Matthew 23:35

That upon you. This does not mean that the men of Christ’s generation were to be punished for the misdeeds of their fathers, for the Scriptures teach specifically that no man is punished for the sins of another (see Eze. 18:2-30; cf. Ex. 32:33). But their rejection of Jesus and His teachings made their guilt greater than that of any previous generation.

The righteous blood. That is, of innocent persons.

Abel. See on Gen. 4:8-10.

Zacharias. Doubtless Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the high priest, who was stoned to death in the courts of the Temple upon orders from King Joash, who reigned from 835 to 796 B.C. (2 Chron. 24:20-22; see Vol. II, p. 83). Numerous references in later Jewish literature to this murder leave no doubt that it made a profound impression upon the thinking of the nation. In Hebrew Bibles the books of Chronicles appear as the last books of Scripture, in the same position occupied by Malachi in our English Bibles (see Vol. I, p. 37). On the plausible assumption that Jesus named Abel and Zechariah because, according to the order of books in Hebrew Bibles, they represent the first and the last recorded martyrs, most scholars conclude that the Jewish order of books placing Chronicles last existed at least as early as the time of Jesus.

Son of Barachias. Zechariah the son of Jehoiada (2 Chron. 24:20-22) is the only person by this name mentioned in Scripture as having been slain thus (see DA 619).

There is no information concerning Zechariah, son of Berechiah (Zech. 1:1), dying a violent death. The same may be said of “Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah” of Isa. 8:2. It has been suggested that Jesus did not identify Zechariah as the “son of Barachias,” but that these words were added by a later scribe who, as he wrote, had in mind either the prophet Zechariah or the Zechariah of Isa. 8:2. It is worthy of note that in the parallel statement of Luke 11:51 Zacharias is not identified as a “son of Barachias.”

The temple. Gr. naos, the Temple proper as distinguished from the hieron, or Temple complex as a whole (see ch. 21:23), which included the courts and other buildings adjacent to it. Ordinarily only a priest had access to the inner court of the Temple, where the altar of sacrifice was, and the fact that Zechariah was “between the temple and the altar” suggests that he was on duty as a priest at the time of his martyrdom. If the courts of Solomon’s Temple were the same as those of Herod’s Temple, the assassins of Zechariah — unless they were priests or Levites — probably had no right to enter this court.