“The Word of the Lord unto Zechariah, . . . Saying, I Saw by Night, and Behold a Man Riding upon a Red Horse, . . . and behind Him Were There Red Horses, Speckled, and White”
(See Zechariah 1:7–21.)
Dr. Ellis T. Rasmussen wrote:
“The messages of the Lord came to Zechariah in several visions using symbols, which an angel interpreted for the prophet. The first angels and horses represented God’s messengers reporting in a valley of Jerusalem that, for a time, all the world was at peace. That may well have referred to the favorable conditions provided by the Persian empire for the peaceful reconstructive work in Judah (Zech. 1:7–11).
“One angel asked the Lord when He would have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah that had lain waste for seventy years. The Lord replied that He was indeed zealous for the building up of Jerusalem, Zion, the temple, and other cities of the land. He was displeased with the nations that had gone to terrible extremes in afflicting Israel, and He would help her recover (Zech. 1:14–17, 14a).
“The nations that had ‘scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem’ were represented by four horns. Horns symbolize power, and four represented an excess of it used in the vanquishing of the last four kings of Judah. In contrast to the horns that push and hurt, the prophet next saw four craftsmen or artisans who would build and create, intimidating the ‘horns’ of the surrounding nations who might be tempted to attack Judah again [Zech. 1:18–21 and footnotes; for fulfillment, see Nehemiah 4–7].”
(A Latter-day Commentary on the Old Testament [1993], 681–82.)
