Horns and Blacksmiths

How long, O Lord?

How long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah?

Thus had the angel of the Lord asked in connection with the first vision that the prophet had seen on the night of the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month in the second year of the reign of Darius. It was also the question that undoubtedly expressed what lives in the heart of the prophet.

For the Lord’s cavalry had traversed the whole earth, but the horses and their riders had executed nothing. They only reported to the angel of the Lord: “The whole earth sitteth still and is at rest!” The ungodly world powers are enjoying peace and prosperity.

Now it is still that same night.

And this same question burns in the heart of the prophet.

For the Lord, through the angel who had talked with the prophet, surely had spoken good and comfortable words:

14. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.

15. And I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease: for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction.

16. Therefore thus saith the Lord; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies: my house shall be built in it, saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem.

17. Cry yet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad; and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem. (Zech. 1:14–17)

Rich and glorious promises!

But how long, O Lord?

And can Jerusalem endure for that long?

Is not Zion’s situation precarious? Is not Zion a suffocating little heap of people, a remnant, that had returned from the land of captivity? And is not Jerusalem yet a pile of rubble?

Are not the ungodly world powers hostile to Zion? Are not the world powers at rest and enjoying peace and prosperity?

Glorious promises! But is there no haste to…?

Will not the world powers overwhelm Zion, overthrow Jerusalem, and completely uproot Judah ere the promises are fulfilled?

How long, O Lord?

Behold, four horns!

Now the prophet’s attention is transfixed by another vision.

“Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns!”

That first!

The horns!

Hostile world powers!

Always they menace God’s church.

Certainly, this is the meaning of the horns. The horn is the symbol of power and might, generally brute, destructive power. Sometimes it is true that the horn signifies royal authority and power. So David sings of his horn that the Lord will exalt. And the Lamb who stands as slain has seven horns because he is the king given to Israel by her God. But frequently the horn is the symbol of the ungodly world power, the godless state, the state that has the sword-power as ordained by God. But the state turns that sword-power against Zion and Jerusalem to eradicate them.

The antichristian state!

Daniel saw that in his visions:

7. 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.

8. 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)

And one who stood by Daniel declared to him that those horns represented kingdoms, and the description of the little horn clearly indicated that the little horn represented the ungodly, antichristian world power.

This is also the meaning of the ten horns with their ten crowns on the heads of the beast out of the sea that John saw in Revelation 13.

So it is this same ungodly world power that the Lord shows to Zechariah.

Of these horns it certainly must be said that they had scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. Strikingly, in Zechariah 1:19 Judah is given the honorable name of Israel. This verse must not be read as though Judah and Israel and Jerusalem were scattered. Rather, the idea is that Judah is God’s Israel. It is Judah—that is, Israel—and Jerusalem. It is in Judah that God acknowledges his Israel. The Lord does not recognize the schism that had been committed by the ten tribes. Whoever had separated from Judah—even if it was far and away the majority—had separated from Israel and was no Israel. In Judah is the church. There is the heart of the covenant line. The holy line runs through Judah. Out of Judah came David’s house. Out of Judah will come Israel’s redemption.

And, therefore, it is Judah that enrages the world power down through the ages!

The ungodly world power through the centuries has aimed at the scattering and total annihilation of Judah.

The church always lies in the midst of and is surrounded by that ungodly world power. The antichristian forces attack her from every side. This is the meaning of the number four in connection with the horns. The prophet saw four horns.

Some think that this number four must have a literal significance, and they try to connect the four horns with four literal world powers: for instance, the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Medes. However, when the prophet sees this vision, Judah had already been scattered by these world powers. Thus they belong to the past. What the prophet sees in the vision is not from the past, but he sees an ever-present reality for the church. Besides, it is true that the Babylonians had scattered Judah by bringing her into captivity, but under the Persians Judah was set free and returned to the land of her fathers. Further, it is evident that when the prophet sees these four horns, he does not see a succession of world powers that harass Judah one after the other, but he sees all the horns simultaneously threatening the church. Thus the view of the horns as four different world powers cannot be maintained.

Rather, the horns must have a symbolic significance. The number four belongs to the symbolic numbers contained in scripture. The number four indicates the earthly world in its fullness and breadth. Just as the number six signifies the same world in its development in time with the full measure of the world’s development through man’s vain strivings—a week of labor without the Sabbath, time without eternity, and work without rest—so the number four points to the world in its vast and expansive space; abundance; and fullness in power, might, and glory. Accordingly, scripture speaks of the four winds from the four corners of the earth, and John saw four living creatures. Therefore, the four horns in Zechariah’s vision represent the world power as it comes from all sides against Judah as the church and surrounds and threatens Judah from every direction.

Together the four horns are all the antichristian forces as the world power!

Judah is a lamb surrounded by wolves!

How long, O Lord?

Is it possible? Is there no hurry with the Lord to fulfill his promises?

Come, Lord Jesus; yea, come quickly!

