Zechariah, 'the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo' (the priest of Neh. xii. 4), was born in Babylonia during the captivity, and accompanied the first band of exiles on their return to Judæa under Zerubbabel and Joshua. Nothing further is known of his personal history except that, along with Haggai, in the second and fourth years of Darius Hystaspis (520-518 B.C.), he as a prophet stirred up the languishing enthusiasm of the Jews to complete the rebuilding of the temple. Of the book that bears his name (eleventh in order among the twelve minor prophets) only the first eight chapters are really attributable to him. They consist of three parts under three separate dates: i. 1-6; i. 7-vi. 15; and vii., viii. The first is a brief exhortation to repentance; the second, forming by far the larger portion of his prophecy, is made up of eight visions relating to the speedy rebuilding of the temple, the scattering of Israel's enemies, the future greatness and glory of Jerusalem, the priestly dignity of Joshua and the advent of the Messiah, the removal of all wickedness out of the land, and the execution of God's judgments on Babylonia; the third contains a hopeful deliverance on the question as to the permanence of fast days, and gives a bright picture of the Messianic future.
The remaining six chapters of the Book of Zechariah are now regarded with practical unanimity as being really anonymous: they have a different horizon, belong to a different school of prophecy, and are separated also by their language and style from the compositions of Zechariah 'the son of Iddo.' They must have been added to the growing book of the minor prophets at a time when the genuine prophecies of Zechariah had already become part of it, and thus according to the usual custom of those times came to be attributed to the last preceding writer whose name was known. They naturally fall into two sections now commonly attributed to two distinct authors. The first of these, consisting of chapters ix.-xi., to which it has been usual, since Ewald, to add xiii. 7-9, may be thus analysed: ch. ix. predicts the judgment about to fall on Damascus, Hamath, Tyre, Sidon, and Philistia, and foretells the advent of the Messiah, the restored prosperity of Judah and Ephraim, and their triumph over the sons of Greece; ch. x. exhorts to trust in Jehovah and warns against 'teraphim and diviners,' through whom Israel has fallen under unworthy rulers; new and better rulers are to be raised up, under whom Judah and Ephraim are to be reunited; ch. xi. begins with allusions to war in the north and east, but is chiefly occupied with the difficult allegory of the shepherd, to which also xiii. 7-9 seems to belong. Among modern critics the prevailing opinion until very lately has been that these chapters belong to the second half of the 8th century B.C. In support of this view it is pointed out that the northern kingdom is still apparently in existence, that Assyria and Egypt figure much as they do in Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, and that the teraphim and diviners also indicate a comparatively early date. But there are other circumstances, on the other side, that point to a rather late date after the exile, the most important being the reference to the Greeks, which would be most appropriate to the Macedonian period. Driver accordingly inclines to think, with Cheyne and Kuenen, that, while the prophecy as a whole dates from the 8th century, it was yet modified in details, and accommodated to a later situation, by a prophet living in the post-exilic period when the Greeks had become formidable to the Jews. As for ch. xii. 1-xiii. 6; xiv., this section of the book used to be assigned to the last days of the Judean kingdom, but is now very generally considered to be post-exilic. It presupposes a state of matters in Judah and Jerusalem of which we have no knowledge, but which may possibly have occurred during one or other of the obscure periods 518-458 or 432-300 B.C.
Stade thinks of the year 300 B.C. as an approximate date for this section. As regards all six chapters, though assigning them to two separate authors, Wellhausen argues for a very late date—as low indeed as that of Antiochus Epiphanes—on a variety of grounds, such as the type of eschatology employed (which was that introduced by Ezekiel), the importance assigned to the temple service, the absence of an actual Davidic king, the allusions to the ‘race of Ashdod’ (comp. Neh. xiii. 23, 24), to Greece, and to idolatry (of which there was a revival late in the Macedonian period). The presence of phrases suggestive of the older prophecy, and the allusions to Ephraim, Assyria, and the like he explains by the desire of the author ‘to give his oracles an archaic garb,’ thus inverting the theory of Kneuen, Driver, and others that the oracles are really old, but with later elements superadded. The evidence is certainly conflicting, and the problem may perhaps ultimately prove insoluble with the limited data at command.
See the commentaries of Hitzig-Steiner (1881), Ewald, Keil (Eng. trans.), and Orelli; also C. H. H. Wright, Zechariah and his Prophetic (1879); Wellhausen's article ‘Zechariah’ in Ency. Brit.; the same author's Die Kleinen Propheten übersetzt mit Noten (1892); and Driver's Introduction to the Old Testament (7th ed. 1897), where further references to the literature of the subject are given.