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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
I saw: in a vision God communicates his word, mind, or will to the prophet.
By night; either literally, it was by night that Zechariah had this vision, or with this it may note the obscurity and mysteriousness of the vision, for it may be emblematical, as the myrtles and the bottom are.
Behold; mark well what I saw, as now I relate it to you.
A man; one in human shape, Christ Jesus in shape of a man so he appeared to Ezekiel, Eze_1:26 40:3\, and to Daniel, Dan_7:13.
Riding; in a posture of readiness, speed, and resolution to help his people, and to appear for them in some tokens of greatness and majesty, Psa_45:4.
Upon a red horse: both the beast is noted, a horse, bold, strong, speedy, and gallant; and the colour is noted also; in the same colour he appeared to Isaiah, see Isa_63:1-3 Rev_6:4. This colour is a symbol of his coming to avenge his own just quarrel, and the unjust dealings of his and his people’s enemies.
He stood among the myrtle trees; he posteth himself in a convenient place to observe and be ready, (as needful,) among humble, verdant, fragrant, pleasant, and much-valued trees, emblem of the flourishing, fruitful, and excellent saints and servants of God.
In the bottom: this bottom or low valley, in which the myrtles grew, (probably on some river’s bank,) is an emblem of the church in a low, mourning, afflicted state; then it is most verdant, and fragrant as these trees, or as spices bruised in a mortar.
Behind him; Christ was, as beseems a captain, in the head; the rest, as his soldiers or servants, are behind attending on him.
Red horses; horses of the same colour, not without their riders, though they are not expressed; but it is a synecdoche, horses and horsemen are both intended, and these are angels, Zec_1:10. Now the colour of these horses is,
1. Red, denoting probably the bloody condition of states and kingdoms by wars one against another, either when God punisheth his church, or when he avengeth himself and his church on his enemies and hers; which will appear on a survey of the times past, when Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, or Roman empires did successively by wars do God’s work, his strange work, &c.; Isa 10 Isa 14.
2. Speckled; a mixed colour, made up of white, red, and black, as some guess, an emblem of affairs of different complexion; not all prosperous, nor all unprosperous; not all dark, nor all light, as the day the prophet describes neither day nor night; such times did the Jews know, during the seventy prophetic weeks, from the beginning of them to the Messiah’s coming.
3. White; an emblem of the best days and state the church should be in, so Rev_19:11,14, and the empire too with it.