“Then I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, there were four horns. So I said to the angel who was speaking with me, ‘What are these?’ And he answered me, ‘These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem’” (Zech 1:18-19).
Zechariah looks and sees four horns that have scattered the people of Israel to the four corners of the earth (see Zech 2:6 [10]). The context makes clear, therefore, that these four horns represent four kingdoms. Although the angel does not reveal their identity, Zechariah’s vision of a renewed and expanded Jerusalem (2:4), with God in her midst (2:11), and God-loving Gentiles joining God’s people (2:11) strongly suggests that these four horns correspond to the kingdoms represented in Daniel’s visions of the four-part statue (Daniel 2) and the four beasts (Daniel 7), namely Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome (see also Num 24:24).
…we can trust God’s prophets and apostles that the glorious day of Messiah’s return will be worth all the trouble and all the waiting.
In this sense, Zechariah teaches us that things will get harder for the people of Israel before they get better. His promises of final redemption take us far beyond Messiah’s joy-filled first entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (Zech 9:9), through another long period of exile (Zech 13:7), and into a day of national mourning for the Divine Messiah whom we rejected and pierced (Zech 12:10). Yet just as Zechariah foretells the coming of four kingdoms, we can be equally certain that, in the not too distant future, the divine Messiah will stand upon the Mount of Olives (Zech 14:4) and usher in the Bible’s greatest feast (Zech 14:16).
Yes, dear friends, things will get harder before they get better. But we can trust God’s prophets and apostles that the glorious day of Messiah’s return will be worth all the trouble and all the waiting.
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).
