Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 1:10

"And the man that stood among the myrtle-trees answered and said, These are they whom Jehovah hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth." — Zechariah 1:10 (ASV)

And the man answered—responding to the question addressed to the attendant angel. He himself spoke up.

These are those whom the Lord sent to walk up and down—Satan says of himself that he came from going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it (Job 2:2). As he did this for evil, so these did it for good.

Their office was not a specific or temporary duty, such as when God sent His angels on some special commission, like those recorded in Holy Scripture. It was a continuous engagement with the affairs of people, a detailed course of visiting and inspecting our human deeds and ways, a part of the “wonderful order” in which God has “ordained and constituted the services of angels and men.”

Nor is it said that these angels were limited, each to his own special province. For instance, we learn through Daniel that certain great angels, princes among them, had charge of empires or nations, even pagan ones.

These angels apparently had only the office of inspecting and reporting to angels of a higher order, being themselves a subordinate order in the heavenly Hierarchy. They are not spoken of as executing any judgments of God or as pacifying the earth. They may have been so employed, but they are only said to have reported the state in which they found it.

These answered the unexpressed inquiry of the angel of the Lord, just as he had answered the unuttered question of the angel attendant on Zechariah.