Zechariah or Zecharya (Hebrew: זְכַרְיָה, Standard Zəḫarya Tiberian Zəḵaryāh ; "Renowned/Remembered of/is the {{smallcaps|Lord}}") was a person in the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh. He was the author of the Book of Zechariah. It is a theophoric name, the ending -iah being a short Hebrew form for the Tetragrammaton, which was very commonly in its times in association with people & places names. He was a prophet of the two-tribe kingdom of Judah, and the eleventh of the twelve minor prophets. Like Ezekiel, he was of priestly extraction. He describes himself (1:1) as "the son of Berechiah." In Ezra 5:1 and 6:14 he is called "the son of Iddo," who was properly his grandfather. His prophetical career began in the second year of Darius, king of Persia (B.C. 520), about sixteen years after the return of the first company from their Babylonian exile. He was contemporary with Haggai (Ezra 5:1). Although there is an indication in Targum Lamentations that "Zechariah son of Iddo" was killed in the Temple,[1] scholars generally understand this as a reference to the death of a much earlier figure, Zechariah Ben Jehoiada. [2]
On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, his feast day is February 8. He is commemorated with the other Minor prophets in the Calendar of saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 31.
See also
Sources
This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.
- ^ Targum on Lam 2:20: "Is it right to kill priest and prophet in the Temple of the Lord, as when you killed Zechariah son of Iddo, the High Priest and faithful prophet in the Temple of the Lord on the Day of Atonement because he told you not to do evil before the Lord?" Cited with permission from English translation by C.M.M. Brady at http://www.targum.info/meg/tglam.htm.
- ^ Brady, 1999, “Targum Lamentations’ Reading of the Book of Lamentations” (1MB pdf), page 116.
