He asked me, "What do you see?" I answered, "I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lights on it, with seven channels to the lights (4:2).

The fifth vision that Zechariah saw in the night of the 24th day of the 11th month in the second year of Darius was the vision of the gold lampstand, the bowl and the two olive trees. The tips of the branches of the olive trees were like ears of grain, out of which pipes were connected to the bowl, and gold oil (some kind of golden liquid) was running through the pipes. The literal translation of v.12 would be:

Again I asked him, "What are these two olive ears that are emptying out the golden (thing) by the hand of the two gold pipes (v. 12)?"

Note that there is no word for “oil” in the original Hebrew text as you see in the NIV version. Zechariah only described what he saw, and it was some kind of liquid in the color of gold. Also note the verb, “to empty,” which is translated as “to pour out” in NIV. The verb implies that the liquid was not flowing constantly, but flowed for a while until it emptied out, and began to flow again: the cycle continued. It is interesting to see that when he first asked the angel about “these two olive trees”, the angel whom he was talking to did not answer, and it appears that the angel hesitated to do so.

Then I asked the angel, "What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand (v. 11)?"

The hesitation to answer by the angel was because these were not completely “olive trees.” Zechariah’s description was only the approximation of what he actually saw: he did his best to describe it.

There is a spring called “Gihon (means bursting) spring,” even today, in the city of David in Jerusalem, where once the temple stood. This spring is very unique in that water runs into it from a natural underground cistern (not man-made) somewhere on a near mountain that is higher than the water level of the Gihon spring. When the cistern is filled with water, it pushes the water out through the underground natural tube (this is the “pipe” in the vision) as in the system of a siphon, and when the water level of the cistern becomes low and air goes into the tube, the water stops flowing. And when the cistern is filled back with water giving enough pressure, it pushes water out through the tube again. This natural cistern was the “bowl” that Zechariah saw at the top of the lampstand.

What Zechariah saw was this underground water system of Jerusalem. The lampstand of seven lamps is a symbol of the temple, and the lamps are the eyes (also means springs) of the Lord, “which range through the earth (v. 10).” Zechariah also tells us in chapter 14 that on the day the feet of the Lord stand on the Mount of Olives, the mountain will split with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south, and a great valley will be formed between the two mountains from east to west (see also Ezek 47:1-12). Then:

On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in summer and in winter (14:8).

There is another unusual thing in chapter 4: the section of vv. 6b-10b was most likely moved from another place in the book, and inserted here. It was originally right after 1:7, and these words were given during the day of the 24th day of the 11th month, and in the night of that day, which would be 25th day in their calendar, he saw the visions recorded in the subsequent sections. The “mighty mountain” was Mount Zion, upon which David’s palace was built. The flattening of Mount Zion means that David’s house as the nation of Israel would disappear, and a new kingdom would be established through his descendant spreading to the right and to the left and dispossessing nations. In fact, the former foundation was taken out, and the foundation of this new kingdom was already laid, and we believers of Christ are being built upon it.