This book is the most messianic, apocalyptic, and eschatological in the Old Testament. Primarily, it is a prophecy about Jesus Christ, focusing on his coming glory as a means to comfort Israel (cf. Zechariah 1:13, 17). While the book is filled with visions, prophecies, signs, celestial visitors, and the voice of God, it is also practical, dealing with issues like repentance, divine care, salvation, and holy living. Prophecy was soon to be silent for more than 400 years until John the Baptist, so God used Zechariah to bring a rich, abundant outburst of promise for the future to sustain the faithful remnant through those silent years. 

—John MacArthur

Source: Copyright 2023, Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission. This Grace to You article originally appeared here at gty.org.

With the exception of Zephaniah, we know more about Zechariah’s lineage than any other Minor Prophet author. The book of Zechariah links the prophet to a priestly family, and particularly chapters 1-8 also introduce the prophet personally, although without the psychological insight garnered from Hosea or Jonah.  

The name Zechariah in Hebrew means “Yahweh remembers,” a popular name belonging to some two dozen different individuals in the Old Testament alone. The name also appears in the New Testament as the name of John the Baptist’s father (Luke 1:5; 3:2). Like many proper names in the Old Testament, Zechariah’s name proclaims a theological message about God and his relationship with his people, Israel. While living in a day filled with political unrest and spiritual apathy, modern readers find it difficult to appreciate the bleak present (and future) that postexilic Israelites faced during the days of Zechariah the prophet’s ministry. Every mention of Zechariah’s name remonstrated against the people’s lack of faith. The prophet’s name, along with his message, consistently reminded the nation that the Lord had made a covenant with Israel, a binding commitment that God would assuredly keep. The people should respond to the reminder of the Lord’s faithfulness with faith and obedience of their own. Israel’s security and future hope will be as sure as the faithfulness of God himself, provided that the nation live obediently before the Lord.   

—George Klein  

Source: Klein, George. Zechariah: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture. The New American Commentary. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2008.

Zechariah deals with a number of important themes, the most significant being the restoration of Israel. He encourages the people with the promise that Jerusalem and the temple will be rebuilt and that this rebuilding will have worldwide significance. God will once again manifest his presence among his people and cleanse them from their sin. He will overcome their sin and rebellion through a coming Messiah. Zechariah’s visions and oracles teach the people that although the restoration from exile has already begun, it has not yet reached its full consummation.

—Keith Mathison  

Source: Top 5 Commentaries on the Book of Zechariah by Keith Mathison. © Ligonier Ministries 2023. Used by permission of Ligonier Ministries. All rights reserved.

Past generations [of Israelites] were characterized by a hardness of heart. When the Lord had repeatedly sent prophets to urge the people to turn from their wicked ways and to repent for their evil deeds, the people largely ignored them. Eventually, their unrepentant disobedience ended with the judgment of the Assyrian exile of the northern tribes and the Babylonian exile of the southern tribes.

Yet God declared in Zechariah that he was not done with his people. He called them to repent and he promised that if they did he would cleanse them. Though they were filthy from their sins and the stain of exile, God assured them that they would once again be made clean (Zechariah 3:1-10). Gone would be the false prophets, the idols, and the spirit of uncleanness (Zechariah 13:1-3), as well as theft and false testimonies (Zechariah 5:1-4). In their place would be mercy, justice, peace, and prosperity (Zechariah 7:1-8:23). Significantly, the book of Zechariah ends with the declaration that Jerusalem will be so holy that even the common and unclean things like horses’ bells and cooking pots will be inscribed with “Holy to the Lord,” an inscription previously reserved for the gold plate on the high priest’s turban (Exodus 28:36; 39:30).

…Moreover, the Lord will return to Zion and will work salvation for his people (Zechariah 9:9-17). In fact, the book mentions Jerusalem more than forty times. Zechariah longs for the day when the Lord will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem so that they become the “Holy Mountain” and the “City of Truth” (Zechariah 8:3 NIV). It will once again be teeming with people and livestock (Zechariah 2:4). In 1:16, the measuring line is used not just to plan the reconstruction of the temple as in Ezekiel 40, but of the entire city of Jerusalem. In other words, the Lord plans to restore Jerusalem as the imperial city of his coming kingdom.

—Bryan R. Gregory

Source: Longing for God in an Age of Discouragement: The Gospel According to Zechariah, Bryan R. Gregory, Copyright 2010, P&R Publishing, Philipsburg, NJ.

