Charles Ellicott Commentary Zechariah 1:8

"I saw in the 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 there were horses, red, sorrel, and white." — Zechariah 1:8 (ASV)

I saw.—Not in a dream, but apparently awake, as indicated by Zechariah 4:1, in an ecstatic vision.

By night.—Better, on this night. The Septuagint has τὴν νύκτα. 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. Regarding the designation, “the angel of the Lord,” see the note on Genesis 16:7.

Angels, when they assume human form, are often called “men”—for example, in Genesis 18:2. There can be no doubt that “horses” means horses with riders.

Commentators endeavor 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 they 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, regarding the color of the horses, some suppose that the colors either denote the lands and nations to which the riders had been sent, or the three imperial kingdoms—Babylonian, Medo-Persian, and Greco-Macedonian (Kliefoth)—or are connected with the various missions the riders had to perform.

The following are examples of such interpretations:

1. That of Keil: The riders on red horses are to cause war and bloodshed; those on pale-grey (seruqqîm) to cause hunger, famine, and pestilence; those on white go to conquest. But this explanation does not take into account the single horseman on the red (bay) horse. Moreover, victory implies bloodshed just as much as war does, so no practical distinction is made between the red and the white horses.

2. Ewald deprives “the man standing among the myrtles” of his horse, then he renders the colors of the horses bright-red, brown, grey, and supplies dark-red, from his interpretation of Zechariah 6:3. Having thus arranged the colors to his fancy, he compares this vision with that of the chariots in Zechariah 6:0, and sees in the colors the mission of the riders to the four quarters of heaven. The red denotes the east; the brown (the black of Zechariah 6:0) the north; the grey, the west; the dark-red, the south.

3. Vitringa interprets the three colors as follows: red, times of war; varicolored, 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 kabbalist, interprets red as the company of Gabriel which inclines to Strict Justice; seruqqîm as that of Raphael (who is the angel of healing after smiting, that is Justice tempered with Mercy); white as that of Michael who inclines to Free Grace.

But all these suppositions are purely conjectural, utterly unsuitable, and perfectly unnecessary.

In a vision or a parable, we must not expect to find something in the interpretation that corresponds with every detail of the figurative representation: the setting must not be confounded with the gem.

So, in this case, we are of the opinion that the fact that the horsemen were standing among the myrtles in a certain hollow is mentioned merely as a natural incident.

For where would a body of scouts so naturally come to a halt—especially in the East, where shade and herbage are scarce, and where travellers always strive to escape as much as possible the observation of hostile tribes—as under the cool and protecting shadow of a grove of myrtles growing in a hollow place?

The Septuagint, for “among the myrtles which were in a certain hollow,” has ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν δύο ὀρέων τῶν κατασκίων, seemingly misreading the word for “myrtles” and taking the word for “hollow” as from a similar root meaning “to be shady.”

Red.—Better, bay. (Compare to Zechariah 6:2.)

Speckled, or, starling grey, is, perhaps, the meaning of the Hebrew word seruqqîm, which occurs only once again—namely, in Isaiah 16:8, and there in the sense of vine-tendrils. Nothing certain is known of it as an adjective of colour. The meanings given by the Authorised Version and ourselves are merely conjectural, and derived (unsatisfactorily) from a comparison of this passage with Zechariah 1:3 and Revelation 6:3. We are almost inclined to suggest that the word is a corruption of shechorîm, “black” .

The colors seem to be mentioned as those most commonly found among horses, to give a more realistic form to the vision, or perhaps, rather, because the prophet actually saw them as such.

The writer of Revelation (Revelation 6:0) adopted the colors mentioned in Zechariah 6:0 and gave them a special significance in his own writings. But to interpret Zechariah in this case by the light of the Book of Revelation, as some commentators have done, would be most uncritical.

The colors in the Septuagint for this chapter are πυρροί, ψαροὶ καὶ ποικίλοι, λευκοί. In Zechariah 6:0 they are πυρροί, μέλανες, λευκοί, ποικίλοι ψαροί. In Revelation 6:0 the colors are λευκός, πυρρός, μέλας, χλωρός.