3So tell the people that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Return to Me, declares the LORD of Hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of Hosts.’
4Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Turn now from your evil ways and deeds.’ But they did not listen or pay attention to Me, declares the LORD.
6But did not My words and My statutes, which I commanded My servants the prophets, overtake your fathers? They repented and said, ‘Just as the LORD of Hosts purposed to do to us according to our ways and deeds, so He has done to us.’ ”
7On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo.
8I looked out into the night and saw a man riding on a red horse. He was standing among the myrtle trees in the hollow, and behind him were red, sorrel, and white horses.
11And the riders answered the angel of the LORD who was standing among the myrtle trees, “We have patrolled the earth, and behold, all the earth is at rest and tranquil.”
12Then the angel of the LORD said, “How long, O LORD of Hosts, will You withhold mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which You have been angry these seventy years?”
16Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there My house will be rebuilt, declares the LORD of Hosts, and a measuring line will be stretched out over Jerusalem.’
17Proclaim further that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘My cities will again overflow with prosperity; the LORD will again comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem.’ ”
19So I asked the angel who was speaking with me, “What are these?” And he told me, “These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.”
21“What are these coming to do?” I asked. And He replied, “These are the horns that scattered Judah so that no one could raise his head; but the craftsmen have come to terrify them and throw down these horns of the nations that have lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter it.”
