Zechariah 1:20

"And Jehovah showed me four smiths. Then said I, What come these to do? And he spake, saying, These are the horns that scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up his head; but these are come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations, which lifted up their horn against the land of Judah to scatter it."

Four smiths ... these are the horns ..." What a dramatic depiction of the rise and fall of nations. Assyria was the "smith" that ruined Egypt, and Assyria was also the "horn" that scattered Israel; and Babylon was the "smith" that ruined Assyria, but Babylon was also the "horn" that destroyed and scattered Judah; and Medo-Persia was the "smith" that destroyed the horn of Babylon; but in time Medo-Persia also, itself now become a persecuting horn, was destroyed by yet another "smith" not visible in this prophecy, but certain, in time, to come, nevertheless.

Great, monolithic world governments carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction, a fact discernible here in the "horns" that were also described as "smiths."

In line with a great many current interpreters, Hailey described efforts to identify the four horns and smiths with the world powers of, "Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, and Medo-Persia, as futile. The four stand for all the world powers who have scattered God's people."[44] However, when properly understood merely as different "heads" or manifestations of the great scarlet beast of Revelation 13th chapter, it is dramatically clear that these actually are "all of the world powers" that ever lifted themselves up against God's people.

The purpose of this brief, but powerful, vision of four horns and four smiths was "To show to the people of God, that every hostile power of the world which has risen up against it, or shall rise up, is to be judged and destroyed by the Lord."[45] Such a revelation was no doubt a source of inexhaustible comfort and encouragement to the people of God.