Rebbetzin Chava Kuperman
Let us continue our analysis of the book of the prophet Zechariah. We will focus on two interesting passages (prophecies) that mention horses.
The first passage is in the first chapter (verse 8). It says: “I saw the night: behold, a man (an angel) riding a red horse, standing among the myrtles in the ravine, and behind him—red, bay, and white horses”. We read the second passage in chapter 6 (verses 1 through 8), which speaks not only of horses but also of chariots. “...and behold, four chariots are coming out of the ravine between two mountains; and these mountains are mountains of copper. In the first chariot—red horses, and in the second chariot—black horses, and in the third chariot—white horses, and in the fourth chariot—spotted, gray horses. And I cried out and said to the angel who was speaking with me: what do these (phenomena) mean, my lord? And the angel answered: they go out in the four directions of heaven, after presenting themselves before the Master of all the earth. The black horses in one of the chariots go out to the northern land, and the white ones went out after them, while the spotted ones went out to the southern land. And the gray ones… asked permission to go and roam the earth. And He said: go, roam the earth, and they roamed the earth. And He called loudly to me and said to me: look, those going out to the northern land have put My spirit at rest in the northern land.”
As we noted before beginning our analysis of the Book of Zechariah, his prophecy is confusing and obscure. Zechariah himself does not understand his visions. He always turns to the angel with the question: what is this? And the angel always provides explanations. We find nothing like this among any of the other prophets.
There are many commentaries examining Zechariah’s prophecies in every detail. As a rule, the opinions of different commentators clash, contend with one another… We will not go into all of this in detail, since we are considering the book as a whole.
So the prophet says: “I saw the night...” Night is a symbol of exile. The visions also contain four chariots and horses of four colors, which means that the prophecy concerns four exiles.
But why is the prophet shown the horses’ colors in such detail? In the first prophecy, the horses are red, bay, and white. In the second, black horses appear, and here the horses are no longer on their own but harnessed to chariots.
In both prophecies, the red horses are mentioned first and the white ones third. The second horses are black in the second prophecy and bay (reddish-brown) in the first. Bay and black are very close in color, since clotted blood is always black.
There are no spotted, gray horses in the first prophecy; they appear only in the second prophecy (evidently, these are dapple-gray horses). Of course, the two-color pattern also has its own symbolism; let us try to understand it.
The four chariots and the four colors of the horses symbolize the four points of the compass, as well as the four kingdoms that will enslave the Jewish people.
In essence, Zechariah’s prophecy speaks of the same thing that the prophet Daniel warned about after deciphering the message in the dream seen by King Nebuchadnezzar. (The statue the king dreamed of, with a golden head, silver arms, a copper torso, iron legs, and so on.)
The horses’ red coloring represents Babylon. Red symbolizes the fact that the king of Babylon destroyed the First Temple and shed much blood. In the ancient world, horses symbolized war. Chariots did so even more. The horses’ black coloring symbolizes Persia, under whose rule and oppression Jewish faces turned black (it was Persia that intended to destroy the entire Jewish people). White is the color of Greece—“pure,” beautiful, advanced in the sciences and philosophy. But when a person is terribly ashamed of something, they first turn red, then grow pale until they turn white. The Greeks did not kill Jews, but tried to Hellenize them. They did not recognize the Almighty and did things to what we hold sacred that made us turn white.
The final coloring is dapple-gray. The two colors correspond to Christianity and Islam (this is our fourth exile). There are two colors because the world is dominated by two religions rather than one.
The Vilna Gaon says that, among other things, the chariots symbolize inanimate nature, into which a person, as it were, breathes life—this is our ability to rule over nature and change it as we see fit (making what is motionless move). The horse symbolizes our use of nature as it is, without changing it, but merely adapting it to our needs.
In Egypt, Babylon, and the other kingdoms that dominated the Jews during their exiles, both were used. That is why the prophecies contain both horses and chariots. (Recall that when the Egyptians pursued the Jews who had left Egypt, they chased them in horse-drawn chariots.)
Some people believe that dreaming of a galloping horse is a bad sign, because a horse symbolizes war.
Next time, we will try to examine the connections and correspondences that abound in Zechariah’s prophecy.
to be continued