Horns of the Beast

Let's face it: some of the visions of the prophets are just plain weird, from Elijah all the way up to John in Revelation, it's a lot of bizarre language and images that are used to describe what God is doing or what God is going to do. 

One of the more frequent images used by God through the prophets is that of a beast with horns. A certain beast with a certain number of horns, that sometimes grow more horns and then the horns take on a life of their own and become rampaging horns or whatever. Beasts and horns: it's a Bible thing. 

And we could get into what all of that means, how the horns are interpreted to be kingdoms or kings, leaders of people or peoples themselves who come to authority for a time, times, and half a time (whatever that means) until they get replaced by other kingdoms or kings, leaders or peoples. And on and on and on it goes. 

Until...

Zechariah. 

And now, we start bringing...Jesus...into the mix.

See, Zechariah is having one of these visions that's so common to prophets. He has before his sanctified sight an image of a beast with a number of horns, just as so many prophets before and after him will see. He's even got horsemen patrolling the earth (chapters 1 and 6, which ought to bring to mind some images from Revelation, but I digress). The difference in Zechariah's prophecy is what happens to those horns.

In this prophecy, craftsmen come and take care of the horns that traumatized and ravaged Israel and Judah (Zechariah 1). 

Craftsmen like...say...carpenters?

Ah, you see where I'm going with this. Right here, Zechariah is identifying the nations that have come against and splintered God's people, and he wraps it up with a craftsman who is going to put those nations in their place. The prophecy ties up in the Messiah in a way that you can't possibly understand unless you know the Carpenter is coming. Jesus is exactly the kind of skilled workman who can take the horns of this beast in His hands and "take care" of it. 

Little things that you read right by a thousand times until once, just once, it jumps off the page at you and you can never forget it. Just thought I'd share.