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Zechariah 1: What the Passage Says

73 claims across 21 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Zechariah 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the second year of King Darius, the word of the LORD comes to the prophet Zechariah, calling the people to return to God and not repeat their ancestors' refusal to listen. Three months later Zechariah sees a night vision of a rider among myrtle trees with horses that have patrolled the earth and found it quiet; an angel asks how long God will withhold mercy from Jerusalem, and God answers with words of comfort and a promise to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, and choose Jerusalem again. Zechariah then sees four horns that scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem, and four craftsmen who come to throw those horns down.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah.
    • Zechariah was the son of Berechiah.
    • Berechiah was the son of Iddo.
    • The word came saying the following.
  2. 1:2
    • The LORD was greatly angry with the fathers of those addressed.
  3. 1:3
    • The LORD instructs Zechariah to say to them what follows.
    • The LORD of hosts says: Return to me.
    • The LORD of hosts declares this.
    • The LORD of hosts says he will return to them.
  4. 1:4
    • They are told not to be like their fathers.
    • The former prophets cried out to those fathers.
    • The former prophets said: Thus says the LORD of hosts.
    • The message was: Turn now from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.
    • The fathers did not listen.
    • The fathers did not pay attention to the LORD.
    • The LORD declares this.
  5. 1:5
    • The question is asked: where are your fathers?
    • The question is asked: do the prophets live forever?
  6. 1:6
    • The question is asked whether the LORD's words and statutes overtook the fathers.
    • The LORD commanded those words and statutes to his servants the prophets.
    • The fathers turned back and spoke.
    • The fathers said the LORD of hosts purposed to do to them according to their ways and their deeds.
    • The fathers said the LORD has dealt with them accordingly.
  7. 1:7
    • On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah.
    • Zechariah was the son of Berechiah.
    • Berechiah was the son of Iddo.
    • The word came saying the following.
  8. 1:8
    • Zechariah saw during the night.
    • He saw a man riding on a red horse.
    • The man was standing among the myrtle trees in a low place.
    • Behind the man were red, sorrel, and white horses.
  9. 1:9
    • Zechariah asked: my lord, what are these?
    • The angel who talked with Zechariah answered him.
    • The angel said he would show Zechariah what these were.
  10. 1:10
    • The man standing among the myrtle trees answered.
    • The man said these are the ones the LORD has sent to range through the earth.
  11. 1:11
    • They answered the angel of the LORD who was standing among the myrtle trees.
    • They said they had ranged through the earth.
    • They said all the earth sits still and is at rest.
  12. 1:12
    • The angel of the LORD answered and spoke.
    • The angel asked the LORD of hosts how long he would withhold mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah.
    • The angel said the LORD had been angry with them these seventy years.
  13. 1:13
    • The LORD answered the angel who talked with Zechariah.
    • The LORD's answer consisted of good words and comforting words.
  14. 1:14
    • The angel who talked with Zechariah spoke to him.
    • The angel told him to cry out and say the following.
    • Thus says the LORD of hosts.
    • The LORD is jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with great jealousy.
  15. 1:15
    • The LORD is greatly angry with the nations that are at ease.
    • The LORD says he was only a little angry.
    • The LORD says the nations added to the calamity.
  16. 1:16
    • Therefore thus says the LORD.
    • The LORD has returned to Jerusalem with mercies.
    • The LORD's house shall be built in Jerusalem.
    • The LORD of hosts declares this.
    • A measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem.
  17. 1:17
    • The angel told him to cry out again and say the following.
    • Thus says the LORD of hosts.
    • The LORD's cities shall again overflow with prosperity.
    • The LORD shall again comfort Zion.
    • The LORD shall again choose Jerusalem.
  18. 1:18
    • Zechariah lifted up his eyes and looked.
    • He saw four horns.
  19. 1:19
    • Zechariah asked the angel who talked with him what these were.
    • The angel answered that these are the horns that scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.
  20. 1:20
    • The LORD showed Zechariah four craftsmen.
  21. 1:21
    • Zechariah asked what these were coming to do.
    • The answer was given.
    • The answer said these are the horns that scattered Judah.
    • The scattering was such that no man lifted up his head.
