Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 1:19

"And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem." — Zechariah 1:19 (ASV)

These are the horns which have scattered – "The four horns which scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem, are four nations: Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Romans; as the Lord, on the prophet’s inquiry, explains here, and Daniel unfolds most fully (Daniel 2:0). He, in the vision of the image with a golden head, silver breast, belly and thighs of brass, feet of iron and clay, explained it as these four nations. Again, in another vision of four beasts (Daniel 7:0)—a lion, bear, leopard, and another unnamed dreadful beast—he pointed out the same nations under another figure. But that the Medes and Persians, after the victory of Cyrus, were one kingdom, no one who reads secular and sacred literature will doubt."

When this vision was seen, the kingdom of the Babylonians had now passed away, that of the Medes and Persians was at hand; that of the Greeks and Macedonians and of the Romans was yet to come.

A learned man acknowledges what the Babylonians, what the Medes and Persians, and what the Greeks (that is, the Macedonians) did to Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem, especially under Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes, to which the history of the Maccabees belongs.

After the coming of our Lord and Savior, when Jerusalem was encompassed, Josephus, a native writer, tells most fully what the Israelites endured, and what the Gospel foretold. "These horns dispersed Judah almost individually, so that, bowed down by the heavy weight of evils, no one of them raised his head."

Though these were successive in time, they are presented to Zechariah as one. One whole are the efforts against God’s Church; one whole are the instruments of God—whether angelic or human, in doing or suffering—to repel them.

Zechariah then presents these hostile powers as past and gone, as each would be at the end, having put forth its passing might, and perishing. They scattered, each in its day, and disappeared, for the next displaced it.

The long schism being ended, Judah and Israel are again one; and Jerusalem, the place of God’s worship, belongs to Israel as well as to Judah.

The explanation of the number four as symbolizing contemporaneous attacks from the four quarters of the heavens fails because, in fact, in these later times, the Jews always suffered from one power at a time. There was no such fourfold attack. In Zechariah’s time, all around was Persian.

Osorius: "Those horns, broken by the angels’ ministry, portended that no guilt against the church of Christ should be unpunished. Fierce enemies from east, west, north, or south—whom God will strengthen in order to teach His own by them—will never be lacking. But when He sees His work finished, that is, when He has cleansed the stains of His own and brought back His Church to her former purity, He will punish those who so fiercely afflicted her."

Spiritually (Jerome): "Those who destroy vices build up virtues, and all the saints who, possessing these remedies, continually build up the Church, may be called ‘builders.’ Thus the Apostle says, I, as a wise builder, laid the foundation (1 Corinthians 3:10); and the Lord, when angry, said that He would take away from Jerusalem artificer and wise man (Isaiah 3:3). And the Lord Himself, Son of the Almighty God and of the Creator of all, is called the son of the carpenter (Matthew 13:55)."