What the Prophet saw
In the dead of night not in a dream, but in an ecstatic condition, in which his mental and spiritual faculties were altogether awake and attuned to God, so that he could fully respond to the operations and promptings of the Spirit, and pictures of divine objects could be reflected on his soul he saw " a man " riding upon a red horse, standing among myrtles " in the bottom," or, more literally, "in" (or "by") the "deep," and behind him, at his command, were horses (most probably with riders upon them), red, speckled (or " sorrel," or " bay "), and white.
Now, before passing from this verse we must consider:
(a) Who is " the man "? (b} What is represented by the myrtles? and (c] the significance of the colour of the horses.
I. The "man," as we are told in ver. 11, was the Malakh Yehovah the Angel of Jehovah, who is none other than the " Angel of His face," the Divine " Angel of the Covenant," the second person in the Blessed Trinity, whose early manifestations to the patriarch and prophets, as the " Angel " or Messenger of Jehovah in the form of man, were anticipations of His incarnation and of that incomprehensible humiliation to which He would after wards condescend for our salvation. Some commentators (among them Keil and Dr. C. H. H. Wright[1]) do indeed distinguish between the two, but without sufficient reason. The chief ground of their objection to the identification of " the man " in the 8th verse with the Angel of Jehovah in the 11th, is that if the Angel of Jehovah was really identified with the rider on the red horse, that rider would have been represented as standing opposite to the other horse man (when giving in their report to him in ver. li), and they would not have been spoken of as standing behind him.[2] To which surely it is sufficient to reply that it is
