And I said to the angel that spoke to me: What are these? And he said to me: These are the horns that have scattered Juda, and Israel, and Jerusalem.

And I say unto the messenger who is speaking with me, 'What are these?' And he saith unto me, 'These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.'

And I said to the angel who was talking to me, What are these? And he said to me, These are the horns which have sent Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem in flight.

And I said unto the angel that spoke with me: 'What are these?' And he said unto me: 'These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.'

And I said to the angel, who was speaking with me, "What are these?" And he said to me, "These are the horns that have winnowed Judah and Israel and Jerusalem."

Et dixi ad angelum, qui loquebatur mecum, Qui isti? (hoc est, Qui sunt isti?) et dixit ad me, Haec sunt cornua quae ventilarunt Iehudah, Israel, et Ierusalem. (Ego conjungam etiam proximos versus)

These are the horns which have scattered - o "The four horns which scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem, are four nations, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Romans; as the Lord, on the prophet's enquiry, explains here, and Daniel unfolds most fully Daniel. 2; who in the vision of the image with golden head, silver breast, belly and thighs of brass, feet of iron and clay, explained it of these four nations, and again in another vision of four beasts Daniel. 7, lion, bear, leopard and another unnamed dreadful beast, he pointed out the same nations under another figure. But that the Medes and Persians, after the victory of Cyrus, were one kingdom, no one will doubt, who reads secular and sacred literature. When this vision was beheld, the kingdom of the Babylonians had now passed away, that of the Medes and Persians was instant; that of Greeks and Macedonians and of the Romans was yet to come.
What the Babylonians, what the Medes and Persians, what the Greeks that is, the Macedonians, did to Judah, Israel and Jerusalem, a learned man acknowledgeth, especially under Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes, to which the history of the Maccabees belongs. After the Coming of our Lord and Saviour, when Jerusalem was encompassed, Josephus, a native writer, tells most fully, what the Israelites endured, and the Gospel fore-announced. These horns dispersed Judah almost individually, so that, bowed down by the heavy weight of evils, no one of them raised his head." Though these were successive in time, they are exhibited to Zechariah as one. One whole are the efforts against God's Church; one whole are the instruments of God, whether angelic or human, in doing or suffering, to repel them. Zechariah then exhibits these hostile powers as past and gone, as each would be at the end, having put forth his passing might, and perishing. They scattered, each in its day, and disappeared; for the next displaced it.
The long schism being ended, Judah and Israel are again one; and Jerusalem, the place of God's worship, belongs to Israel as well as to Judah.
The explanation of the number four, as symbolizing contemporaneous attacks from the four quarters of the heavens, fails in matter of fact, that, in these later times, the Jews suffered always from one power at a time. There was no such fourfold attack. In Zechariah's time all around was Persian.
Osorius: "Those horns, broken by the angels' ministry, portended that no guilt against the church of Christ should be unpunished. Never will there be wanting fierce enemies from east, west, north, or south, whom God will strengthen, in order by them to teach His own. But when He shall see His work finished, that is, when He shall have cleansed the stains of His own and brought back His Church to her former purity, He will punish those who so fiercely afflicted her."
Spiritually, (Jerome), "those who destroy vices, build up virtues, and all the saints who, possessing these remedies, ever build up the Church, may be called 'builders.' Whence the Apostle says, "I, as a wise builder, laid the foundation" 1-Corinthians 3:10; and the Lord, when wroth, said that He would "take away from Jerusalem artificer and wise man" Isaiah 3:3. And the Lord Himself, Son of the Almighty God and of the Creator of all, is called "the son of the carpenter" Matthew 13:55.

And I said unto the angel that talked with me,.... Zac 1:9,
What be these? that is, who do these horns signify? and what or whom do they represent?
and he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem; which may design the distresses, vexations, and captivities of the people of Israel by their enemies, as by the Moabites, Ammonites, &c. in the times of the judges; and the captivity of the ten tribes of Israel by Shalmaneser; and of the two tribes of Benjamin and Judah, and of the destruction of Jerusalem, by Nebuchadnezzar; when they were ventilated or fanned, as the word (x) signifies, and so scattered abroad; see Jeremiah 6:11 and also their troubles in the times of the Medes and Persians, under Cambyses, until this second year of Darius; and may likewise have reference prophetically to their after troubles and captivity by the Romans; and to Rome Pagan, which persecuted and scattered the churches of Christ and people of God in the several parts of the world; and the antichristian states, the persecutors of the same.
(x) "quae ventilaverunt", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Vatablus, Drusius, Cocceius.

Judah, Israel--Though some of the ten tribes of Israel returned with Judah from Babylon, the full return of the former, as of the latter, is here foretold and must be yet future.

The horns - Powers, states, and kingdoms, which have from all sides pushed at, broken and tossed my people. Judah - The two tribes. Israel - The ten tribes.