What are the Four Winds of Heaven? The Jews held that the
winds from due north, south, east, and west to be favorable,
while those from the angles were unfavorable. Many
commentators identify these winds as the “powers of the air”
or “spiritual forces of evil” of which the apostle Paul wrote
in Ephesians 6:12:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but
against the rulers, against the authorities, against the
powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces
of evil in the heavenly realms.
In Revelation 7:1, the four winds of the earth can be
taken as literal or symbolic, representing the destructive
forces of either God or evil.
After this I saw four angels standing at the four
corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the
earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on
the sea or on any tree.
The LORD announced in Jeremiah 49:36:
I will bring against Elam the four winds from the four
quarters of the heavens; I will scatter them to the four
winds, and there will not be a nation where Elam's exiles
do not go.
Elam is the Hebrew name of a region lying east of
Babylonia and extending to the mountains of Media in the
northeast, and along the Persian Gulf to the borders of
ancient Persia in the south. Its two divisions were Elam
proper in the north and Anshan in the south, the latter
being an independent kingdom until it was annexed by
Persia around 600 B.C.
Elam assisted in the overthrow of Babylon and was
absorbed by the Persian Empire. The four winds do not
represent four nations coming against Elam; they symbolize
the widespread scattering of the people of Elam by God.
In three passages, the four winds symbolize the
scattering or gathering of the elect to or from the ends
of the earth (Zechariah 2:6; Matthew 24:31; Mark 13:27).
In Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones, the
four winds symbolize the Holy Spirit’s breath of
salvation, breathed into Israel.
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy,
son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign
LORD says: ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and
breathe into these slain,
that they may live’”
In the figurative language of Scripture, the blowing of
the four winds of heaven has either positive or negative
ramifications. The Aramaic does not indicate whether the
four winds blew at the same time, or followed each other
in sequence. A separate and sequential churning of the
Great Sea by each wind matches the historical fulfillment
of this passage. In verses 6 and 7, the phrase “after
that” points to the sequential blowing of the winds.
Of the 192 references to “wind” in the Bible, 60 relate
to events and ideas that involve the power and sovereignty