Behold Your King: The Hope for the House of David in the Book of Zechariah. By ANTHONY R. PETTERSON.

Abstract

This monograph, the revised version of the author’s doctoral thesis, aims to show that (1) the book of Zechariah reflects the hope for an eschatological king of Davidic descent, and (2) that Zechariah 1–8 and 9–14 present this hope in a continuous and coherent manner. The introductory chapter provides a short discussion of the date and setting of the book of Zechariah. Petterson states, without much discussion, that Zechariah the prophet is responsible for the whole book bearing his name. According to him, Zechariah wrote Zechariah 9–14 ‘in a later period in the prophet’s ministry’ (p. 3). This brings me to one of my major concerns with this monograph. First, any claim of Zecharian authorship of the entire book of Zechariah must be made in dialogue with current scholarship. Secondly, given this claim of Zecharian authorship, it is unclear what Petterson means when he later states that he will read the ‘final form’ of the book of Zechariah and when he refers to the final editor(s) (e.g. pp. 45, 99, 247). After a careful reading of Petterson’s book, I suspect that what he means with ‘final form’ is not the end result of gradual textual growth, but the immediate product of one author, namely Zechariah. If this is correct, Petterson’s use of this expression is misleading. He further states that this ‘final form’ is an internally coherent literary work. For Petterson, this means that a passage in Zechariah 1–8 can shed light upon the meaning of a passage in Zechariah 9–14.