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Was the murdered Zechariah the son of Jehoiada or of Berechiah?
Hard question · Prophecy and its fulfilment · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
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Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest rebukes the people and is stoned in the court of the Lord’s house; dying, he says, “The Lord look upon it, and require it.”
And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you. And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it, and require it.
Jesus speaks of all the righteous blood “from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar”.
That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Luke’s parallel: from Abel to “Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple”, it “shall be required of this generation”.
That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.
The prophet Zechariah is “the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo”.
In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying,
The objection
Jesus speaks of the murder of “Zacharias son of Barachias” between the temple and the altar (Matthew 23:35). The only such murder in the Old Testament is that of Zechariah son of Jehoiada, stoned in the temple court (2 Chronicles 24:20–21). Zechariah son of Berechiah was a different man, the prophet who lived some three centuries later, and Scripture records no murder of him.
The answer
Jesus is almost certainly speaking of the Zechariah of 2 Chronicles 24. In the traditional order of the Hebrew Bible, recorded in the Talmud (Bava Batra 14b), Chronicles is the last book, so ‘from Abel to Zechariah’ runs from the first murder in Scripture (Genesis 4) to the last one it records. The place fits: Zechariah son of Jehoiada was stoned “in the court of the house of the Lord” (2 Chronicles 24:21), the priests’ court where the altar of burnt offering stood before the sanctuary. So do his dying words, “The Lord look upon it, and require it”, which Jesus echoes when he says that this blood “shall be required of this generation” (Luke 11:51).
The difficulty is the name of the father, and here no answer can be confirmed. Two explanations fit the evidence. In Hebrew, ‘son’ can mean grandson: Jehu is called “the son of Nimshi” (2 Kings 9:20), though Nimshi was his grandfather (9:2). Jehoiada lived to 130 (2 Chronicles 24:15), so Zechariah may have been his grandson, the son of a Berechiah whom Chronicles does not name. Or Jehoiada may also have been known as Berechiah, as many people in Scripture had two names; John Gill suggested this.
Other answers Christians give
The prophet Zechariah
Some take Jesus to mean the prophet Zechariah son of Berechiah (Zechariah 1:1). The Aramaic paraphrase of Lamentations, the Targum, speaks of ‘Zechariah son of Iddo, the High Priest and faithful prophet’ killed in the temple on the Day of Atonement. But the Targum seems to have merged him with the son of Jehoiada, and the Old Testament records no such death of the prophet.
A Zechariah of AD 68
Some have thought of Zacharias son of Baruch, whom the Zealots murdered in the temple during the war with Rome (Josephus, Jewish War 4.5.4). But Jesus speaks of a murder already committed (‘whom ye slew’), and Baruch is not Berechiah.
Still open
Christian scholars who hold Scripture to be without error are divided on this question. Most identify the man with Zechariah son of Jehoiada, but no explanation of ‘son of Barachias’ can be checked against another source.
From the classic commentators
it remains, that it must be Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, who was slain in the court of the house of the Lord, 2 Chronicles 24:20 who, as Abel was the first, he is the last of the righteous men whose death is related in the Scriptures, and for whose blood vengeance was required, as for Abel's.John Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Matthew 23:35 (1746–1763)
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Matthew 23 (HelloAO)
- Aramaic Targum to Lamentations 2:20, translated by C. M. M. Brady, at Sefaria
- Josephus, The Jewish War 4.5.4, translated by William Whiston, at Project Gutenberg
- Matthew 23:35 with textual apparatus (greeknewtestament.net)