There can be little doubt that, apart from the few interpolations noted, these eight chapters are genuine prophecies of Zechariah, who is mentioned in the Book of Ezra as the colleague of Haggai, and contemporary of Zerubbabel and Joshua at the time of the rebuilding of the Temple.[722] Like the oracles of Haggai, these prophecies are dated according to the years of Darius the king, from his second year to his fourth. Although they may contain some of the exhortations to build the Temple, which the Book of Ezra informs us that Zechariah made along with Haggai, the most of them presuppose progress in the work, and seek to assist it by historical retrospect and by glowing hopes of the Messianic effects of its completion. Their allusions suit exactly the years to which they are assigned. Darius is king. The Exile has lasted about seventy years.[723] Numbers of Jews remain in Babylon,[724] and are scattered over the rest of the world.[725] The community at Jerusalem is small and weak: it is the mere colony of young men and men in middle life who came to it from Babylon; there are few children and old folk.[726] Joshua and Zerubbabel are the heads of the community, and the pledges for its future.[727] The exact conditions are recalled as recent which Haggai spoke of a few years before.[728] Moreover, there is a steady and orderly progress throughout the prophecies, in harmony with the successive dates at which they were delivered. In November 520 they begin with a cry to repentance and lessons drawn from the past of prophecy.[729] In January 519 Temple and City are still to be built.[730] Zerubbabel has laid the foundation; the completion is yet future.[731] The prophet’s duty is to quiet the people’s apprehensions about the state of the world,[732] to provoke their zeal,[733] give them confidence in their great men,[734] and, above all, assure them that God is returned to them[735] and their sin pardoned.[736] But in December 518 the Temple is so far built that the priests are said to belong to it;[737] there is no occasion for continuing the fasts of the Exile,[738] the future has opened and the horizon is bright with the Messianic hopes.[739] Most of all, it is felt that the hard struggle with the forces of nature is over, and the people are exhorted to the virtues of the civic life.[740] They have time to lift their eyes from their work and see the nations coming from afar to Jerusalem.[741] These features leave no room for doubt that the great bulk of the first eight chapters of the Book of Zechariah are by the prophet himself, and from the years to which he assigns them, November 520 to December 518. The point requires no argument. There are, however, three passages which provoke further examination—two of them because of the signs they bear of an earlier date, and one because of the alteration it has suffered in the interests of a later day in Israel’s history.