And a second time I said to him: It appears that the prophet adds a second question before the angel has an opportunity to answer the first one. Since Zechariah remains the speaker, these introductory words are an interruption in the flow of the speech that may be awkward in some languages. Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version omit them and continue straight on with the second question (similarly New Living Translation, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente), and translators may do the same if this would result in a better style in their own language. Most translations, however, keep the quotation formula, which can be expressed as “And I also asked him.” The question that follows raises various problems, both in terms of the words used and in terms of its relation to the description in verses 2-3.

What are these two branches of the olive trees: For What are…? Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version render “what is the meaning of…?” (compare verses 4, 11). The Hebrew word here translated branches elsewhere always has the meaning “grains of wheat growing at the top of the stalk.” Scholars think that here it must mean “the extreme ends of fruit-laden boughs,” so New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translates it as “the two tops of the olive trees.” Since English has no special term for this particular part of a tree, several translations use a more general term like branches (Revised Standard Version/New Revised Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible, Good News Translation, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Bible en français courant, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente) and translators with a similar problem may do the same. These branches have not been mentioned before and we must assume that they are simply prominent boughs, probably one on each tree.

Which are beside the two golden pipes from which the oil is poured out: These pipes have not been mentioned before either, and it is not certain where they were. The most probable interpretation is that they connected the trees to the bowl of verse 2, and supplied olive oil as fuel for the lamps. Of course, oil does not pour from an olive tree in everyday life: the olives have to be gathered and pressed to get the oil. But in a vision such details may be omitted. The tree was the ultimate source of the oil, and that is what the vision shows.

The word translated oil is the normal word for “gold,” and this causes a problem for interpreters. Some commentators assume that the “gold” stands for the color of the oil by a figure of speech called metonymy. Others assume that some words have been lost from the Hebrew, and that there was originally a reference to the golden bowl of verse 2. Others have suggested that the Hebrew word, though the same word for gold, is actually from a different root, and means “oil.” Whatever the truth may be, English versions generally render it as oil (Revised Standard Version/New Revised Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, Good News Translation), “golden oil” (New English Bible/ Revised English Bible, New International Version, New Living Translation, Bible en français courant), or even “golden olive oil” (Contemporary English Version), and this is what we recommend that other translators should do. Contemporary English Version offers a helpful model for this verse:

• And what is the meaning of the two branches from which golden olive oil flows through the two gold pipes?

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Zechariah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2002. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .