Zechariah 1:8

I saw by night,.... Or, "that night" (m); the night of the twenty fourth of Sebat; a proper and usual time for visions; and it may denote the obscurity of the vision, as it was in some respects to

I saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom; and behind him were there red horses, speckled, and white. I saw by night.

I saw: in a vision God communicates his word, mind, or will to the prophet. By night; either literally, it was by night that Zechariah had this vision, or with this it may note the obscurity and mysteriousness of the vision, for it may be emblematical, as the myrtles and the bottom are. Behold; mark well what I saw, as now I relate it to you. A man; one in human shape, Christ Jesus in shape of a man so he appeared to Ezekiel, 40:3, and to Daniel, . Riding; in a posture of readiness, speed, and resolution to help his people, and to appear for them in some tokens of greatness and majesty, . Upon a red horse: both the beast is noted, a horse, bold, strong, speedy, and gallant; and the colour is noted also; in the same colour he appeared to Isaiah, see . This colour is a symbol of his coming to avenge his own just quarrel, and the unjust dealings of his and his people’ s enemies. He stood among the myrtle trees; he posteth himself in a convenient place to observe and be ready, (as needful,) among humble, verdant, fragrant, pleasant, and much-valued trees, emblem of the flourishing, fruitful, and excellent saints and servants of God. In the bottom: this bottom or low valley, in which the myrtles grew, (probably on some river’ s bank,) is an emblem of the church in a low, mourning, afflicted state; then it is most verdant, and fragrant as these trees, or as spices bruised in a mortar. Behind him; Christ was, as beseems a captain, in the head; the rest, as his soldiers or servants, are behind attending on him. Red horses; horses of the same colour, not without their riders, though they are not expressed; but it is a synecdoche, horses and horsemen are both intended, and these are angels, . Now the colour of these horses is, 1. Red, denoting probably the bloody condition of states and kingdoms by wars one against another, either when God punisheth his church, or when he avengeth himself and his church on his enemies and hers; which will appear on a survey of the times past, when Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, or Roman empires did successively by wars do God’ s work, his strange work, &c.; Isaiah 10 Isaiah 14. 2. Speckled; a mixed colour, made up of white, red, and black, as some guess, an emblem of affairs of different complexion; not all prosperous, nor all unprosperous; not all dark, nor all light, as the day the prophet describes neither day nor night; such times did the Jews know, during the seventy prophetic weeks, from the beginning of them to the Messiah’ s coming. 3. White; an emblem of the best days and state the church should be in, so ,14, and the empire too with it.

Zechariah 1:8 I saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that [were] in the bottom; and behind him [were there] red horses, speckled, and white.Ver. 8. I saw by night] The usual time for such revelations. It may note, moreover, the obscurity of the prophecy; hence also the mention of myrtle trees, low and shady, and that in a bottom, as Calvin conceiveth; and all this that he might give a taste of good hope to the Jews by little and little. And behold a man riding upon a red horse] Not Alexander the Great, riding upon his horse Bucephalus, and translating the empire from the Persians to the Grecians, as Arias Montanus conceited it; but the man Christ Jesus, 1 Timothy 2:5, the Captain of the Lord’ s host, Joshua 4:14, and of our salvation, Heb. ii. 0. Riding upon a red horse] In the same sense, saith one, that this colour is given to his garments, Isaiah 63:1-3, and to the angel’ s horse, Revelation 6:4. The wild bull, saith another, of all things, cannot abide any red colour. Therefore the hunter for the nonce, standing before a tree, puts on a red garment; whom when the bull seeth, he runneth at him as hard as he can drive; but the hunter, stepping aside, the bull’ s horns stick fast in the tree; as, when David slipped aside, Saul’ s spear stuck fast in the wall. Such a hunter is Christ; he, lifted up upon the tree of his cross, had his garment dipped and dyed in his own blood, as one that cometh with red garments from Bozrah. Therefore the devil and his angels (like wild bulls of Bashan) ran at him with all their force (in that three-hours’ darkness especially), but he, delivering himself as a mighty conqueror, their horns stick fast, as it were, in his cross; as Abraham’ s ram, by his horns, stuck fast in the brier. And he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom] Myrrh trees some render it. Here Christ, that horseman and head of his Church, keepeth himself, as touched with the feeling of our infirmities, Hebrews 4:15, as suffering and sorrowing with his people, who are fitly compared to myrtles, that grow in a shady grove, in valleys and bottoms, and by waters’ sides, et amantes littora myrtos (Virg. Georg.). "Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters," Isaiah 32:20. Myrtles also are odoriferous, and precious, Isaiah 41:19; Isaiah 55:13; so are the saints, Isaiah 43:4 Colossians 4:6, they cast a good scent wherever they go, by the grace of God that is in them; as Alexander the Great is said to do, by the excellent temperament of his body. Lastly, Leviticus 23:40 cf. Nehemiah 8:15, the Jews, at their joyful feast of tabernacles, used myrtle branches among others, to testify their thankfulness for a settlement in the promised land, after so long wandering in the wilderness.

(8) I saw.—Not in a dream, but apparently, from Zechariah 4:1, awake, in an ecstatic vision. By night.—Better, on this night. LXX., τὴννύκτα. It was during the night of the twenty-fourth of Sebat that the prophet saw this series of visions. The expression does not mean that in his vision it appeared to be night. Red horse, and . . . the bottom.—Better, bay horse, and he was standing among the myrtles that were in a certain hollow. The construction of the Hebrew shows beyond controversy that “the man that stood among the myrtles” and “the angel of the Lord” (Zechariah 1:11) are identical. On the appellation, “the angel of the Lord,” see Note on Genesis 16:7. Angels, when they assume the human form, are often called “men”—e.g., in Genesis 18:2. There can be no doubt but that “horses” means horses with riders. Commentators endeavour to attach special significance to the expression, “the myrtles which were in the hollow.” Some see in “the myrtles” a symbol of the pious; others of the theocracy, or of the land of Judah, and take “the hollow” as a figurative representation of Babylon, or of the deep degradation into which the land and people of God had fallen at that time. Similarly with respect to the colour of the horses: some suppose that the colours either denote the lands and nations to which the riders had been sent, or the three imperial kingdoms, Babylonian, Medo-Persian, and Grζco-Macedonian (Kliefoth), or as connected with the various missions which the rider had to perform. The following are specimens of such interpretation—(1) that of Keil: The riders on red horses are to cause war and bloodshed; those on pale-grey (seruqqξm) to cause hunger, famine, and pestilence; those on white go to conquest. But this explanation takes no account of the single horseman on the red (bay) horse. Moreover victory implies bloodshed, as much as does war, so that there is no practical distinction made between the red and the white horses. (2) Ewald deprives “the man standing among the myrtles” of his horse, then he renders the colours of the horses bright-red, brown, grey, and supplies dark-red, from his interpretation of Zech. vi, 3. Having thus arranged the colours to his fancy, he compares this vision with that of the chariots in Zechariah 6, and sees in the colours the mission of the riders to the four quarters of heaven. The red denotes the east; the brown (the black of Zechariah 6) the north; the grey, the west; the dark-red, the south. (3) Vitringa interprets the three colours as follows: red, times of war; varicoloured, times of varying distress and prosperity; white, times of complete prosperity, which were sent on the Jewish people. (4) That of Kliefoth, mentioned above. (5) Rabbi Mosheh Alshekh, the cabbalist, interprets red of the company of Gabriel which inclines to Strict Justice; seruqqξm of that of Raphael (who is the angel of healing after smiting, that is Justice tempered with Mercy); white of that of Michael who inclines to Free Grace.

Verse 8. I saw by night] The time was emblematical of the affliction under which the Jews groaned. A man] An angel in the form of a man: supposed to have been the Lord Jesus; who seems to have appeared often in this way, as a prelude to his incarnation; see Joshua 5:13; Ezekiel 1:26; Daniel 7:13; Daniel 10:5. The same, probably, that appeared to Joshua with a drawn sword, as the captain of the Lord's host. Joshua 5:13-15. A red horse] An emblem of war and bloodshed. Among the myrtle trees] This tree was an emblem of peace; intimating that all war was shortly to end. But some think these trees are emblematical of the true followers of Christ. And behind him were there red horses] Probably pointing out the different orders of angels in the heavenly host, which are employed by Christ in the defence of his Church. The different colours may point out the gradations in power, authority, and excellence, of the angelic natures which are employed between Christ and men.

8. by night] or, in the night, R. V. As the Jewish day began at sunset, this would be the night preceding the twenty-fourth day of the month. If so, Zechariah may have recited these visions to the people for their encouragement, on the very day on which, five months before, they had re-commenced their work on the Temple. Haggai 1:14-15. a man riding upon a red horse] There is some difficulty in deciding how many persons take part in this vision. If, however, we suppose them to have been

I saw in the night - that is, that following on “the twenty-fourth day.” The darkness of the night perhaps was chosen, as agreeing with the dimness of the restored condition.

8. I saw — In a vision or trance (compare Isaiah 6), one of the means by which God communicated his truth to the prophets (compare Numbers 12:6; see on Amos 7:1; Nahum 1:1).