Three: Four Horns and Four Craftsmen (The Second Vision) - Zech 1:18-21
- Sep 21, 2024
- 7 min read
18 Then I looked up, and there before me were four horns. 19 I asked the angel who was speaking to me, ‘What are these?’
He answered me, ‘These are the horns that scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem.’
20 Then the Lord showed me four craftsmen. 21 I asked, ‘What are these coming to do?’
He answered, ‘These are the horns that scattered Judah so that no one could raise their head, but the craftsmen have come to terrify them and throw down these horns of the nations who lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter its people.’
The Plain English campaign makes an annual Foot in Mouth award. Here are some past winners:
Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian PM: “I am pretty often faithful”.
MEP Godfrey Bloom: “Women don't clean behind the fridge enough”.
Supermodel Naomi Campbell: “I love England, especially the food. There's nothing I like more than a lovely bowl of pasta”.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “Brexit means Brexit and we’re going to make a Titanic success of it”.
Former Cabinet Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg: “Food banks are rather uplifting”.
Such ‘mis-speaking’ is not a solely modern phenomenon. In Luke 21, for example, the disciples were remarking on the beauty of the newly refitted Temple, with its massive stones and expensive furnishings. They must have wished they’d kept quiet. Because their remarks became the launch-pad for some very uncomfortable teaching from Jesus.
The Temple is going to be destroyed; there will be false messiahs, wars and persecutions; and here are some warnings about when to stand firm and when to run for your life. ‘We were only admiring the building’! they must have thought.
The style of speaking and writing used in Luke 21 is often called ‘apocalyptic’. Apocalypse doesn’t really mean ‘the end times’, although that’s often the theme. It means ‘revelation’ – a peep behind the scenes, if you like. You find plenty of that style of writing in the book of Revelation, of course. But it’s also common in certain Old Testament (OT) books such as Daniel and Zechariah, with which Jesus was very familiar.
In Zech 1: 18-21 we have some text-book apocalyptic. There are four mysterious ‘horns’, which seem to have been responsible for the exile of God’s people. Then in turn they are terrified and thrown down by four craftsmen.
What on earth is going on?
Well, the horns are actually quite easy to understand. Horns are used throughout the OT as a symbol of strength. Think of a stag’s antlers or a rhino’s horn on the walls of some stately home – it’s a sign of the animal’s prowess, now displayed as a trophy by the huntsman.
Ps 89, for example, has a couple of ‘horn’ references:
“You [Lord] are [your people’s] glory and strength, and by your favour you exalt our horn [our strength]…” (v17).
“[God says,] ’My faithful love will be with [the king], and through my name his horn [his strength] will be exalted” (v24).
So the four horns that have scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem must be four strong empires or four strong kings that sent them into exile – perhaps the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians. Or it might be that four is just a symbol of totality, as in Gen 2:10-14 perhaps – Zechariah is thinking of pagan nations from north, east, south and west.
So far so good.
The next thing that happens in the vision is that Zechariah sees four craftsmen. They have come, he is told, to terrify and throw down the four horns.
The commentator Anthony Petterson (p124) highlights some wordplay here. The Hebrew root for craftsmen is hrs and for terrify is hrd. Wordplay like this is a common device in the OT. A notable case is in Jer 1: 11-12, where God asks Jeremiah what he can see. “The branch of an almond tree”, replies the young prophet. “That’s right”, says God, “for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled”. Watching and almond tree have similar root words in Hebrew, and I wonder if the original hearers or readers of this would have smiled wanly, as we do when we hear a comedian deliver a particularly weak pun.
Most Hebrew words, by the way, are derived from a root with just three consonants. Originally the vowels between the consonants were not written, but would still have been pronounced when read aloud. If you are trying to pronounce a three-letter root like hrs (craftsman) try saying haras, with the first a long (as in ‘car’) and the second short (as in ‘cat’).
Most commentators think that the craftsmen are more strong empires or kings, come to deal with the horns in their turn. If that’s right, it fits with Jesus’ teaching in Lk 21:10 about nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. It is the way of the world, but it doesn’t mean the end has come.
We’ve seen it in ancient times: the Assyrians were overthrown by the Babylonians, who were taken over by the Medes and Persians, who were defeated by the Greeks, who were superseded by the Romans.
In modern history, the Spanish and Portuguese ruled the waves, then the Brits did, then after two world wars the Soviets and the Americans were the two superpowers, and now it seems to be just America, with China coming up fast behind.
