c. 520 b.c.
By Zechariah’s time the borders of the land of Israel and Judah, later called Palestine, had been completely redrawn from the days before the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions. The minor Persian province to which exiles of Judah returned from Babylon was now called Judea, and it encompassed only a fraction of the territory that had once belonged to Judah. Edomites had migrated northwest from their traditional homeland just south of Moab into the area immediately south of Judea, and this land was now called Idumea. Territory that had once belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel was divided into several different minor provinces, including Samaria.
