1. Zechariah son of Berekiah received a message from the Lord. This was in the eighth month of the second year that Darius 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.”
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.”