Zechariah 1 - Easy To Read Version

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 {\cf2\super [1]} in Persia. (Zechariah was the son of Berekiah. Berekiah was the son of Iddo the prophet.) This is that message:

² The Lord became very angry at your ancestors.

³ So you must tell the people these things. The Lord says, “Come back to me and I will come back to you.” The Lord All-Powerful said these things.

⁴ The Lord said, “Don’t be like your ancestors. In the past, the prophets spoke to them. They said, ‘The Lord All-Powerful wants you to change your bad way of living. Stop doing bad things!’ But your ancestors did not listen to me.” The Lord said those things.

⁵ God said, “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. And your ancestors finally learned their lesson. They said, ‘The Lord All-Powerful did the things he said he would do. He punished us for the way we lived and for all the bad 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 {\cf2\super [2]} of Persia, Zechariah received another message from the Lord. (This was Zechariah son of Berekiah, son of Iddo, the prophet.) 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?”

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. They said, “We have walked here and there on the earth, and everything is calm and quiet.”

¹² Then the Lord’s angel said, “Lord, how long before you comfort Jerusalem and the cities of Judah? You have shown your anger at these cities for 70 years now.”

¹³ Then the Lord answered the angel that was talking with me. The Lord spoke good, comforting words.

¹⁴ Then the angel told me to tell the people these things:

¹⁵ And I am very angry at the nations\par that feel so safe.\par I was a little angry,\par and I used those nations\par to punish my people.\par But those nations caused too much damage.”\par

¹⁶ So the Lord says,\par “I will come back to Jerusalem\par and comfort her.”\par The Lord All-Powerful says,\par “Jerusalem will be built again.\par And my house will be built there.”\par

¹⁷ The angel also said,\par “The Lord All-Powerful says,\par ‘My towns will be rich again.\par I will comfort Zion.\par I will again choose Jerusalem\par to be my special city.’”\par

¹⁸ Then I looked up and I saw four horns.

¹⁹ Then I asked the angel that was talking with me, “What do these horns mean?”

²⁰ The Lord showed me four workers.

²¹ I asked him, “What are these four workers coming to do?”