of the eads of a priestly family. Josephus states that Zechariah, the son of Baruchus, was slain at the temple. There are those who identify Zechariah as the one mentioned by our Lord as having been martyred …show more content…
When, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, devastated Jerusalem and its place of worship, exiling many of Judah's elite to Babylon. And after a certain time God rose up Cyrus. Then the Persian king was to overthrow Babylon in 539. He freed the Jews from imprisonment and allowing them to return to their land. But not only did he free them; he returned the temple containers that Nebuchadnezzar had stolen and gave them consent to rebuild their place of worship with Persian moneys (Ezr.6:3-5). Zechariah embarks unsurprisingly into two parts: chapters 1-8 and 9-14. In the first part we find dates tracing the prophecies in the Persian era that mentions Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the Davidic governor that aided in helping to reconstruct the temple, and a combination of revelations and visions. However, there are dates missing, the leaders are unnamed shepherds, and the renovation of the temple. Because of these changes to the stylistic structures has led most researchers to see more than one author within this important visionary work. The first eight chapters were written by Zechariah, just maybe chapters 9-14 was curtailed from a later unidentified