Zechariah 7:8

"And the word of Jehovah came unto Zechariah, saying, Thus hath Jehovah of hosts spoken, saying, execute true judgment, and show kindness and compassion every man to his brother".

These and the following verses amount to a Bible lesson taught by Zechariah to his inquirers. They constitute somewhat of a thumbnail summary of what the previous prophets had taught.

We are purposely passing over the allegations of some critical scholars to the effect that this or that passage is an interpolation, or that it belongs in another place, or that some later editor placed it. The words of Leupold are profoundly true with regard to such things:

"Statements such as Zechariah 7:8 should not be classed as interpolations as the critics do. If redactors shifted about phrases such as these in a rather arbitrary manner, the current Old Testament text would have lost all right to serious consideration. Then, the current text could never have been treated as reverently as it was by our Lord and his disciples."[18]

As Watts said, "Zechariah shows a knowledge of earlier prophecy at every step in his book. This is one of the explicit references to such."[19]