Zechariah 1 - Introduction

Zechariah exhorteth to repentance. The vision of the horses. At the prayer of the angel, comfortable promises are made to Jerusalem. The vision of the four horns, and the four carpenters.

Before Christ 520.

THE first six verses of this chapter contain a separate and distinct revelation, but at the same time connected with the general purport and design of the visions that follow, to which it forms a suitable introduction. The people of the Jews were dispirited with the recollection of their past sufferings, and a sense of their present weak and dependent state. The divine wisdom thought meet to rally their courage, and animate them to the undertaking of what was necessary for the restoration of their affairs, and particularly to a vigorous prosecution of the building of the temple already in hand, by holding forth to them a prospect of better times. Accordingly, they are assured that God was now ready to restore them to favour, and accumulate his blessings upon them, provided they would turn to him, and not provoke his judgments, as their fathers had done, by wilful disobedience.