'•That wliich moveth me more than the rest is in ch. xii, which contains a prophecy of the destruction of Jernsa- lein, and a description of (he wickedne-s of the inhabi- tants, for which God would give them to the sword, and liave no more pity on them. It is expounded of the de- struction by Titus: but methinks such a prophecy was uothiug seasonable for Zachary's lime (when the city yet,
ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF 10^
for a great part, lay in her rnins, and the Temple had not yet recovered hers), nor ujireeiible to ihe scope of Zach- ary's commission, who, together with his colleague Hag- gai, was sent to encourage the people lately returned from captivity to build their temple, and to iustaurate their commonwealth. Was this a tit time to foretell the destruction of both, while they were but yet a-building? and by Zachary, too, who was "to encourage them ? Would not this better befit the desolation by Nebuchadnezzar?"
Archbishop Newcome went further. He insisted on the great dissimilarity of style as well as subject be- tween the earlier and later chapters. And he was the first who advocated the theory which Bunsen calls one of the triumphs of modern criticism, that the last six chapters of Zcchariah arc the work of two distinct prophets. His words are :
"The eight first chapters appear by the introductory parts to be the prophecies of Zechariah, stand in connec- tion with each other, are pertinent to the time when they were delivered, are uniform in style and manner, and con- stitute a regular whole. Bnt the six last chapters are not expressly assigned to Zechariah ; are unconnected with those which precede; the three first of them are unsuita- ble in many parts to the time when Zechariah lived ; all of them have a more adorned and poetical turn of com- position than the eight first chapters; and they manifest- ly break the unity of the prophetical book. ... I conclude from internal marks in ch. ix, x, xi, that these three chap- ters were written much earlier than the time of Jeremiah and before the captivity of the tribes. Israel is mention- ed in ix, 1; xi, 14 (but that this argument is inconclu- Bive, see Mai. ii, 11); Ephraini ix, 10, 13; x, 7; and Assyria x, 10, 11. . . . They seem to suit Hosea's age and manner. . . . The 12th, 13th, and 14th chaptei-s form a distinct prophecy, and were written after the death of Josiah; but whether before or after the Captiv- ity, and by what prophets, is tmcertain, though I in- cline to think that the author lived before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians."
In proof of this he refers to xiii, 2, on which he observes that the "prediction that idols and false prophets should cease at the final restoration of the Jews seems to have been uttered when idolatry and gromuiless pretensions to the spirit of prophecy were common among the Jews, and therefore before the Babylonish Captivity." A large number of critics have followed Mede and arch- bishop Newcome in denying the later date of the last six chapters of the book. In England, bishop Kidder, Whiston, Hammond, and more recently Pye Smith and Davidson; in Germany, Fliigge, Eichhorn, Bauer, Ber- tholdt, Augusti, Forberg, Rosenmiiller, Gramberg, Cred- iier, Ewald, Maurer, Knobel, Hit/.ig, and Bleek, are agreed in maintaining that these later chapters are not the work of Zechariah the son of Iddo.
Oil the other hand, the later date of these chapters has been maintained among British writers, by Blayney and Henderson, and on the Continent b\' Carpzov, Beck- haus, Jahn, Koster, Hengstenbcrg, Hiivernick, Keil, De Wette (in later editions of his Einlntumj ; in the first three he adopted a different view), and Stiihelin.
Those who impugn the later date of these chapters of Zechariah rest their arguments on the change in style and subject after the 8th chapter, but differ much in the application of their criticism. Bosemn tiller, for instance {Schol. ill Proph. Mill, iv, 257), argues that ch. ix-xiv are so alike in style that they must have been written by one author. He alleges in proof his fondness for images taken from pastoral life (i.x, 16; x, 2, 3; xi, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 15, 17; xiii, 7, 8). From the allusion to the earthquake (.xiv, 5; comp. Amos i, l),he thinks the author must have lived in the reign of Uzziah. Da- vidson (in Home's Iiitrod. ii,982) in like inanner declares for one author, but supposes him to have been the Zech- ariah mentioned in Isa. viii, 2, who lived in the reign of Ahaz. Eichhorn, on the other hand, while also assign- ing (in his A'z«/f'i/«?(//, iv, 444) the whole of ch. ix-xiv to one writer, is of opinion that they are the work of a Inter prophet who flourished in the time of Alexander. Otliers again, as Bertholdt, Gescnius, Knobel, Maurer, Bunsen, and Ewald, think that ch. ix-xi (to which Ewald adds xiii, 7-9) are a distinct prophecj' from ch. xii-xiv, and .separated froin them by a considerable in- terval of time. These critics conclude from internal
•2 ZECHARIAH, BOOK OF
evidence that the former portion was written bj' a pro])het who lived in the reign of Ahaz (Knobel gives ix and x to the reign of Jotham, and xi to that of Ahaz). and most of them conjecture that he was the Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah (or Berechiah) men- tioned in Isa. viii, 2. iMvald, without attempting to identify the prophet with any particular person, con- tents himself with remarking that he was a stdijcct of the Southern kingdom (as may be inferred -from ex- pressions such as that in ix, 7, and from the IMessianic hopes which he utters, and in which he resembles his countryman and contemporary Isaiah); and that, like Amos and Hosea before him, though a native of Judah, he directs his prophecies against Ephraim. There is the same general agreement among the last-named crit- ics as to the date of the section xii-xiv. They all as- sign it to a period immediately previous to the Baby- lonian Captivity, and hence the author must have been contemporary with the prophet Jeremiah. Bunsen identifies him with Urijah, the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim (Jer. xxvi, 20-23), who prophesied "in the name of Jehovah" against Judah and Jerusalem.