Scripture Daily

Context No. 764 of 4322 · Zechariah

Context · Reflection

Zechariah 1:7-11: in context

7On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the LORD’s word came to the prophet Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, saying, 8“I had a vision in the night, and behold, a man riding on a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in a ravine; and behind him there were red, brown, and white horses. 9Then I asked, ‘My lord, what are these?’” The angel who talked with me said to me, “I will show you what these are.” 10The man who stood among the myrtle trees answered, “They are the ones the LORD has sent to go back and forth through the earth.” 11They reported to the LORD’s angel who stood among the myrtle trees, and said, “We have walked back and forth through the earth, and behold, all the earth is at rest and in peace.”

Zechariah prophesies among the discouraged people who have come back from exile to a half-built temple and a broken city, and one night he is given the first of eight strange visions. He sees a man mounted on a red horse, standing among myrtle trees down in a shadowed hollow, and behind him more horses, red and sorrel and white. He asks the angel with him, my lord, what are these? And the rider answers: these are the ones the LORD has sent to patrol the earth. Then they make their report. We have walked back and forth through the whole earth, they say, and behold, all the earth is at rest and in peace.

That sounds like good news until you remember who is hearing it. The nations that scattered Israel are comfortable and quiet, at ease, while God's own people sit small and struggling among the ruins. The peace the patrol reports is the complacency of a world for whom everything is fine, and it is exactly what troubles the vision; the next lines have the angel cry out, how long until you have mercy on Jerusalem? But underneath the disquiet is a quiet assurance. God has riders covering every inch of the earth. Nothing is unwatched. And the horseman stands among the low myrtle trees, down in the hollow, which is to say among the humble and the overlooked, right where his waiting people are.

The world was at ease while God's people waited, and it looked like nothing was happening, yet God's riders were covering the whole earth. When everything seems stalled and the comfortable go on undisturbed, can I trust that God is still watching, down where I am?

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