The book of Zechariah’s most foundational purpose is to lift the eyes (a recurring phrase in the book) of the people of God from their discouraging circumstances to see the bigger picture of God’s coming kingdom. If they could begin grasping that “the kingdom of God was already prepared in heaven,” then they would find their discouragement melting away and a renewed motivation to do what the Lord was calling them to do, namely to build the temple, purge the social evils among them, and order their lives and communities around the priorities and expectations of God’s coming kingdom.

—Bryan R. Gregory 

Source: Longing for God in an Age of Discouragement: The Gospel According to Zechariah, Bryan R. Gregory, Copyright 2010, P&R Publishing, Philipsburg, NJ.

Consider a lesson from Zechariah and Scripture’s other prophets: if we are genuinely faithful in the day of small things, our small obedience will become big—but not usually right away, and not often in the ways we expect… As long as we are in the day of small things, then, our job is to bear the Spirit’s fruit of faithfulness as we wait for God to bring the big things (Galatians 5:22–23). And our job is to see, by faith, all the big things right in front of us.

—Scott Hubbard

Source: By Scott Hubbard. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org.

From Bibles.net: We strongly encourage you to read this phenomenal article as a family!

The incarnation of the Son of God, and what followed over the next three years, was a turning point in world history and in the purposes of God. It introduced a radically new situation in which everything had changed. But it was not a negation of the past, as though all that had gone before was now cancelled out as irrelevant. On the contrary, according to Jesus himself, the new thing that had happened in him was the fulfillment of the past, a past in which, under God’s sovereign guidance and control, the kingdom of God had been slowly but certainly moving towards Bethlehem to be born[1]. The prospect of its coming had captivated the prophets and other inspired writers of the Old Testament for hundreds of years before its realization in Jesus. Like Jesus’ disciples of later times, they too had lived in the tension of the now and the not yet, for they already had the vision of it (at least in outline), but not yet its realization in the Messiah, who was yet to come.  

For the Christian, then, a journey into the world of Zechariah and his contemporaries is not a journey into alien territory, but a pilgrimage to the land of his spiritual ancestors. It is to meet people fired by the same vision as himself, and living with many of the same tensions and challenges. That is why the study of the book of Zechariah is bound to be so enriching; it is imbued, from beginning to end, with the same heart-cry that Jesus turned into a prayer for all of us: ‘Your kingdom come.’ 

1. I allude, of course, to the famous words of W. B. Yeats (in his poem ‘The Second Coming’) in which he speaks of a similar (more ominous) inevitability about the way things are presently building towards another great turning point, a (metaphorical) second coming.  

—Barry G. Webb 

Source: Webb, Barry G. The Message of Zechariah. The Bible Speaks Today. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003.  

The Second Temple is the central theme of the Hag-Zech-Mal corpus. Haggai rallied the Hebrew people to rebuild the sanctuary (Haggai 1:14). Zechariah further encouraged the building project (Zechariah 6:9-12) and witnessed the vision of cleansing and investiture for the High Priest Joshua who would oversee temple worship (Zechariah 3; 6:9-15). Later, the prophet Malachi advocated the renewal of proper temple worship and the reform of a corrupt priesthood (Malachi 1-2). 

—Andrew E. Hill  

Source: Hill, Andrew E. Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012.

Someone has said that to correctly read the visions of this book, you must shine two lights on them—the light of the cross and the light of the crown. Otherwise, you will find that you don’t have the proper perspective or background to understand Zechariah’s visions. The prophet, looking far into the future, saw two aspects of the future Messiah—one Person, but two appearances. First, he saw him in humiliation and suffering; then he saw him in majesty and great glory. Jewish people who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah ignore the Christ of the cross. Christians too often ignore the Christ of the crown. Both are wrong!  

—Henrietta Mears  

Source: This content is from What the Bible Is All About, written by Henrietta Mears. Copyright © 1953, 2011 by Gospel Light. Copyright assigned to Tyndale House Publishers, 2015. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.  

God has comfort. God has counsel, and God has some fantastic coming events for the people who have heard the call to repentance. That’s the gist of the whole book [of Zechariah]. God has got some marvelous things laid out for people who repent. And from 1:7 through 6:15, through the 15th verse of the sixth chapter, comes this comfort. And interestingly enough, it is given in a series of eight visions, and this is a mode that was used very frequently with the prophets. Eight visions. Now each of them is distinct, and yet basically they all say the same thing, but they come at it from different angles. In fact, as I looked at them, it’s very clear that the first one is almost a summarization of the other seven, and the other seven put out the details. But these eight visions were designed to comfort God’s people. 

—John MacArthur

Source: Copyright 2023, Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission. This Grace to You message originally appeared here at gty.org.