Matthew 23:35

Jesus was not saying that the Jews who rejected Him were responsible for the deaths of all the righteous martyrs throughout biblical history. They simply were the ones who would add the last measure of guilt that would result in the outpouring of God’s wrath for all those murders.

"In the case of the Jews, the limit of misbehavior had been almost reached, and with the murder of the Messiah and His Apostles would be transgressed." [Note: Plummer, p. 320-21.]

Abel was the first righteous person murdered that Scripture records (Genesis 4:8). We do not know exactly when Zechariah the prophet, the son of Berechiah, died, but he began prophesying as a young man in 520 B.C. and delivered some prophecies in 518 B.C. He may have been the last martyr in Old Testament history. [Note: See Gleason L. Archer Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, p. 425.] However according to Jewish tradition this Zechariah died peacefully at an advanced age. [Note: Lives of the Prophets 15:6.]

Many students of this problem believe that the Zechariah to whom Jesus referred was the priest whom the Jews stoned in the temple courtyard (2 Chronicles 24:20-22). That man died hundreds of years earlier than Zechariah the prophet. Jesus seems to have been summarizing all the righteous people the Jews had slain throughout Old Testament history. Zechariah the son of Jehoiada was the last martyr in the last book of the Hebrew Bible, so Jesus may have been saying the equivalent of "all the martyrs from Genesis to Revelation." Nevertheless that Zechariah was the son of Jehoiada, not Berechiah, and Jesus mentioned Berechiah as the father of the Zechariah He meant (cf. 2 Chronicles 24:22). Berechiah may have been the actual father of this martyr, and the writer of 2 Chronicles may have designated him as the son of his famous grandfather, Jehoiada. The fact that Abel’s name begins with the letter A and Zechariah’s name with the letter Z is simply coincidence. Z is not the last letter in either the Hebrew or the Greek alphabet.