Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 6:5

"And the angel answered and said unto me, These are the four winds of heaven, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth." — Zechariah 6:5 (ASV)

These are the four spirits of the heavens - They cannot be literal winds, for spirits, not winds, stand before God as His servants. This is as in Job, where the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord (Job 1:6; Job 2:1).

This they did, as Jerome notes, “for these four kingdoms did nothing without the will of God.” Zechariah sums up in one what former prophets had said separately of the Assyrian, the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian.

For example, O Assyria, the rod of Mine anger - I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath I will give him a charge (Isaiah 10:5). And, I will send and take all the families of the north, and Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land (Jeremiah 25:9).

Also, The Lord shall hiss for the fly, that is in the uttermost part of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria, and they shall come, and shall rest, all of them, in the desolate valleys (Isaiah 7:18–19). Finally, I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, saith the Lord; and they shall come, and shall set every one his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 1:15).

Whatever the human impulse or the human means, all stand before the Lord of the whole earth, ministering to His will, to whom all things belong. He is the Judge of all, who withholds the chastisement until the iniquity is full, and then, through human injustice, executes His own just judgment.

Osorius writes: “He says that they went out from where they had stood before the Lord of the whole earth, to show that their power had been obtained by the counsel of God, that they might serve His will.

For no empire was ever set up on earth without the mind, counsel, and power of God. He exalts the humble and obscure, He prostrates the lofty who trust too much in themselves, and He arms one against the other, so that no fraud or pride will be without punishment.”