Passage

Zechariah 6.2

Book: Zechariah · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

And again I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.

2. In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;

and in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grizzled strong horses. 4. Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord? (Zechariah 6:1-4, ASV)

WEB

Again I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and behold, four chariots came out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.

2. In the first chariot were red horses; in the second chariot black horses;

in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot dappled horses, all of them powerful. 4. Then I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?” (Zechariah 6:1-4, WEB)

KJV

And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.

2. In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;

And in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses. ^{bay: or, strong} 4. Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord? (Zechariah 6:1-4, KJV)

YLT

And I turn back, and lift up mine eyes, and look, and lo, four chariots are coming forth from between two of the mountains, and the mountains [are] mountains of brass.

2. In the first chariot [are] red horses, and in the second chariot brown horses,

and in the third chariot white horses, and in the fourth chariot strong grisled horses. 4. And I answer and say unto the messenger who is speaking with me, 'What [are] these, my lord?' (Zechariah 6:1-4, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: Zechariah, describing the eighth and last night vision
Audience: the returned Judean community in Jerusalem, under Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest
Location: Jerusalem, in the Persian province of Yehud
Time period: the night visions are dated to the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month of the second year of Darius I, early 519 BC

Theological reading

"In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;"

The eighth vision answers the first. In 1:8-11 the prophet saw horses among the myrtles, and the patrol reported that the whole earth sat still and was at rest while Jerusalem lay unbuilt. Here he sees chariots, the vehicles of war, coming out from between two mountains of brass (v. 1) and sent across the earth. The visions begin with a report and end with a dispatch.

The colors are listed but not decoded. The angel's interpretation at v. 5 explains the chariots as a whole: "These are the four winds of heaven." What the vision wants understood is that the teams go out in every direction at the command of the Lord of all the earth, and that those sent north have "quieted my spirit in the north country" (v. 8). The north is where the exiles had been told to flee from, "the land of the north," the home of "the daughter of Babylon" (2:6-7).

Revelation 6:1-8 also uses horses of different colors, white, red, black and pale, and there each rider is given a distinct task. Zechariah's teams are not assigned separate tasks by color, and the two visions should not be read as one code.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

None of the words in this verse has its own lexicon entry yet.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Israelites Were Black Racial Descriptors Objection Defeater

Notes

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Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.