Zechariah 1-7

Easy-to-Read Version

The Lord Wants His People to Return

1 Zechariah son of Berekiah received a message from the Lord. This was in the eighth month of the second year that Darius^[a] was king in Persia. (Zechariah was the son of Berekiah, who was the son of Iddo the prophet.) This is that message:

² The Lord became very angry with your ancestors. ³ So you must tell the people what the Lord All-Powerful says, “Come back to me, says the Lord All-Powerful, and I will come back to you.” This is what the Lord All-Powerful said.

⁴ “Don’t be like your ancestors. In the past the prophets spoke to them and said, ‘The Lord All-Powerful wants you to change your evil way of living. Stop doing evil things!’ But your ancestors did not listen to me.” This is what the Lord said.

⁵ “Your ancestors are gone, and those prophets did not live forever. ⁶ The prophets were my servants. I used them to tell your ancestors about my laws and teachings. Your ancestors finally learned their lesson and said, ‘The Lord All-Powerful did what he said he would do. He punished us for the way we lived and for all the evil things we did.’ So they came back to God.”

The Four Horses

⁷ On the 24th day of the eleventh month (Shebat) of the second year that Darius was king of Persia, Zechariah received another message from the Lord. (This was Zechariah son of Berekiah, son of Iddo.) This is the message:

⁸ At night I saw a man riding a red horse. He was standing among some myrtle bushes in the valley. Behind him, there were red, brown, and white horses. ⁹ I said, “Sir, what are these horses for?”

Then the angel speaking to me said, “I will show you what these horses are for.”

¹⁰ Then the man standing among the myrtle bushes said, “The Lord sent these horses to go here and there on earth.”

¹¹ Then the horses spoke to the Lord’s angel standing among the myrtle bushes and said, “We have walked here and there on the earth, and everything is calm and quiet.”

¹² Then the Lord’s angel said, “Lord All-Powerful, how long before you comfort Jerusalem and the cities of Judah? You have shown your anger at these cities for 70 years now.”

¹³ Then the Lord answered the angel who was talking with me. He spoke good, comforting words.

¹⁴ Then the angel told me to tell the people this: The Lord All-Powerful says:

The Four Horns and Four Workers

¹⁸ Then I looked up and I saw four horns. ¹⁹ So I asked the angel who was talking with me, “What do these horns mean?”

He said, “These are the horns that forced the people of Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem to go to foreign countries.”

²⁰ The Lord showed me four workers. ²¹ I asked him, “What are these four workers coming to do?”

He said, “The horns represent the nations that attacked the people of Judah and forced them to go to foreign countries. The horns ‘threw’ the people of Judah to the foreign countries. The horns didn’t show mercy to anyone. But these four workers have come to frighten the horns and throw them away.”

Measuring Jerusalem

2 Then I looked up and saw a man holding a rope for measuring things. ² I asked him, “Where are you going?”

He said to me, “I am going to measure Jerusalem, to see how wide and how long it is.”

³ Then the angel who was speaking to me left, and another angel went out to talk to him. ⁴ He said to him, “Run and tell that young man this:

God Calls His People Home

The High Priest

3 The angel showed me Joshua the high priest, standing in front of the angel of the Lord and Satan was standing by Joshua’s right side. Satan was there to accuse Joshua of doing wrong. ² Then the angel of the Lord said, “The Lord says that you are wrong, and he will continue to correct you! The Lord has chosen Jerusalem to be his special city. He saved that city—it was like a burning stick pulled from the fire.”

³ Joshua was wearing a dirty robe as he stood in front of the angel. ⁴ Then the angel said to the other angels standing near him, “Take those dirty clothes off Joshua.” Then the angel spoke to Joshua. He said, “Now, I have taken away your guilt, and I am giving you a new change of clothes.”

⁵ Then I said, “Put a clean turban on his head.” So they put the clean turban on him and also put clean clothes on him while the Lord’s angel stood there. ⁶ Then the Lord’s angel said this to Joshua:

The Lampstand and the Two Olive Trees

4 Then the angel who was talking to me returned and woke me up. I was like a person waking up from sleep. ² Then the angel asked me, “What do you see?”

I said, “I see a solid gold lampstand. There are seven lamps^[c] on the lampstand, and there is a bowl on top of it. There are seven tubes coming from the bowl. One tube goes to each lamp. The tubes bring the oil in the bowl to each of the lamps. ³ There are two olive trees by the bowl, one on the right side and one on the left side. These trees produce the oil for the lamps.” ⁴ Then I asked the angel who was speaking with me, “Sir, what do these things mean?”

⁵ The angel speaking with me said, “Don’t you know what these things are?”

“No sir,” I said.

