ZACHARIAS (Heb. Zēhharjâh « Yahweh has remembered »). - Name of a king, of a prophet of Israel, and of various minor figures of the Old Testament.
1. King of Israel, son of Jeroboam II and his successor (743 B.C.). His reign lasted only six months; Z. was killed by a revolt led by Shallum (v.). In II Kings 14:29; 15:8-12 only his idolatrous conduct is recalled, and it is stated that in Z. the prophecy made to Jehu was fulfilled, to whom a dynasty lasting four generations had been promised (cf. ibid. 10:30).
2. High priest and prophet, killed by King Joash (799-784 B.C.) because he accused the people of apostasy and religious indifference. He was killed "in the court of the Temple" (II Chron. 24:20-22). Since in Mt. 23:35 (cf. Lk. 11:51) Jesus reproaches the Jews for the killing of the prophets down to that of Z. "son of Barachiah," put to death "between the Temple and the altar"; since the patristic era the question has been debated concerning the identification of the two individuals (cf. Jerome, In Matthaeum, 23, 35; PL 26, 180).
The simplest explanation is the one that removes the only obstacle to the identification, the paternity, noting that the designation "son of Barachiah" is missing in the text of Luke and in some codices of Matthew; therefore it is considered a gloss suggested perhaps by the memory of Z. the prophet (v.), who was in fact the son of Barachiah. The other hypothesis also has its probabilities, which considers Barachiah as the true father of Z., while the extremely aged Jehoiada (cf. II Chron. 24:15) would have been his grandfather. The biblical text, as happens in other cases, would have simply linked together the two most distinguished figures, the priest who was the guardian of Joash and the nephew prophet killed by the ungrateful king. Devoid of any foundation and tendentious, on the other hand, appears the interpretation that designates the prophet recalled by Jesus as Z. son of Baris, killed by the Zealots (v.) in the Temple during the anti-Roman revolt of 66-70 A.D. (cf. Flavius Josephus, Bell. Jud., IV; G. Ricciotti, Flavio Giuseppe tradotto e commentato. La guerra giudaica, III, Turin 1937, pp. 174-76).
About 15 other figures, whose name occurs mostly only once, appear in the books of Kings and Chronicles; they are generally of Levitical or priestly families. The name also occurs in Ezra 8:3, 11; 10:26; Neh. 11:4; Is. 8:2; I Macc. 5:18, 56.
Angelo Penna