Zechariah

[Jax27]

There is one problem I have with Matthew 23 however and it is the same discrepancy that I described above. “So upon you may come all the righteous bloodshed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (Matthew 23:35). Matthew is confused and has the wrong Zechariah. “In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD (YHWH) came to the prophet Zechariah, son of Barachiah son of Iddo” (Zech.1:1). Here we see Iddo as the grandfather of Zechariah. “Now the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them” (Ezra 5:1). Here Iddo is not the grandfather, but the father of Zechariah. “So the elders of the Jews built and prospered, through the prophesying of the prophet Haggai and Zechariah son of Iddo. They finished their building by command of the God of Israel and by the decree of Cyrus, Darius, and King Artaxerxes of Persia” (Ezra 6:14). Now we find this reference of the new Temple of Jerusalem being completed “on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius” (Ezra 6:15). The date would have been Mar.12, 515 BCE. If this is true, it did not have anything to do with Artaxerxes of Persia because his reign was from 465-424 BCE. Was Zechariah the son or grandson of Iddo? According to Ezra, he was his son, but according to Zechariah and Matthew, he was his grandson. “Then the spirit of God clothed itself with Zechariah son of the priest Jehoiada; he stood above the people and said to them, ‘Thus says God: ‘Why do you transgress the commandments of YHWH, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken YHWH, he has also forsaken you.’ But they conspired against him, and by command of the King, they stoned him to death in the court of the house of YHWH” (2 Chr. 24:20-22). This is the Zechariah son of Jehoiada whom Matthew remembers being murdered as righteous. Matthew has him confused with the later Zechariah! It was the earlier Zechariah who was murdered, not the later one from Ezra. This is not a big deal to me and should not be to Christians either. Matthew got lineage wrong here as he did also with Jesus’ lineage in the birth narrative as it clearly differs from Luke. It might have been the case that there was a separate source of lineages that still remained in use and acceptance throughout Israel in the first century or perhaps the author of Matthew would have benefited from learning from the Pharisees who were now leading the Jewish community at the time he was writing instead of being quick to point the finger throughout his gospel. More than anything else, the point of this story being mentioned by Jesus in Matthew is to once more demonize the Pharisees and make it fitting that they would crucify Jesus.

[King]

lolDerek