Zechariah 1:2

sore displeased Lit. displeased with displeasure. The addition of the noun serves to give emphasis to the verb. Comp. Luke 22:15. What a commentary on this "sore displeasure" was the scene on which the prophet and his hearers gazed, in its contrast with the past: the House, which had once been "exceeding magnifical, of fame and of glory throughout all countries" (1 Chronicles 22:5), now slowly rising above its foundations, the poor and feeble representative of its former self: the city, which had once been "beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth," now such as Nehemiah some seventy-five years after saw it, on that memorable night when he "on his mule or ass, accompanied by a few followers on foot, descended into the ravine of Hinnom, and threaded his way in and out amongst the gigantic masses of ruin and rubbish …; the gate, outside of which lay the piles of the sweepings and offscourings of the streets; the masses of fallen masonry, extending as it would seem all along the western and northern side; the blackened gaps left where the gates had been destroyed by fire; till at last by the royal reservoir the accumulations became so impassable, that the animal on which he rode refused to proceed" (Stanley, Jewish Church, Vol. III. p. 125, Nehemiah 2:12-15): the people, once "many as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry" (1 Kings 4:20), now scattered among the heathen, represented on their native soil only by the poor and subject "remnant," to whom the prophet addressed himself!

The company of horsemen and their Leader;