13:2–6.
False Prophets
The phrase “cloak of hair” in 13:4 also appears elsewhere
in the Old Testament. The most famous association of prophets with cloaks or
mantles appears in the Elijah narratives. In 1 Kgs 19:13 Elijah covers his face
with his cloak when he meets God, and in v. 19 he throws his cloak over Elisha
as a gesture of drafting Elisha to be an apprentice. Next, 2 Kgs 2:8 mentions
the cloak again in a narrative in which Elijah struck the Jordan River causing
it to cease flowing temporarily at that spot. He and Elisha crossed the river,
and Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind, leaving the cloak for Elisha. Elisha
then struck the river with it, causing the water to cease flowing again and
allowing him to re-cross the river alone.
Zech 13:5 also borrows from another context, namely Amos
7:14. Any future false prophet will speak as did the earlier man, denying that
he is a prophet: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son” (i.e., an apprentice to
a prophet). A look at the background of Amos’s denial is useful. Modern readers
are accustomed to think of him as a prophet if for no other reason than that
the book bearing his name appears in the Book of the Twelve. In 7:14, however,
Amos denied being a “prophet” more strongly than does the shamed false prophet
of Zech 13:5. Amos not only denied being a prophet or prophet’s “son” (i.e., an
apprentice), he mentioned two other means by which he earned a living: herding
animals and tending sycamore trees. Amos only prophesied, one should deduce, at
the direct instigation of God. He was not a professional prophet.
The use of the words of Amos in Zech 13:5 was
intentional, of course, but not as proof that the shamed prophet was genuine.
The hypothetical prophet of Zech 13:5 continues his defense by claiming to be a
typical small farmer: “I am a man who tills the ground, for a man caused me to
possess it from my youth.” Several scholars suggest that the phrase “I am a man
who tills the soil” is a literary allusion that betrays the man as a liar to
the alert reader. The phrase is the same as in Gen 4:2 to describe Cain, just
before he killed his own brother Abel.
Discussions of confrontations with or even among prophets
occur elsewhere in the Old Testament. Perhaps the most famous is the
confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kgs 18:20–40, which
ended not only with God’s answering Elijah’s prayer for rain, but with Elijah’s
killing of the 400 prophets of Baal. Another relevant text is Isa 9:15, which
promised that God would cut off prophets who give false prophecies. Mic 2:6–11
narrates a disputation between Micah and people who questioned Micah’s accuracy
when he spoke. In the next century the prophet Jeremiah made a public
pronouncement in which he predicted that a prophet named Hananiah would be
taken into exile and die there (Jer 28:5–16) for speaking rebelliously against
God. Events such as these provide the canonical context in which to understand
Zech 13:4–6. (Paul L. Reddit, Zechariah 9-14 [International Exegetical
Commentary on the Old Testament; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2012], 117-18)
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