1. I am the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah and the grandson of Iddo.In the eighth month of the second year that Darius was king of Persia, the Lord told me to say:
2-3. Israel, I, the Lord All-Powerful, was very angry with your ancestors. But if you people will return to me, I will turn and help you.
4. Don't be stubborn like your ancestors. They were warned by the earlier prophets to give up their evil and turn back to me, but they paid no attention.
5. Where are your ancestors now? Not even prophets live for ever.
6. But my warnings and my words spoken by the prophets caught up with your ancestors. So they turned back to me and said, “Lord All-Powerful, you have punished us for our sins, just as you had planned.”
7-8. On the twenty-fourth day of Shebat, which was the eleventh month of that same year, the Lord spoke to me in a vision during the night: in a valley among myrtle trees, I saw someone on a red horse, with riders on red, brown, and white horses behind him.
9. An angel was there to explain things to me, and I asked, “Sir, who are these riders?”“I'll tell you,” the angel answered.
10. Straight away, the man standing among the myrtle trees said, “These are the ones the Lord has sent to find out what's happening on earth.”
11. Then the riders spoke to the Lord's angel, who was standing among the myrtle trees, and they said, “We have gone everywhere and have discovered that the whole world is at peace.”