I have read Matthew 23 more times than I can count, and for years one sentence never registered with me.
In verse 35, Yeshua tells the Pharisees that all the righteous blood shed on earth, from Abel all the way to Zechariah, son of Berechiah, murdered between the temple and the altar, will come on them. 1 I used to assume this was simple. Abel was Abel. Zechariah was the prophet, the one with his own book.
Turns out it’s not that simple at all. I think the evidence points most strongly to Zechariah son of Jehoiada, the priest murdered in 2 Chronicles 24. The circumstances of that death line up incredibly well with Matthew’s description. But the name Berechiah is still a real problem, and I don't think it goes away as easily as some commentators pretend it does.
Two Zechariahs, One Difficult Name
Scripture has more than one man named Zechariah, and untangling which one Yeshua meant took me WAY longer than I care to admit. There’s the prophet, son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, who started his ministry around 520 BC. 2 And there’s a totally different Zechariah, back in 2 Chronicles, the son of a priest named Jehoiada.
Yeshua says the man in Matthew 23:35 was murdered between the Temple and the altar, and He calls him son of Berechiah.
And so, upon you shall come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar. (TLV)
On the surface, that name points to the prophet. 3 But Scripture never records the prophet’s murder. Now, to be clear, that silence doesn’t prove it didn’t happen. It just means Matthew is referencing a death at the sanctuary that the Tanakh nowhere attaches to Zechariah son of Berechiah.
Second Chronicles, on the other hand, gives us a Zechariah whose death matches Matthew very well. Zechariah son of Jehoiada is stoned in the courtyard of the LORD’s house. 4
God’s Spirit energized Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest. He stood up before the people and said to them, “This is what God says: ‘Why are you violating the commands of the Lord? You will not be prosperous. Because you have rejected the Lord, he has rejected you!’” They plotted against him and by royal decree stoned him to death in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple. King Joash disregarded the loyalty Zechariah’s father Jehoiada had shown him and killed Jehoiada’s son. As Zechariah was dying, he said, “May the Lord take notice and seek vengeance!” (2 Chronicles 24:20-22, NET)
Same sanctuary setting. Same righteous servant killed there. The one thing that doesn’t fit is the father’s name.
Leave out the patronymic entirely and there’s hardly anything to argue about. Zechariah son of Jehoiada becomes the obvious answer. Which is exactly why commentators have spent a very long time arguing about this verse. It isn’t that the Bible fails to offer a Zechariah who fits. It’s that it offers two pieces of identifying information pointing in two different directions. One matches the murder. The other matches the name.
What Happened to Zechariah Son of Jehoiada in 2 Chronicles 24
Joash was hidden from Athaliah by Jehoshabeath, Jehoiada’s wife, and grew up under their protection for six years.5 Jehoiada arranged his coronation later and kept him on the right path for years afterward. As long as Jehoiada lived, Joash did right in God’s sight.
But… then Jehoiada died.
Joash and the officials of Judah walked away from the house of the LORD and went after the Asherah poles and the idols instead.6 God sent prophets to call them back. Guess what? They wouldn’t listen. Shocker. 7
So the Spirit of God came on Jehoiada’s own son, also named Zechariah, and he stood up and told them exactly why everything was falling apart. In a classic example of killing the messenger, Zechariah is stoned in the Temple courtyard, at the king’s own command.8 Joash did it without any regard for the kindness Jehoiada had shown him, and Zechariah’s dying words asked the LORD to see it and hold them accountable.9
The household that saved Joash’s life becomes the household whose son Joash has killed.
Why Does Matthew Call Him “Son of Berechiah”?
I lean toward Zechariah son of Jehoiada. The circumstances of his death line up with Matthew a little too closely to ignore. But the patronymic, son of Berechiah, is a very real problem, and I’m not going to ignore it just because I have a preferred answer.
A small number of witnesses drop the patronymic altogether, including the original text of Codex Sinaiticus, even though a later editor went back and added it in. Modern critical editions of the Greek text keep the phrase. 10 Worth knowing but doesn’t make the problem go away.
