Lord

Zechariah uses the word “lord” or “master” ( adon ) seven times in the first six chapters of his prophecy (1:9, 4:4, 5, 13, 14; 6:4-5).  The word appears in the first, the fifth, and the eighth of Zechariah’s night visions, beginning, middle, end.

Five of the seven uses are in Zechariah’s conversations with the interpreting angel, the “angel who was speaking with me.” In two cases, however, the angel uses the word, and in both cases he refers to the “Lord of the whole earth.”  Those two uses are neatly distributed in the night visions.  The first is in 4:14, at the climax of the vision of the lampstands.  The angel identifies the two olive trees as the “sons of oil” who “stand by the Master of the whole earth.”  The second use of adon as a title for Yahweh comes in 6:5, again at the climax of a vision, in fact at the climax of the whole sequence of night visions.  And the phrase where the word is used in 6:5 echoes the earlier phrase in 4:14.  The chariots and horses that go out in the final vision are the spirits of heaven that “go forth after standing before the Master of the whole earth.”

One implication of this arrangement is that the “sons of oil” from chapter 4 are parallel to the “spirits of heaven.” Both stand in the presence of the Master of the whole earth, and are His agents in the world.