Zechariah (Son of Jehoiada)

Biblical Account

Zechariah was the son of the priest Jehoiada and lived during the reign of Joash, king of the southern kingdom of Judah. His story appears only in 2 Chronicles 24:17–22. He does not appear in 2 Kings 12, which covers the same period.

Jehoiada had hidden and raised the young Joash, made him king, and guided him for as long as Jehoiada lived (2 Chronicles 22–23). After Jehoiada died, the princes of Judah came to the king, and Joash listened to them. The people abandoned the temple and served Asherah poles and idols. At this time the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah (2 Chronicles 24:20). Standing before the people, he warned that because they had transgressed the commandments of the LORD they would not prosper, and that because they had forsaken the LORD, He had also forsaken them. At the king's command the people stoned him to death in the court of the house of the LORD. The Chronicler records that Joash did not remember the kindness Jehoiada had shown him. As he died, Zechariah said, "The LORD look upon it, and require it" (2 Chronicles 24:22), a plea for God to see the wrong done and redress it.

At the end of that year the army of Aram (Syria) attacked Judah. Because of the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, Joash's servants conspired against him and killed him on his bed, and he was not buried in the tombs of the kings (2 Chronicles 24:23–25).

Significance Within the Bible

Rebuking the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus declared that responsibility for the righteous blood shed upon the earth would come upon that generation, "from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar" (Matthew 23:35). In Luke 11:51 he appears without his father's name as "Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple."

Many scholars identify this Zacharias with the Zechariah of 2 Chronicles, on two grounds: the location of his death in the temple court matches, and the Hebrew Bible ends with Chronicles. On this reading, the phrase from Abel (Genesis) to Zechariah (Chronicles) refers to the blood of the righteous shed from the beginning of the Scriptures to the end.

Interpretation and Debate

The phrase "son of Barachias" in Matthew has given rise to several views. The prophet Zechariah is introduced as "the son of Berechiah" (Zechariah 1:1), and the two names are identical in Greek.

• The view that he is the Zechariah of 2 Chronicles: proponents either hold that the father's name in Matthew became confused with that of the prophet Zechariah in the course of transmission, or harmonize the texts by suggesting that Jehoiada had another name.
• The view that he is the prophet Zechariah: the Old Testament text, however, does not record the prophet's death.
• The view that he is the Zacharias mentioned in Josephus's The Jewish War: a man killed in the temple around the time of the Jewish War.

Traditions not found in the biblical text have also been handed down. Jewish tradition, including the Talmud, tells of Zechariah's blood seething in the temple until the Babylonian invasion. The second-century apocryphal Protevangelium of James relates that Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was murdered in the temple. These accounts are distinct from the record of the biblical text.

Preachers often compare Zechariah's dying words with the final prayer of Stephen, who prayed, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 7:60).