Luke’s version doesn’t help either. If anything it adds to the difficulty. Luke 11:51 names Zechariah and gives no father at all.11
…from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation. (Luke 11:51, NET)
Both Gospels place him at the sanctuary. Only Matthew gives us the name Berechiah.
There’s one more possibility, and I want to be totally honest about where it leads. Zechariah 1:1 calls the prophet son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, while Ezra just calls him son of Iddo. 12 Now, biblical genealogies skip generations all the time, so in theory there could be an otherwise unknown Berechiah somewhere in Jehoiada’s line. But no biblical text tells us that. I'd rather admit I don't know than give you a genealogy I invented to solve the problem.
And I want to say this clearly: Christians committed to the full trustworthiness of Scripture have proposed more than one solution to this problem. I’m not making my preferred identification a litmus test for anybody’s faithfulness. Careful readers end up in different places here. So feel free to disagree with me!
From Abel to Zechariah: Tracing a Canonical Pattern
Abel isn’t just the first murder victim in the Bible. Matthew is specific about that. He calls him “righteous Abel”.13 This is righteous blood answering righteous blood snd not just an early death paired with a later one.
There might be something deeper going on here than book order. Abel’s blood cries out to God from the ground in Genesis 4:10. The dying Zechariah asks the LORD to see his murder and avenge it in 2 Chronicles 24:22.14 Both deaths become appeals… both are asking God to reckon with what was done.
There’s a second layer some readers find compelling, and I’ll admit I’m one of them. I have mentioned this more than once in some of our live Bible studies.
One traditional Jewish ordering of the Hebrew Bible, explicitly attested in the Talmud and followed by most modern printed Tanakhs, closes the Writings with Chronicles rather than Malachi, like our English Old Testaments do.15
If Yeshua has that ordering in mind, “Abel to Zechariah” stops sounding like a random pair and starts looking like canonical bookends. Abel’s righteous blood in Genesis, the opening book. Zechariah’s righteous blood in Chronicles, the final book.
Plenty of modern commentators read it that way and, after studying Tanakh in my graduate classes, I find it persuasive. But the saying alone can’t prove that ordering was fixed and universal in the first century, so I’m not going to tell you it’s settled, because it’s not.
A Later Echo in Rabbinic Tradition
Centuries later, rabbinic literature was still treating Zechariah son of Jehoiada’s death as a symbol, a stand-in for innocent blood that demands judgment. One well-known narrative has the Babylonian commander Nebuzaradan discovering Zechariah’s blood still bubbling on the ground when Jerusalem falls. 16
That story is far too late to tell us what Yeshua’s first-century audience actually knew. What it does tell us is that this murder stayed alive in Jewish memory for a very long time. A related tradition ties Lamentations 2:20, which asks whether priest and prophet should be slain in the sanctuary, to this same man. 17
What Yeshua’s Warning Actually Means
Before I say anything else, one caution. This passage should never become a license to blame Jewish people as a whole for prophetic bloodshed. Yeshua’s accusation is aimed at specific people doing a specific thing. The specific scribes and Pharisees He’s addressing claim to reject their ancestors’ violence, and in the very next breath, they’re preparing to repeat it. 18
Matthew isn’t building a doctrine of inherited guilt passed down like debt. The weight of the passage falls on people who repeat the pattern they claim to condemn. That’s the charge. They condemn the prophet-killers of the past while getting ready to persecute the messengers standing in front of them.
Their rejection of those messengers becomes, in Matthew’s mind, the last chapter of a story that started a long time ago.
So where does that leave the verse itself? I can’t prove beyond a doubt that Matthew means Zechariah son of Jehoiada. The father’s name is still the hard part, and I don’t think that difficulty resolves cleanly.
But the death itself points hard toward 2 Chronicles 24. A messenger, rejected. Killed inside the sanctuary. His last words asking God to remember. Set that next to Abel, whose blood is still crying out from the ground centuries later, and the warning stops being about one disputed name.
