Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Yesterday we met Hagai, the first of two prophets who were prophesying to the

returned exiles of Judah and today we met his pal Zakariah, another minor

prophet who also happens to be a priest. We haven't read through all the

prophets yet but in what we have read so far we've gotten a good sampling of

different ways God communicates to them and through them. Sometimes he calls them to preach sermons. Sometimes he commands them to do

sign acts, and sometimes he speaks to them via dreams and visions.

Zachariah at least falls into the latter category. He's a dreams and visions guy. But first, God

starts out by telling Zach how angry he was at the past generations of Israel. He

wants the current generation to know just how much their ancestor sins impacted things, and he begs

them not to walk that same path. He says, those people are gone and even the prophets he

sent to warn them are gone, but he's still here with the same truths and the same message because the truth

doesn't die.

He says their ancestors eventually repented while in exile and acknowledge that their sins

deserved punishment.

Then we launch into Zach's first vision.

There will be nine total visions in this book, and he probably had the first eight visions

back to back, maybe even on the same night.

And his visions are among the strangest in scripture,

so buckle up.

Vision one is a bunch of horses.

They're sent out to patrol the earth

...