Isaiah 8:1-4; Matt. 23:35, Who is the martyr Zechariah?

Let’s consider a supposed contradiction in the word of Christ in Matt. 23:35, where He refers to the Jews being responsible for all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.”  Who is this “Zechariah?” 

·       Zech. 1:1 identifies the prophet as “Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet.”  But there is no record of his dying in such a way.  Jewish tradition says he was killed on the Day of Atonement.

·       On the other hand, there is a Zechariah the son of the priest Jehoiada in 2 Chron. 24:20-21.  “They stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the LORD.”

The charge is that Jesus was mistaken and spoke of the wrong Zechariah.  To bring in another potentially relevant passage, Isa. 8:2 speaks of “Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah” in the time of Isaiah.

We are going to share with you a rather lengthy quote from John Lightfoot’s Bible Commentary that sheds considerable light on the question.  Given its length and his dated language, we will summarize it at the conclusion.

…the difficulty under our hand is resolved, as I imagine, very clearly: and I suppose that Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah in Isaiah is the very same with our Zacharias the son of Jehoiada; and that the sense of Isaiah comes to this: in that and the foregoing chapter there is a discourse of the future destruction of Damascus, Samaria, and Judea. For a confirmation of the truth of this prophecy, God makes use of a double testimony: first, he commands the prophet Isaiah to write, over and over again, in a great volume, from the beginning to the end, “To hasten the spoil, he hastened the prey” (my note: this is the meaning of the name of one of Isaiah’s sons, referred to in Isa. 8:1 as Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz): and this volume should be an undoubted testimony to them, that God would certainly bring on and hasten the forementioned spoiling and destruction. “And moreover (saith God), I will raise up to myself two faithful martyrs,” (or witnesses,) who shall testify and seal the same thing with their words and with their blood, namely, Uriah the priest, who shall hereafter be crowned with martyrdom for this very thing, Jeremiah 26:20,23, and Zechariah the son of Barachiah, or Jehoiada, who is lately already crowned: he [Zechariah], the first martyr under the first Temple; this [Uriah], the last. Hear, thou Jew, who taxest Matthew in this place: your own authors assert, that Uriah the priest is to be understood by that Uriah who was killed by Jehoiakim; and that truly. We also assert, that Zechariah the son of Jehoiadah is to be understood by Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah; and that Matthew and Christ do not at all innovate in this name of Barachias, but did only pronounce the same things concerning the father of the martyr Zacharias, which God himself had pronounced before them by the prophet Isaiah.

Lightfoot’s conclusion is that Jesus is referring to the martyr, the son of Jehoiadah, who is referred to in Isaiah as “the son of Jeberechiah.”  In Isaiah the 2 martyrs are: Uriah who was the priest killed in the time that Jeroboam established the worship of the golden calf; and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah who was martyred in the time of King Joash.  Thus, these are the first and last martyrs in the times of the kings, which goes to Jesus’ point.  As to why this Zechariah is said to be son of Jehoiada in one place and Jeberechiah, we can only say what was often the case, that Jeberechiah would have been perhaps a grandfather.  Remember in Babylon that Daniel spoke of Nebuchadnezzar as “father” of King Belshazzar, when in fact he was his great grandfather.  Yet, Nebuchadnezzar was his father, the beginning of the dynasty.

This all makes sense to me and perhaps you have found it helpful.  In the end we “assume” the veracity of the Bible because it is the word of a perfect and holy God.  He cannot be in error as He is the definition of righteousness.  For that reason we always believe that seeming contradictions or difficult passages will always have a resolution when we have heard the “end of the story.”  Likewise, the One who is "the way, the truth and the life” must be trustworthy, and is trustworthy.  His word to us is without error and will accomplish the purpose God intends (Isa. 55:10-11).