It becomes about a pattern, and Yeshua is telling His generation they’re standing inside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Zechariah, son of Berechiah, in Matthew 23:35? Most likely, Yeshua meant Zechariah son of Jehoiada, the priest stoned in the Temple courtyard in 2 Chronicles 24:20 to 22. The father’s name, Berechiah, is the unresolved detail, since the Chronicles account names his father as Jehoiada, not Berechiah.
Is Matthew 23:35 a contradiction with 2 Chronicles 24? It’s a genuine textual difficulty rather than a clear contradiction. The death described matches 2 Chronicles 24 closely, while the patronymic matches the prophet Zechariah in Zechariah 1:1. Scholars have proposed several explanations, and no single reading is universally settled.
Why does Matthew say “son of Berechiah” instead of “son of Jehoiada”? There’s no fully certain answer. Possibilities include an otherwise unrecorded Berechiah in Jehoiada’s family line, a very early copying tradition, or an intentional link to the prophet’s canonical name. Luke’s parallel account in Luke 11:51 names Zechariah without any father at all, which does not resolve the question either way.
What is the difference between Zechariah the prophet and Zechariah son of Jehoiada? Zechariah the prophet, son of Berechiah and grandson of Iddo, wrote the book of Zechariah around 520 BC. Zechariah son of Jehoiada was a priest, roughly three centuries earlier, stoned in the Temple courtyard by order of King Joash. Scripture doesn’t record the prophet’s death.
What does “from Abel to Zechariah” mean? Abel is the first murder recorded in the Torah, and Zechariah’s death appears in 2 Chronicles, the final book in one traditional Jewish ordering of the Hebrew Bible. Read that way, the phrase spans the full canon rather than referring to two isolated deaths.
Dig Deeper
Genesis 4:8-10, the blood of Abel crying out from the ground. 2 Chronicles 24:15-22, the full account of Jehoiada, Joash, and Zechariah’s death. Zechariah 1:1, establishing the prophet’s own lineage. Luke 11:47-51, the parallel version of this same saying. Lamentations 2:20, the verse behind the later rabbinic tradition.
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About the Author
Diane Ferreira is a Jewish believer in Yeshua, a published author, speaker, seminary student, wife, and proud mom. She is the founder of She’s So Scripture and She Opens Her Bible. She is the author of several books, including The Proverbs 31-ish Woman, which debuted as Amazon’s #1 New Release in Religious Humor, as well as Holy, Hormonal and Holding On.
She is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Jewish Studies in seminary, with her favorite topics being the early church and Biblical Hebrew. Diane writes and teaches from a unique perspective, bridging her Jewish heritage with vibrant faith in the Messiah to bring clarity, depth, and devotion to everyday believers.
When she’s not writing, studying, or teaching, you’ll find her curled up with a good book, crocheting something cozy, traveling, or playing her favorite video games.
Notes
1 Matthew 23:35, TLV.
² Zechariah 1:1.
3 Matthew 23:35, TLV.
4 2 Chronicles 24:20-22, NET.
5 2 Chronicles 22:10-12; 23.
6 2 Chronicles 24:17-19.
7 2 Chronicles 24:19.
8 2 Chronicles 24:20-21, NET.
9 2 Chronicles 24:22, NET.
10 Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th ed., Matthew 23:35 and apparatus; Codex Sinaiticus (א*), Matthew 23:35.
11 Luke 11:47-51.
12Zechariah 1:1; Ezra 5:1, 6:14.
13 Matthew 23:35, TLV, "righteous Abel."
14 Genesis 4:10; 2 Chronicles 24:22.
15 b. Bava Batra 14b.
16 b. Gittin 57b.
17Lamentations Rabbah, on Lamentations 2:20; cf. Rashi on Lamentations 2:20. Section numbering varies by edition.
18Matthew 23:29-36.
Tree of Life (TLV) – Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures, Tree of Life Version*. Copyright © 2014,2016 by the Tree of Life Bible Society. Used by permission of the Tree of Life Bible Society.
Biblical Studies Press. The NET Bible. New English Translation. Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C., 1996–2017. https://netbible.com