Four Chariots and the Winds

Chapter 6

1 And I turned and looked up and saw, and, look, four chariots coming out from between two mountains, and the mountains were bronze mountains. 2 In the first chariot were red horses, and in the second chariot black horses, 3 and in the third chariot white horses, and in the fourth chariot spotted gray horses.

4 And I asked the angel speaking in me, “What are these, my lord?” 5 And the angel speaking in me answered: These are the four winds of the sky, and they are going out to stand before the Lord of all the earth. 6 As for the chariot in which were the black horses, they went out to the land of the north, and the white went out after them, and the spotted went out to the land of the south. 7 And the gray horses went out, and looked to go and travel around the earth. And he said, “Go and travel around the earth.” And they traveled around the earth.

8 And he shouted to me, “Look, those going out to the land of the north have put my anger to rest in the land of the north.”

Crowns for Joshua

9 And a word of the Lord came to me, saying: 10 Take the things from captivity from the rulers, and from its useful people, and from those who have known it, and on that day you will enter the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah, who came from Babylon. 11 And you will take silver and gold, and make crowns, and you will put them on the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest,

12 and you will say to him, This is what the Lord Almighty says: Look at the man whose name is the Rising Sun,⁠ and he will rise up from beneath him, and build the house of the Lord. 13 And he will receive excellence, and will sit and rule on his throne, and the priest will be at his right, and peaceful counsel will be between the two of them.

14 And the crown will be to those who wait patiently, and to the useful people of it, and to those who have known it, and for the favor of the son of Zephaniah, and for a psalm in the house of the Lord. 15 And those far from them will come and build in the house of the Lord, and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you, and this will happen, if you listen attentively to the voice of the Lord your God.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Zechariah 6:12 and Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 61–63

Septuagint · Classical

Summary

Philo of Alexandria reads the messianic figure of Zechariah 6 as the divine Logos. The interpretation depends on the Greek Septuagint version, whose translation of the Hebrew name supplies the imagery of sunrise that Philo’s allegory draws on.

Passages

LXX Zechariah 6:12

Septuagint

11 And you will take silver and gold, and make crowns, and you will put them on the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest,12 and you will say to him, This is what the Lord Almighty says: Look at the man whose name is the Rising Sun, and he will rise up from beneath him, and build the house of the Lord. 13 And he will receive excellence, and will sit and rule on his throne, and the priest will be at his right, and peaceful counsel will be between the two of them.

200–100 BCE Read in LXX Zechariah

Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 61–63

Classical

61 Here is an example of the former kind: “And God planted a paradise in Eden, toward the East,” not of terrestrial but of celestial plants, which the planter caused to spring up from the incorporeal light that exists around him, so as to be forever inextinguishable. 62 I have also heard of one of the companions of Moses saying something like this: “Here is a man whose name is the East!” A very novel name indeed, if you take it as spoken of a man composed of body and soul; but if you regard it as applied to that incorporeal being who in no way differs from the divine image, you will agree that the name of the east has been given to him very aptly. 63 For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn; and the one born in this way, imitating the ways of his father, has formed various species by looking to his archetypal patterns.

20–50 CE Read in Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues

References

“... Philo introduces the text Zechariah here because the biblical text being interpreted in the discussion of De Confusione Linguarum is Septuagint Genesis 11:2, which reads ‘And it came to pass as they moved from the east [ἀνατολῶν, lit.: the rising], they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.’ Here, Philo clearly takes the messianic title of Zechariah 6:12, ṣemaḥ in the Masoretic text and anatolē in the Septuagint, as the Logos: the ‘eldest son whom the Father of all raised up.’ This is a classic description of how the Logos works. The Logos is the first generated from the divine mind and brings into creation the discrete elements of the sensible world by following (mimēsis) the ideas ...”

Richard D. Hecht, “Philo and Messiah,” in Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era, ed. Jacob Neusner, William Scott Green, and Ernest S. Frerichs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 150.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Last updated 11/15/2026

Four Chariots and the Winds

Crowns for Joshua

LXX Zechariah14 chapters

Compare LXX Zechariah 6:12 and Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 61–63

Summary

Passages

LXX Zechariah 6:12

Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 61–63

References

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