This was the actual situation of the church in the old dispensation. The church was then limited to one nation that stood in the middle of the hostile world power. Surely, the Lord had redeemed his people and brought them out of the land of Egypt and brought them to their own land, a paradise that flowed with milk and honey. They were his peculiar and precious people separated unto himself. This land did not lie in a far-off corner of the world, but it was in the very center—the navel—of the earth. Canaan was surrounded on every side by the world power. The Lord could not have prepared a more dangerous position for his people in the world. And always the world powers lurked and watched Judah and Jerusalem. Always they were full of hatred and spite against the people of God. That people was a despised people—harassed, ravaged, and scattered.

Very justly might the people complain about their enemies:

From my youth they crushed me, let Israel say.
Enemies rejoiced when in the dust we lay.
From my youth with hatred, they cast thy sheep down.
Yet their might could not prevail against thy own.
Deep in my back they plowed their terrible rows.
Brutally they carved their long, painful furrows.
In my destruction they heaped sorrow on grief.
Deaf to my cries, they punish without relief.¹

And truly they could say:

O Lord, to us thy mercy show;
And thy salvation now bestow.
We weary of their sneering words;
These foes our tired ears have heard.
With cruel mock’ry they deride
This strong conspiracy of pride.
Our hearts such sorrow long have borne;
They gleefully laugh us to scorn. ²

So it was all the way to the captivity.

A remnant had returned from exile, but it was only to be threatened again and ravaged by those four horns—to become a plaything of the world powers…

Until all conspired against the Lion of Judah’s tribe, attempting to destroy him at the cross…

But the man-child was caught up to God; Satan was cast down into the earth; and the woman fled into the wilderness (Rev. 12).

Israel is not a single nation any longer but is spread throughout the nations. Israel does not live in a separate land anymore but dwells in all lands.

The church is become a church among all nations!

But still the world is enraged at the church. Still the church is surrounded on all sides by enemies. Always and again the antichristian world power seeks to get into its hands the steel sword of the state in order to turn it against Judah and Jerusalem.

So it was under the mighty Roman Caesars.

Thus it was at the time of the Reformation.

And it is the same at this present time. Think only of the godless Communist state of Russia or of the Nazis of Germany.³

So will it still be the case in the worldwide kingdom of the antichrist.

A lamb surrounded by wolves!

Will the promises ever be fulfilled? Will not the world power succeed in totally destroying Judah and Jerusalem?

How long, O Lord?

Come quickly!

The marvelous ways of God!

Because in that precarious situation of the church, Zion always is preserved and the church never can be destroyed.

The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished (2 Pet. 2:9). How often did God’s Israel not have many reasons for his sad complaint because men had been oppressing him from his youth? How often did it not appear in history as if the end of God’s church had come and the ungodly world had the victory? But time and again God’s Israel sang:

Blest be the Lord Who made us not their prey;
As from the snare a bird escapeth free;
Their net is rent and so escaped are we;
Our only help is in Jehovah’s Name,
Who made the earth and all the heavenly frame.⁴

For the Lord also has his carpenters!

And he shows the prophet these carpenters. Even as the horns are four, so are the carpenters. In the original Hebrew the word translated in Zechariah 1:20 as carpenters can mean craftsmen or skilled artisans. But the translation blacksmiths is to be preferred, especially in light of what they have come to do.

The prophet asks, “What have these come to do?”

The angel answers, “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” (v. 21).

The smith in holy scripture is symbolic of power and skill. The smith is a strong man. By his hard work he develops a muscular frame. But he also has understanding and skill to work the stubborn, hard steel while it is hot.

God’s hammers!

They are God’s servants to work and to break the powerful horns of the heathen!

Note that these smiths appear on the scene just as the four horns begin to threaten the people of God from every side.

Although John Calvin translates verse 21 as though it identifies the four blacksmiths with the four horns, that clearly is not the idea. Everything in the verse and its context points to the fact that these blacksmiths are world powers like the horns, yet they are distinct from the horns. They are powers that are outside Israel. Their number is also four. They do their work through violence and are themselves stronger than the four horns. Therefore, the four blacksmiths represent world powers that God raises up at the precise moment that the horns threaten to destroy the church. The blacksmiths fall on the horns and scatter them.

The blacksmiths do not intend to serve God or to deliver and preserve his church. But the blacksmiths seek their own power, honor, and recognition and to gain spoil and plunder and to enrich themselves with gold and silver. They seek to gain the whole world!

But all powers are God’s. This is true not only of the horns but also of the blacksmiths. Thus even against their own intentions and purposes, the horns and the blacksmiths serve the purpose of God. He sets the world against the world in order to deliver his church.

This fact history frequently shows.

So it happened to David in the wilderness of Maon. There in the wilderness Saul pursued David. Saul was on one side of the mountain, and David and his men were on the other. But when David and his men tried to escape, they walked right into a trap. Saul and his men had them surrounded and were ready to capture David. The net was set. The bird was caught.

Then came God’s blacksmiths. The Philistines invaded the country, and Saul had to break off hunting David.

So it happens repeatedly.

And so it will be for the church until Christ appears on his white horse in victory!

To fulfill the promises!

Oh, the wonderful ways of God!