Does Scripture Make Horse Sense?

In Scripture, Jehovah God is often depicted as riding on horses.  For instance we read in Haabakkuk 3:8,15:

Oh God, Thou dost ride upon Thy horses, Thy chariots of salvation; Thou hast made Thy horses to tread in the sea;

Besides riding horses underwater, God can also ride in the clouds:

Sing unto God, sing praises to His name, extol Him that rideth upon the clouds, (Ps. 68:4)

Besides the supernatural significance of this divine horsemanship, Scripture fails to tell us why an Infinite God needs to ride any horses at all—especially when it concerns salvation.

This strange theme is also continued in the New Testament as Jesus enters into Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of a donkey, as well as in Revelation, which depicts the Lord’s return on a white horse.

In the case of the Lord entering into Jerusalem on a colt, this can be simply explained as the fulfilling of Scripture from Zechariah (9:9). But again, why is such bareback riding associated with God’s coming to save humankind? Surely, an omnipotent Being does not need a horse!

Perhaps “horse sense” in God’s Holy Word transcends common sense. In other words, we are being challenged to decipher a higher spiritual psychology from the meaning of these extraordinary images. To come to a psycho-spiritual interpretation of God’s “riding upon horses” we need to use our mind in a new way and meditate on what this might symbolize.

It is obvious that a man or woman can travel farther and faster on a horse than on foot. The symbolic equivalence of this is that a human’s thoughts travel farther and faster from the cognitive function of understanding than relying just on the more pedantic function of retrieving memory-data (memory and understanding are two distinct functions of the human intellect).

Therefore, anytime God is described as riding on a horse (or a colt, the foal of a donkey) it represents that God comes to humans with greater understanding and truth. This is why such equestrian depictions are relevant to human salvation.

In fact, the idea of God  “riding upon clouds” means that deeper divine knowledge exists within the common meanings of the Holy Word. Symbolically speaking, clouds represent a relative state of obscurity concerning God’s communication of deeper truths, from a mere literal (and worldly) grasp of Scripture.

This symbolic knowledge that physical terms correspond to spiritual knowledge was known in ancient times. For instance, the Greeks also described deities as using chariots and horses, which originally represented various levels of understanding truth. This abstract human knowledge degenerated as paganism and polytheism began to take these images of gods literally.

That the Lord’s eschatological return will be upon a white horse signifies that the Second Coming will involve the human mind regaining access to this deeper symbolic language. That is why the last chapter in the Holy Word is called REVELATION.

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