The book of Zechariah is “the longest and most obscure” of the Twelve Minor Prophets, Jerome remarked. That may have been the reason why in 386 he visited the Alexandrian scholar Didymus the Blind and requested a work on this prophet. Though long thought to be lost, the work was rediscovered in 1941 at Tura outside Cairo along with some other biblical commentaries. As a result, Didymus’ commentary on Zechariah enjoys particular distinction as his only complete work on a biblical book extant in Greek whose authenticity is established, passed down by direct manuscript tradition, and critically edited. Thus it deserves this first appearance in English.
A disciple of Origen—whose own work on Zechariah reached only to chapter five—Didymus’ commentary on this apocalyptic book illustrates the typically allegorical approach to the biblical text that we associate with Alexandria. Didymus alone offers his readers a wide range of spiritual meanings on the obscure verses of Zechariah, capitalizing on his extraordinary familiarity with Holy Writ, and proceeding on a process of interpretation-by-association, frequently invoking also etymology and number symbolism to plumb the meaning of the text. No wonder he remarks, “The reader who understands it is a seer;” such is the richness of the hermeneutical offering.