Greetings! Welcome back to our study on the book of Zechariah, prophet to the returned exiles. In our last posts, we studied the first of Zechariah’s eight visions. After Zechariah’s vision of the man sitting on a horse among the myrtle trees, we now come to his second vision, which is the “Four Horns and Four Carpenters.” Let’s get started!

ZECHARIAH
Prophet to the Returned Exiles
His End Time Prophecies

First in a Two-Part Series
By Karen Thompson

Zechariahs’ Second Vision: The Four Horns and Four Carpenters

Zec. 1:18 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns. 19 And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. 20 And the Lord shewed me four carpenters. 21 Then said I, What come these to do? And he spake, saying, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up his head: but these are come to fray them, to cast out the horns of the Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of Judah to scatter it.

Now we come to the next vision—the vision of the four horns and four carpenters. This vision is also part of the good and comfortable words from the Lord. It addresses the punishment that will be brought to the nations that would invade and scatter Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. The knowledge that the Lord would deal with their enemies was meant to bring comfort and encouragement to the returned exiles due to their ongoing struggles in dealing with their hostile neighbors.

When reading this vision, you can’t help but notice it sounds contradictory. Right after the Lord stated in verse 17, “My cities shall yet again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion and shall yet choose Jerusalem,” Zechariah had a vision of horns scattering Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. Doesn’t it sound contradictory? First the Lord states that His cities in Judah will overflow with prosperity and then He shows Zechariah a vision of horns scattering “Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” It’s a curious juxtaposition. They seem to be predicting an opposite outcome for Israel. First prosperity and then scattered!

Horns Symbol Defined

Before we examine this seeming contradiction, we need to first ascertain what the horns and carpenters symbolize. When Zechariah saw the four horns, he asked the interpreting angel, “What are these?” The interpreting angel answered, “These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” Let’s first talk about the word “horns.” Throughout the Bible, the word “horn” has different yet closely related meanings. Of course, one meaning for horns is that they refer to the horns on an animal. But the word horn is also used to symbolize strength and power. For instance, in the King James Bible, the verse that reads, “The Lord is the horn of my salvation,” is translated in other translations of the Bible as, “The Lord is the strength of my salvation.” The horn is most often used to symbolize strength and power.

However, the word horn is also used in prophetic books to symbolize kings. Kings exhibit both strength and power, so the horn would be an appropriate symbol for them. You see this interpretation most significantly in the books of Revelation and Daniel. For instance, in Daniel chapter seven, Daniel had a vision of ten horns. An angel helping Daniel to understand the vision explained the symbolism of the horns in verse 24: “And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise…” Throughout the book of Daniel, whenever you read about horns, you are reading about kings.

In Zechariah’s vision, he saw four horns, and just as in Daniel and Revelation, these four horns symbolize kings. This interpretation is confirmed in the fact that the horns are said to be responsible for scattering Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. What is meant by the word scattering is when, as a result of war, the people of a nation are dispersed, or forcefully relocated, to other nations.

The Four Horns of the Times of the Gentiles

Which four kings do these horns symbolize? What will assist you in ascertaining the answer to this question is remembering one thing: when you study the prophetic words of the prophets, you will find that they all harmonize with one another. They prophesy the same things but in a way that is uniquely different from each other. In other words, the prophetic words of the prophets create sort of a layering effect, confirming the word of the Lord through different witnesses. That is the first clue we can use to identify the four horns. To that end, the vision of the four horns harmonizes with Daniel’s vision of the four beasts in Daniel chapter seven, identifying the four world powers as being Babylon, Medo/Persia, Greece, and the end time kingdom of Antichrist. This same interpretation is put forth by David Baron, author of the book Commentary on Zechariah; Zechariah’s vision of the four horns corresponds to Daniel’s vision of the four beasts in Daniel chapter seven.¹²

But those aware of Jerusalem’s history would say, “Hold on, what about Assyria? It was Assyria that conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, forcefully relocating many of the ten tribes to other nations. And Egypt engaged Jerusalem in many conflicts as well. Shouldn’t Assyria and Egypt be considered as two of the horns that scattered Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem?” These are valid points that need to be considered.

The northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered and scattered by Assyria more than 100 years before Jerusalem was invaded by Babylon. However, the ultimate scattering of all the tribes of the children of Israel would not be complete until Jerusalem was invaded and conquered by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Though the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered, Judah and Jerusalem were still autonomous. As long as Judah and Jerusalem had autonomy, it was not possible to say the tribes of Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem were scattered. The prophetic period of time known as the “Times of the Gentiles” would not begin until Judah and Jerusalem lost their autonomy. That is important because all the words of the prophets concerning end time prophecies are based on a period of time when Jerusalem would be trodden down by the Gentiles. This is a phrase Jesus Himself used saying, “And they [the Jewish people] shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the Times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24).

The prophetic period of time referred to as the Times of the Gentiles did not begin when the northern kingdom was scattered. It only began when the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem and brought thousands of its citizens back to Babylon. That was when the Times of the Gentiles began, and that is the period of time upon which all the end time prophecies are based. The four horns symbolize the four kings that scatter the Jewish people during the Times of the Gentiles.

Someone might point out that Zechariah’s wording about the four horns makes it sound as though it was already in the past: “These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” If you examine many of the prophetic words, you’ll see they often use past tense for something that will take place in the future. When the prophets see coming events, they see them as having already been done and that’s the way they speak about them. Take for instance, Isaiah’s prophetic word about the coming Messiah in chapter 53: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (vv. 3–5). Isaiah saw into the future and wrote about it as past tense. He spoke about Messiah’s suffering and pain as though it had already happened, yet Jesus hadn’t even been born yet. So Zechariah prophesying about the horns scattering Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem in past tense is not an issue.

The Identity of the Four Horns

Now let’s examine Daniel’s vision of the four horns in chapter seven. At the time Daniel had this vision, Nebuchadnezzar had died and Belshazzar succeeded him to the throne. It was in the first year of Belshazzar’s reign that Daniel dreamed about the four beasts. Daniel said his dream began with the four winds of heaven striving upon the sea. Out of the sea came four great beasts, all different from each other. Daniel said the first beast was “like a lion, and had eagle’s wings…” (Dan. 7:4). This beast represented the Babylonian Empire. The next beast that rose out of the sea Daniel said looked like a bear that had three ribs in its mouth. This beast symbolized the Medo/Persian Empire (v. 5). The three ribs symbolized three nations that it devoured: Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt.

The third beast that came out of the sea Daniel said looked like a leopard with four heads. The leopard symbolized Alexander the Great, the first king of the Grecian Empire. The four heads on the leopard represented Alexander’s four generals that divided up his empire among them after he died. All three of these beasts were responsible for oppressing Israel, resulting in the people being scattered. The territories the beasts occupied were all located in the Middle East. At the time of Zechariah’s writing, the Babylonian Empire and the Medo/Persian Empire had already invaded and conquered Jerusalem. The Grecian Empire would invade and conquer Jerusalem in the future.

The fourth beast that rose out of the sea is the prophesied end time kingdom of Antichrist. In verses 7–8, Daniel described the fourth beast: “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things” (Dan. 7:7–8). Daniel doesn’t compare the appearance of this beast with any animal; he simply said it was different than the other beasts. In Daniel’s description of this beast, it’s obvious that it disturbed him more than the others. He said it was dreadful, terrible, and very strong. The action of the fourth beast is what made the fourth beast more dreadful than the first three. The beast had great iron teeth that he used to devour his prey. And then what he didn’t devour, he stomped on with his feet.

In the next post, we’ll talk about the carpenters.

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