If that interpretation is correct, then Zechariah’s vision is reassuring, in its own way. All powerful empires have their moment in the sun, then are replaced by another. For every ‘horn’ there’s a craftsman to replace it.
The only thing is, that doesn’t seem to be what the passage is saying. There’s no suggestion that the craftsmen are going to turn into tyrannical horns in their own right.
This is borne out by a quick look at other prophecies in the Bible where animal horns stand for empires or kings.
In Daniel 7 and Daniel 8 there are beasts with horns, but each horn is defeated by another horn. The same is true in Rev 12, 13 and 17: horned beasts are defeated by God himself, but there are no craftsmen in evidence.
I think we need an alternative view.
Fortunately, the American minister Dr Fred De Ruvo has come up with one. He writes a blog called ‘Study Grow Know’. De Ruvo suggests that the craftsmen are builders rather than armies or empires, in keeping with God’s preferred method of using the weak to destroy the strong.
Zechariah was prophesying while the Temple was being rebuilt. The sounds of hammering and sawing and trimming and mortaring would have been everywhere. Pagan nations with their ‘horns’ were all about, but here in Jerusalem, it was craftsmen as far as the eye could see.
DeRuvo asks, “What is the worst thing an enemy can see happening after they conquer a people and their land? It’s when the people start rebuilding things the way they were before being destroyed… it shows the enemy that they do not fear them.”[1]
God comes against the fearsome horns of mighty empires not with more horns but with builders.
“‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit’, says the Lord Almighty” – that comes a bit later, in Zech 4:6.
This has always been God’s way, to use the weak to shame the strong, as Paul puts it in 1 Cor 1:27.
Think of David, the rosy-cheeked shepherd boy, who felled Goliath with a single smooth pebble (1 Sam 17:48-49). Think of Elisha, leading blinded Aramean enemies to the king of Israel, whom he persuaded to give them a great feast and send them home unharmed (2 Kgs 6:15-23). Think of the twelve apostles, ‘unschooled, ordinary men’, bamboozling the Jewish authorities with the certainty of their faith in the Resurrection (Acts 4:8-13).
I think this may well be what Zechariah’s prophecy means.
At any time in the history of God’s people – from Zechariah’s beleaguered first hearers to the present day – there have been powerful forces ranged about us on all sides.
As another commentator Thomas McComiskey (p1048) puts it, “The four horns represent the full extent of human cruelty, military might, political machinations, lust for power – whatever else we can imagine.”
And against them God sends four craftsmen who “cause them to tremble” (a better translation than “terrify them”) and eventually overthrow them.
Who are the craftsmen? They are us, you and me – and anyone involved in building God’s kingdom. We don’t fight – at least not in the conventional sense. St Paul again: “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2Cor 10:4). And of course in Eph 6:12: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
We destroy the enemy by building the kingdom. Just like those rebuilders of the Temple who must have unnerved their enemies all around.
Supremely, this is the way of Jesus. His parables are all about building and making and growing, not becoming top dog and being overthrown in turn.
The wise man builds his house on a rock, and is safe in the fiercest storm (Matt 7:24-28). A woman puts a little yeast in some flour and it spreads throughout the whole batch (Matt 13:33). A tiny mustard-seed becomes a tree large enough for birds to nest in its branches (Matt 13:31-32).
One of Jesus’ disciples was Simon the Zealot, a freedom-fighter who believed in overthrowing the Roman invaders by force. Jesus gave him no encouragement in that direction. He talked instead about turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, praying for your persecutors. Indeed, when Jesus was arrested and Peter lashed out with a sword, Jesus rebuked him.
In times of political turmoil, it is tempting to be like Peter and lash out. Or to band together against perceived enemies, like one ‘horn’ against another. That’s not Jesus’ way. He works irresistibly but peaceably, like yeast working through the dough, like seed growing in a field, hardly noticed but unstoppable.
And by the way, what was Jesus’ job before his public ministry began? He was a carpenter, a craftsman.
A story to round off this chapter. On 17th Nov 1989, not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, students in what was then Czechoslovakia began to demonstrate. Riot police were called and over 100 students were injured. But against the riot shields and batons of the police, the students simply held flowers. The demonstrations gained public support and spread, leading to the fall of the Communist regime by the end of the year, in just a few short weeks.
Flowers, not batons.
Craftsmen, not horns.
“‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.”
For God’s Spirit is far stronger than human strength.
[1]This quotation is from Fred De Ruvo’s March 2014 blog and can be found at https://studygrowknowblog.com/2014/03/07/four-horns-and-four-smiths-in-zechariah-1-represent-what/ which I last accessed on 16 September 2024.
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