    • The craftsmen have come to terrify the horns.
    • The craftsmen have come to cast down the horns of the nations.
    • Those nations lifted up their horn against the land of Judah to scatter it.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
The eighth month of the Hebrew calendar falls in our October–November. Darius is Darius I of Persia; his second year is 520 BC. Judah was then a small province of the Persian Empire, so events were dated by the reigning Persian king rather than by a king of Judah. Hebrew "son of" can mean any descendant, which is why Ezra 5:1 calls Zechariah simply "son of Iddo", grandson.
1:2
"Fathers" in the King James means ancestors generally, not male parents. The generation meant here is the one that lived before Jerusalem fell to Babylon in 587 BC and the people were deported.
1:3
"The LORD of hosts" is Hebrew *YHWH tsevaot*, the LORD of the armies, meaning the heavenly forces at his command. LORD printed in capitals stands for the personal name of God, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud. "Turn" and "return" here are the same Hebrew verb (*shuv*), so the line has a deliberate echo: turn back to me, and I will turn back to you.
1:4
"The former prophets" are the prophets who spoke before the exile (figures such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos) as against Zechariah's own generation speaking after the return.
1:6
The Hebrew picture behind "take hold of" is of pursuit: the words chased the ancestors down and overtook them, like a pursuer catching a runner.
1:7
Shebat is the Babylonian name for the eleventh month, falling in our January–February; the Jews adopted these month names during the exile. The date is about February 519 BC, roughly three months after the message in verse 1.
1:8
The myrtle is a dense evergreen shrub common in the hills around Jerusalem. "The bottom" means a hollow or deep valley. The riders would have suggested to a first hearer the mounted couriers of the Persian Empire, who patrolled the provinces and reported back to the king. The exact shade of the second color (King James "speckled") is uncertain in Hebrew; it is somewhere between red and brown.
1:9
"My lord" is ordinary polite address to a superior, roughly "sir", not a divine title. The angel who speaks with Zechariah acts as his guide and interpreter through this and the following visions.
1:10
These riders were like scouts. They rode all over to see what was happening. Then they came back and told what they saw.
1:11
"All the earth sitteth still" means the world is undisturbed and quiet. After the revolts at the start of Darius's reign the Persian Empire had settled, peaceful for the empire, but a sign that nothing had yet changed for the Jews still living under it.
1:12
The seventy years point back to Jeremiah's word that Babylon's domination would last seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11; 29:10). "Threescore and ten" is the King James way of writing seventy, a score is twenty.
1:14
Zion was originally the fortified hill David captured in Jerusalem; the name came to stand for the temple hill, and then for the city and its people as a whole. The Hebrew word behind "jealous" (*qanaʾ*) means fierce, possessive devotion (the passion of a husband for his wife, or of a man defending what is his), not petty envy.
1:15
"The heathen" is the King James rendering of the ordinary Hebrew word for the nations, meaning the peoples other than Israel; it carries no sense of savagery. "Helped forward the affliction" means they went beyond what was intended and made the punishment harsher than it was meant to be.
1:16
"My house" is the temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. Rebuilding had begun after the return from exile but had stalled for years. A measuring line was the builder's cord used to lay out a site; stretching it over a city was the standard sign that construction was about to begin.
1:17
"Shall be spread abroad" describes towns so full that they overflow their own boundaries, a picture of population and prosperity returning to a region emptied by war and deportation.
1:18
A horn is a standard Hebrew image for strength and aggressive power, taken from a bull or ram driving with its horns; it stands for a king or a nation. Four suggests the four points of the compass, enemies from every direction.
1:19
Scattered means the people were forced away from home. They ended up spread out in faraway lands. Judah and Israel were the two parts of the land God's people lived in.
1:20
The King James "carpenters" is misleading: the Hebrew word covers any skilled worker in wood, stone or metal. Smiths are probably meant here, since their tools could cut off a horn.
1:21
"Fray" is old English for frighten or terrify. "Not lift up his head" is an idiom for being so crushed or humiliated that a person cannot hold himself upright. "Gentiles" is again the ordinary word for the nations; "lifted up their horn" means made a violent show of power.

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