The Branch of David

This reflection is part of the ongoing Forest Hills Haftorah Series. The rest of the content can be found here: https://www.sefaria.org/groups/FHJC-Haftorah-Series .

(above: Zecharia as portrayed by Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel)

The second half of the 6th century was a hopeful one; much more so than the first!

Recall that the Babylonian Empire's campaign against the Judean Kingdom reached its tragic climax in 586, with the sacking and destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of Solomon's glorious Temple. Fast forward a half-century, when in 538, Persia - the world power that supplanted Babylon - would give the Judeans permission to return home.

(Cyrus the great)

It is in this context that the prophet Zecharia enters the scene.

The proper names throughout the TaNaKh are oftentimes quite telling. In this case, Zechariah means YAH-remembered (זכר-יה). How fitting that Zechariah would be deeply engaged in the reading of the surviving texts of the scribes and prophets of the First Temple period, interpreting them for the Judeans returning from exile and demonstrating that God, in fact, remembers His people and His promises, and that brighter days are ahead.

Let's take a look at an example in this week's Haftorah.

Chapter three consists of a strange vision, in which Zechariah describes seeing the High Priest Joshua standing before a divine assembly. With Zechariah looking on, one of the angels charges Joshua with the following:

Note the promised servant's name at the end of the charge: Tzemah.

As for why, and to what end, and exactly who this servant Tzemah is is unstated.

If this name sounds familiar to you, there is good reason; For one of the prayers which makes up the thrice-daily Amidah prayer states the following (with the Artscroll translation):​​​​

So in our Amidah-prayer, our traditional liturgy asks for the tzemah, or the offspring of David to flourish.

And as it turns out, Artscroll's commentary to their Wasserman siddur says the following:

Zecharia (6:12) teaches that Messiah's name will be צמח, Tzemach, literally, the sprouting or flourishing of a plant. This indicates that the normal process of redemption is like the barely perceptible daily growth of a plant.

------Wassserman Edition Artscroll Siddur, page 108

However, recall that Zechariah is about recollection and interpretation. As far as the timeline of the prophets goes, he is at the very tail end.

Take a look at this helpful chart. You'll see Zecharia in a green box almost at the extreme right, towards the end of the 6th century.

While for us, anyone in the Bible, including Zechariah, is ancient; For him, there has already been hundreds of years worth of accumulated sacred texts and prophetic writings. Therefore, it is important to read his book with the following questions in mind:

What texts does Zechariah already have in his library? What ideas, or kernels of ideas, have already been expressed by other prophets previously, that he is now picking up on, developing, and re-applying to his own time and place?

(by the way, these are always worthwhile questions to ask, for all of the "older" prophets as well)

In this case, Zechariah is indeed playing with themes and images that the current returnees have inherited from the Judeans pre-exile.

The most explicit place where we see this idea occurring is Jeremiah, writing throughout the end of the 7th, and first half of the 6th century. (you can look back at the timeline above)

Then once again in chapter 33, Jeremiah starts off similarly, but then takes these prominses a step further:

We therefore see Zechariah reading the words of one of his predecessors, Jeremiah, who spoke so eloquently about the end of the exile, witnessing the promises manifest themselves before his very eyes.

If so, who, specifically, was this branch?

Zachariah gives us two major clues in chapter 6:

All we saw in Zechariah 3 is that God is bringing His servant Tzemach. Here we also learn the following:

1. Tzemach shall build the Temple
2. He will work together with a priest

When read in light of a few other texts, this new information actually gives us quite a bit; For we actually have someone in the TaNaKh who seems to exactly fit this description.

Here is an excerpt from the book of Ezra, which gives an account about this very time period:

Anyone sound familiar? Take a look back up at our first passage from this week's Haftorah, and you will see that someone called "Joshua the High Priest" is being spoken to in Zechariah's vision!

Here too, in Ezra, we have a priest named Jeshua, who is in charge of the work of the House of God, working with someone named Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel. There are a couple of points of importance about Zerubbabel.

Firstly, Shealtiel was the son of Jehoiachin, one of the very last kings of Judea. Zerubbabel therefore, very significantly, comes from the line of David. (1 Chronicles 3).

Secondly, according to the prophet Haggai, a contemporary of Zechariah, Joshua's and Zerubbabel's taking charge of rebuilding the Temple is actually a mandate that came all the way from On High:

In the ancient world, building a Temple to the gods was seen as the role of kings (hence, "Solomon's Temple") and kings oftentimes served in a High-Priestly role (though not in Israel).

