I1. This prophet was in Babylonian prison, and together with his companion Haggai, he helped to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, and to bring the scattered people together again, so that regiment and order could be established in the land. He is truly one of the most consoling prophets, for he presents many sweet and comforting visions and gives many sweet and kind words to comfort and strengthen the afflicted and scattered people to begin the building and the regiment, which until then had suffered great and various opposition; this he does until the fifth chapter.
2. in the fifth he prophesies, under a vision of the letter and the shekel, of the false teachers that should come afterward among the Jewish people, who would deny Christ; which vision still concerns the Jews today.
In the sixth he prophesies of the gospel of Christ and the spiritual temple to be built in all the world, because the Jews denied him and would not have him.
In the seventh and eighth, a question arises, to which the prophet answers, comforting and exhorting them once again to build and govern, and thus evoking such a prophecy of his time about rebuilding.
In the ninth he goes into the future time, and prophesies first in the tenth chapter, v. 4, how the great Alexander should win Tyrum, Zidon and the Philistines, so that the whole world would be opened to the future gospel of Christ, and introduces the King Christ in Jerusalem on a donkey.
6th But in the eleventh he prophesied that Christ should be sold of the Jews for thirty pieces of silver, wherefore he would also forsake them, that Jerusalem should be finally destroyed, and the Jews should be hardened and scattered in error, and so the gospel and the kingdom of Christ should come among the Gentiles after the passion of Christ, that he before, as the shepherd, should be slain, and the apostles, as the sheep, should be scattered; for he had to suffer before, and so come into his glory.
7 In the last chapter, when he disturbed Jerusalem, he also refers to the Levitical priesthood with its nature and utensils and feasts, and says: "All spiritual offices will be common to serve God with it, and no longer only of the tribe of Levi, that is, other priests, other feasts, other sacrifices, other worship should come, which could also be practiced by other tribes, even Egypt and all Gentiles. That is, the Old Testament was purely taken away.
Another "Preface to the Prophet Zechariah" is found before Luther's writing: "Der Prophet Zechariah ausgelegt durch Mart. Luther" in this volume.
*) This preface is found in Walch, in the Leipzig edition, vol. XII, p. 47 and in the Erlanger, vol. 63, p. 88.