Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Zechariah · About this commentary
The Horseman Among the Myrtles
Zechariah 1:7-17
7 On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius, Yahweh’s word came to the prophet Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, saying, · WEB
A patrol reports that the whole earth is quiet, and the quiet turns out to be the complaint rather than the comfort.
The vision is dated to a single night — the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month Shebat — and everything through the four chariots belongs to it.
What the prophet sees is small and unexplained. A rider has halted among the myrtle trees that were in a ravine, his mount red, with more horses behind him. A ravine is low ground, and myrtles are ordinary shrubs. Nothing in the picture is grand.
His question — my lord, what are these? — introduces the figure who carries the whole first half of the book, the angel who talked with me, a phrase that recurs in eleven verses. The prophet consistently does not know what he is looking at.
The riders report: we have walked back and forth through the earth, and behold, all the earth is at rest and in peace Zechariah 1:11.
That sounds like good news and is the problem. A patrol of the whole world finds nothing stirring — no upheaval, no judgment, no movement of any kind toward the small unwalled town where the report is delivered. The empires are comfortable, and Jerusalem 's situation is therefore permanent.
Which is why the angel, not the prophet, asks the question in verse 12: how long will you not have mercy on Jerusalem... against which you have had indignation these seventy years? The intercession comes from the messenger.
The answer arrives with kind and comforting words, and then in two parts. First, jealousy — I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. Second, and sharper, a distinction about the nations that are at ease: I was but a little displeased, but they added to the calamity Zechariah 1:15. The instruments of a measured judgment exceeded their commission, and the excess is charged to them.
Then the reversal, and it turns on one repeated word. God has returned with mercy, the house shall be built, a measuring line goes out — and the cities will again overflow, Zion will again be comforted, Jerusalem will again be chosen. Three times in a single verse, to a people whose whole difficulty was that nothing was happening again.
settled What this mark means