⁶ He said, “This is the message from the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Your help will not come from your own strength and power. No, your help will come from my Spirit.’ This is what the Lord All-Powerful says. ⁷ That tall mountain will be like a flat place for Zerubbabel. He will build the Temple, and when the most important stone is put in place, the people will shout, ‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’”

⁸ The Lord’s message to me also said, ⁹ “Zerubbabel will lay the foundations for my Temple, and he will finish building it. Then you will know that the Lord All-Powerful sent me to you people. ¹⁰ People will not be ashamed of the small beginnings, and they will be very happy when they see Zerubbabel with the plumb line,^[d] measuring and checking the finished building. Now the seven sides^[e] of the stone you saw represent the eyes of the Lord looking in every direction. They see everything on earth.”

¹¹ Then I said to him, “I saw one olive tree on the right side of the lampstand and one on the left side. What do those two olive trees mean?” ¹² I also said to him, “I saw two olive branches by the gold tubes with gold colored oil flowing from them. What do these things mean?”

¹³ Then the angel said to me, “Don’t you know what these things mean?”

I said, “No, sir.”

¹⁴ So he said, “They represent the two men chosen^[f] to serve the Lord of the whole world.”

The Flying Scroll

5 I looked up again, and I saw a flying scroll. ² The angel asked me, “What do you see?”

I said, “I see a flying scroll that is 30 feet^[g] long and 15 feet^[h] wide.”

³ Then the angel told me, “There is a curse written on that scroll. On one side of the scroll, there is a curse against thieves and on the other side is a curse against people who lie when they make promises. ⁴ The Lord All-Powerful says, ‘I will send that scroll to the houses of thieves and people who lie when they use my name to make promises. That scroll will settle there and destroy even the stones and wooden posts of their houses.’”

The Woman and the Bucket

⁵ The angel who was talking to me went outside and said, “Look! What do you see coming?”

⁶ I said, “I don’t know. What is it?”

He said, “That is a measuring bucket.” He also said, “That bucket is for measuring the sins^[i] of the people in this country.”

⁷ A lid made of lead was lifted off the bucket, and there was a woman in the bucket. ⁸ The angel said, “The woman represents evil.” Then the angel pushed the woman down into the bucket and put the lead lid back on it. ⁹ Then I looked up and saw two women with wings like a stork. They flew out, and with the wind in their wings, they picked up the bucket. They flew through the air carrying the bucket. ¹⁰ Then I asked the angel who was speaking with me, “Where are they carrying the bucket?”

¹¹ The angel told me, “They are going to build a house for it in Babylonia.^[j] After they build that house, they will put the bucket there.”

The Four Chariots

6 Then I turned around. I looked up and saw four chariots going between two bronze mountains. ² Red horses were pulling the first chariot. Black horses were pulling the second chariot. ³ White horses were pulling the third chariot, and horses with red spots were pulling the fourth chariot. ⁴ I asked the angel who was talking with me, “Sir, what does this mean?”

⁵ The angel said, “These are the four winds.^[k] They have just come from the Lord of the whole world. ⁶ The black horses will go north, the red horses will go east, the white horses will go west, and the horses with red spots will go south.”

⁷ The red spotted horses were anxious to go look at their part of the earth, so the angel told them, “Go walk through the earth.” So they went walking through their part of the earth.

⁸ Then he shouted at me and said, “Look, those horses that were going north finished their job in Babylon. They have calmed my spirit; I am not angry now!”

Joshua the Priest Gets a Crown

⁹ Then I received another message from the Lord. He said, ¹⁰ “Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah have come from the captives^[l] in Babylon. Get silver and gold from these men and then go to the house of Josiah son of Zephaniah. ¹¹ Use the silver and gold to make a crown. Put it on the head of the high priest, Joshua son of Jehozadak. ¹² Then tell him this is what the Lord All-Powerful says:

¹⁴ The crown will be kept in my Temple,^[m] so that when people see it, they will remember Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and the kindness of Zephaniah’s son Josiah.”

¹⁵ People living far away will come and build the Lord’s Temple. Then you will know for sure that the Lord All-Powerful sent me to you people. All these things will happen if you do what the Lord your God says.

The Lord Wants Kindness and Mercy

7 Zechariah received a message from the Lord in the fourth year that Darius^[n] was the king of Persia. This was on the fourth day of the ninth month (Kislev). ² The people of Bethel sent Sharezer, Regem-Melech, and his men to ask the Lord a question. ³ They went to the prophets and to the priests at the Temple of the Lord All-Powerful. They asked them this question: “For many years we have shown our sadness for the destruction of the Temple. In the fifth month of each year, we have had a special time of crying and fasting. Should we continue to do this?”

⁴ I received this message from the Lord All-Powerful: ⁵ “Tell the priests and the other people in this country this: ‘For seventy years you fasted and showed your sadness in the fifth month and in the seventh month. But was that fasting really for me? ⁶ And when you ate and drank, was that for me? No, it was for your own good. ⁷ The Lord used the earlier prophets to say the same thing long ago. That was when Jerusalem was still a rich city filled with people and there were still people living in the surrounding towns, in the Negev, and in the western foothills.’”