Zechariah, a contemporary of Haggai, lived in the time of the Persian King Darius I and encouraged the restored Judean community to rebuild the Temple. In chapters 1 through 8, through a series of symbolic visions explained to him by an angel, the prophet assured the people that they would succeed in the rebuilding, that God would return to Jerusalem and would bring the scattered exiles back and settle them in the Holy Land in peace and prosperity. According to Zechariah, many nations will come and worship Israel’s God and become his people; the governor, Zerubbabel, and the priest, Joshua, will lead the people; a “branch” (perhaps Zerubbabel) from the line of David will rule as king; and the fast days that commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem will become joyous festivals. Chapters 9–14 contain pronouncements (possibly from a different prophet or prophets) that envision the future culminating in God’s defeat of the enemy nations, rule by the House of David, the end of idolatry, and universal worship of the Lord alone in Jerusalem. The visions in these chapters influenced the growth of apocalyptic literature.
Steinhardt was one of the founders of a group of artists in Berlin called Die Pathetiker (The Sorrowful Ones), early practitioners of what later came to be known as expressionism. Expressionists…
Weber was one of the few American modernists to paint religious subjects. He painted Sabbath around the time he became associated with a group of American Yiddish writers called Di yunge (The Young…
[ . . . ] Why does the present Jewish fate appear so strongly connected to our entire past and to all that is currently unfolding before our eyes? At times it seemed that many distinct events stood…