These words of Haggai have the affect of bringing legitimacy to what appears to be an emerging, divinely-sanctioned diarchy, or ruling partnership between Zerubbabel, the descendant of David, and Joshua, the leader of the priests.

Here's a major (!!) question, however.

At some point, all mention of Zerubbabel in the TaNaKh is brought to a sudden, and unexplained halt!

In the beginning of Zechariah chapter 2, we see his visions being located in the second year of the Persian Emperor Darius, which would be the year 520. But that's the latest we can get. What did he accomplish after laying the foundation stone in Zecharia 4:9? What came of all of the hope and the hype?

This is shocking, but truth be told, no one knows the answer! And so unsurprisingly, there are some wild theories, one of which I'll share with you.

But before going into it, it is important to take a moment to explain some of the historical upheavals leading up to the year 520.

Cyrus will forever be remembered favorably as the Persian Emperor who issued the proclamation which would allow the Judeans to return to Zion and rebuild the Temple. (Just look at the stamp, issued in his honor 2,500 years after the fact!!! See 2 Chronicles 36 and Ezra 1 for its accounting in the TaNaKh).

More significantly for him, he was the founder of the first Persian empire (the "Achaemenid Empire), and bringing about the downfall of the Babylonians.

His son, Cambyses II, was the undisputed emperor after Cyrus's death. But when he died of gangrene in 522, the rule fell to his younger brother Bardiya. However, the Persian military commander Darius, with military backing, would very quickly seize power. There would then be civil war and attempted rebellions for two years throughout Persia, as Darius was seen by many (and correctly so) as an illegitimate usurper. In response, he claimed that Bardiya, whom he overthrew, was not actually the true brother of Cambyses, but was himself already another usurper, masquerading as part of the royal family, but whose real identity was a magician named Goumata.

Amazingly, to this very day, scholars are divided as to whether or not Darius's claims are true.

(above is the amazing Behistun inscription, which tells the story of the wars between Darius and Gaumata in three languages - Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian - all of them using cuneiform script. It is due to this that scholars have been able to decipher cuneiform, just as the Rosetta Stone enabled them to decipher Egyptian heiroglyphics. In the image, Darius is the tall one third from the left, and he has his foot on top of the defeated Gaumata.)

It was against this backdrop that Zerubbabel and Joshua would lead the way back from exile to Jerusalem. The empire was fraught with internal fighting. Rebellions were commonplace. No one emperor had unanimous support.

And in this context we get the following words from Haggai:

So with this historical background, combined with Haggai's and Zechariah's (and Jeremiah's) words above, consider what all of the following might add up to:

• The branch of David;
• Zerubbabel's bloodline;

• Zerubbabel as God's chosen and signet (signet's being associated with royalty);
• The building of the Temple;
• Oracles of empires being overthrown;
• An extended period of rebellion and instability throughout Persia, with Darius and his forces occupied elsewhere

With this, some scholars have posited that all of this points to what appears to have been a budding (pun very much intended) messianic fervor amongst the returning Judeans, with Zerubbabel being increasingly seen as a kingly successor of David.

In being influenced by words of previous prophets like Jeremiah, the Judeans would not be content with Zerubbabel as a mere Persian-appointed governor, and were impatiently waiting for him to declare Judea's complete independence as a restored monarchy (rather than a vassal-province) with a restored royal line.

(source: Daniel F O'Kennedy, Haggai 2:20-23: Call to rebellion or eschatological expectation?, 2014. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1010-99192014000200012#top62 )

Note that when Zechariah spoke of the branch of David, he never mentioned Zerubbabel explicitly.

Robert Alter's comments that, "Political considerations may have led Zechariah to suppress his name," (page 2599 in his Hebrew Bible Commentary).

In other words, perhaps this was due to an attempt to be subtle, so as to protect Zerubbabel from Persian suspicion. While it is true that explicit evidence for this is lacking in the TaNaKh, it is not absurd to conclude that there was such fervor, that it boiled over after all, and that the Persians felt a need to take action.

Of course this is in large part conjecture; But an interesting one with support amongst some of the "experts" at that. (As well as rejection from others, "experts" no less!)

I'll leave you with a question for thought:

If you buy this theory, Do you continue to pray for the tzemach of David, the branch of David, as it has been formulated in traditional Jewish liturgy? For perhaps we have been praying for something that has already come and gone!

And if you do continue to pray the same words, what do you think is the appropriate kavannah (intent)?

Of course, there is no reason that we can't draw on Zechariah's poetic and inspiring words, but use them differently from how he originally did. That is, perhaps he was referring to Zerubbabel, but we can still use them to express hope for someone yet to come.

Or, do you pray for something else altogether?