3. Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth. Zechariah here follows the practice of Third Isaiah, who attributes new names to Jerusalem in keeping with its dramatically transformed nature in the restoration of Zion.

4. each with his staff in hand because of their many years. In the new era of peace and prosperity, the city will be filled with people who will have lived to a ripe old age. The complement to this multiplication of elders is the children playing in the squares.

6. Does it seem beyond the remnant of this people in these days? This rhetorical question is addressed to those who might doubt the capacity of the people to complete the project of rebuilding the Temple. It is surely not beyond God to conceive such a consummation, and it should not be beyond the people. One might note that many scholars view the recurrent phrase “the remnant of this people” as a designation for those who remained in Judah after its conquest by the Babylonians.

7. I am about to rescue My people from the land of the east. The plausible inference from these words is that a substantial population of exiles from Judah remained in Babylonia after Cyrus’s decree permitting return, and this seems historically very likely. “The land of the sunset” is added to convey the sense “everywhere.”

8. May your hands be strong. These words, which will be repeated in verse 12, are an exhortation to those engaged in the arduous effort of rebuilding the Temple, as the reference to the rebuilding in the second part of this verse makes clear.

these words from the prophets. The reference is probably to Haggai and to Zechariah himself.

9. the wages of man was naught and the wages of beast was nothing. Man reaped no profit for his labor, and there was no food for his beasts of burden.

and for him coming and going there was no peace from the foe. Although other identifications have been proposed, the language sounds like a reference to siege. The same Hebrew phrase (literally, “going out and coming in”) is used to describe the besieged Jericho in Joshua.

I set each man against his fellow. If these lines in fact refer to Jerusalem besieged by the Babylonians, what this formulation reflects is the bitter divisions within the people during that moment of crisis. Jeremiah, one recalls, was the object of a murderous conspiracy.

12. a curse . . . a blessing. Zechariah invokes common biblical usage, in which “curse” means a byword of calamity and “blessing” the opposite.

18. the fast of the fourth month. This reversal of a whole series of fasts addresses the question of the people in Jerusalem as to whether they should continue to keep two particular fasts.

good festivals. This rather odd use of “good” with “festivals” may be influenced by the Late Biblical yamim tovim, “good days,” for “festivals,” which occurs in Esther and becomes standard in rabbinic Hebrew.

And love truth and peace. Abraham ibn Ezra aptly observes that what God really wants of His people is not the awkward practice of fasts but the love of truth and peace, a life of ethical behavior.

19. Peoples and the dwellers of many towns yet shall come. This vision of the nations coming to seek out the God of Israel is in keeping with a recurrent theme in Third Isaiah and may well be influenced by him.

21. ten people from all the tongues of the nations shall grasp the border of a Jew’s garment. This vivid image conveys the sense of throngs of foreigners desperate to join the people with whom God dwells. The term yehudi, “Jew,” never appears in earlier biblical literature, although it occurs frequently in Esther, which also belongs to the Persian period. Yehudi is palpably moving toward the meaning of “Jew” because it is now hard to speak of a “Judahite” (Hebrew, ben yehudah), given that the kingdom of Judah no longer exists, having been replaced by the Persian province of Yehud.