The Book of Zechariah

Eerdmans sent, some months back, a review copy of this very, very new volume without any expectation of either a positive or negative outcome of said review.

Over the centuries, the prophetic book of Zechariah has suffered from accusations of obscurity and has frustrated readers seeking to unlock its treasures. This work by Mark Boda provides insightful commentary on Zechariah, with great sensitivity to its historical, literary, and theological dimensions. Including a fresh translation of Zechariah from the original Hebrew, Boda delivers deep and thorough reflection on a too-often-neglected book of the Old Testament.

A generation ago scholars of the caliber of Gerhard von Rad, Martin Noth, and Walther Eichrodt, whose commentaries on the Old Testament were stellar examples of the genre, and who originally had said commentaries published in German, allowed them to appear in English in a series published by Westminster Press titled Old Testament Library.

That series was the best available, bar none.  Contributors came from Europe and North America and they were the best of the best at their craft.  Long before the present era, in which commentaries more and more have shifted their attention away from the actual text and onto how the text has been read and understood (the so called ‘Reception History’ movement), these scholars, and their commentaries, actually investigated the biblical text!  Imagine- books which help readers of the Bible understand what they are reading rather than diverting attention away from the text and focusing instead on how some artist in some Italian backwater or how some filmmaker in some Hollywood studio apartment see it.  Those were the days.

Enter, in these troubled times, when talking ABOUT the Bible has replaced any attempt to understand the Bible, the series of commentaries published by Eerdmans under the title “The New International Commentary on the Old Testament“.  Thank heaven, we have in it a series of volumes which bring sanity back to the discipline of biblical studies.  We have in it, commentary!   We have in it a new incarnation of the glory of the genre and a fitting heir to the fantastic standards of the Old Testament Library.

Mark Boda’s new commentary on Zechariah brings readers face to face with Zechariah and that, and that in sum and substance, is the reason commentaries exist (or at least should exist).

Boda begins his work with a clear and detailed examination of the book of Zechariah’s referential history, compositional history, literary form and structure, and inner-biblical allusions.  Then Boda helps readers come to terms with the message of Zechariah and he closes the first 56 pages of his work with a very lengthy bibliography.

Then the commentary proper begins and extends for over 610 pages.  The volume concludes with the usual indices, etc.  It is simply the most detailed and expressive commentary on any biblical book that I have yet read.  There is not a stone left unturned as Boda attempts, with glorious success, to open as many windows as possible by which to shed light on the biblical text.  Footnotes abound and sometimes they occupy more space on the page than the commentary proper.

Boda’s translation of Zechariah is exceptionally vivid and ranks right up there with the best of the English translations of the Bible, the Revised English Bible.  He ‘gets’ the Hebrew text so well that he brings it to linguistic life in such a way that modern readers will ‘get’ the meaning of the text like they never have before.

Another aspect of the work which needs to be discussed, ever so briefly, is the clearly Christian, clearly ‘from a faith perspective’ point of view of the commentator.  Boda is a Christian who reads Zechariah as a Christian as a part of the Bible of Christians.  Indeed, in a move guaranteed to annoy segments of the scholarly world, Boda even mentions the Holy Spirit!

The authors of the volumes of the Old Testament Library were Christians, who read the Bible as Christians, and who wrote for Christians.  Boda (and the other contributors to the volumes in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament) does the same.  Unashamedly.

If the volume has any fault it is the fault of transliteration.  There is simply no reason for Hebrew (or Greek) to be transliterated in a technical commentary such as this.  People who read Hebrew don’t need such helps and people who don’t read Hebrew can’t do anything with transliterated words anyway, except use them to pretend that they know Hebrew (or Greek).  To be sure, in olden times before computerized printing the setting of Hebrew or Greek or whatever necessitated a lot of extra work for publishers and it made sense to simply transliterate.  No longer can that be said.  Publishers, please, stop transliterating.

This is not the sort of volume one sits down and reads like one reads a novel or a collection of essays.  This is a demanding volume.  But the payoff is a gloriously full appreciation for and understanding of one of the most obscure biblical books.  Professor Boda is to be thanked for his labor and Eerdmans is to be thanked for bringing out a series that really does deserve to be called a commentary.

Such scholars as Boda and such commentaries as the NICOT are pleasant oases in the dry and (far too often) barren landscape of modern biblical scholarship.