Zechariah 11-12

Common English Bible

11 Open your doors, Lebanon, so that fire will devour your cedars.
²Scream, cypress, for the cedar has fallen;
            those majestic ones have been devastated.
Scream, oaks of Bashan, for the deep forest has fallen.
³The sound of screaming appears among the shepherds
            because their majesty has been devastated.
        The sound of roaring can be heard among the young lions
            because the pride of the Jordan has been devastated.

The shepherd’s two staffs

⁴This is what the Lord my God says:
    Shepherd the flock intended for slaughter.
⁵        Those who buy them will kill them,
            but they will go unpunished.
        Those who sell them will say,
            “Blessed is the Lord, for I have become rich.”
                And their own shepherds won’t spare them.
⁶                In fact, I will no longer spare the inhabitants of the land, says the Lord.
        But look what I am about to bring upon humanity,
            upon each of them by their neighbor’s hand and by the hand of their king:
        They will beat the land to pieces,
            but I won’t rescue anyone from their hand.
⁷So I shepherded the flock intended for slaughter,
            the afflicted of the flock.^[a]
I took two staffs for myself.
        I named one Delight;
            the other I named Harmony.
I shepherded the flock.
⁸I removed three shepherds in one month
        when I grew impatient with them.
        Moreover, they detested me.
⁹Then I said, “I won’t shepherd you.
    Let the dying die,
                and let what is to be removed be removed.
    Let those who are left devour the flesh of their neighbor.”

¹⁰Then I took the staff Delight,
        and I chopped it up in order to break my covenant that I had made with all the peoples.
¹¹        It was broken on that day.
            As a result, the afflicted^[b] of the flock knew that it was the Lord’s word.
¹²And I said to them,
        “If it appears good to you, give me my wages;
        but if not, then stop.”
        So they weighed out my wages, thirty shekels of silver.
¹³The Lord said to me,
        “Put it in the treasury.^[c]
        They value me at too magnificent a price.”
So I took the thirty shekels^[d] of silver
        and put them in the treasury of the Lord’s house.

¹⁴Then I chopped up my second staff Harmony,
        to break the alliance between Judah and Israel.
¹⁵Then the Lord said to me,
    “Take for yourself again the equipment of a foolish shepherd,
¹⁶        because I am about to appoint a shepherd in the land.
            He won’t tend to those who have been removed.
            He won’t seek the young or heal the broken.
            He won’t sustain the one standing.
            Instead, he will devour the flesh of the fat ones, even tearing off their hooves.
¹⁷        Doom, foolish shepherd who forsakes the flock.
            A sword will strike^[e] his arm and his right eye.
            His arm will wither completely;
                his right eye will become blind.”

Jerusalem on that day

12 A pronouncement. The Lord’s word against Israel,
    an utterance of the Lord
        who stretches out the heavens,
        who establishes the earth,
        and who fashions the spirit of humanity within it:
²I am about to make Jerusalem a cup that will stagger all the surrounding nations.
        There will be a siege against Judah and against Jerusalem.

³On that day I will make Jerusalem into a heavy stone^[f] for all the peoples.
All who carry it will hurt themselves;
nevertheless, the nations of the earth will conspire against it.

⁴On that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with confusion
        and its rider with madness.
I will keep my eyes open for the house of Judah;
        I will strike blind every horse of the peoples.
⁵The chieftains of Judah will say to themselves, We are strong;
        the inhabitants of Jerusalem will say,
            The Lord their God of heavenly forces is strong.^[g]

⁶On that day I will place the chieftains of Judah like a pot on a wood fire and like a burning torch among the bundles of grain.
        They will devour all the surrounding nations to the right and the left.
        Jerusalem will dwell again in its place, in Jerusalem.
⁷The Lord will first deliver the tents of Judah so that the splendor of David’s house
        and the splendor of Jerusalem’s inhabitants won’t overshadow Judah.

⁸On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Anyone among them who stumbles on that day will become like David,
and David’s house will become like God,
like the Lord’s messenger in front of them.

⁹On that day I intend to destroy all the nations who come against Jerusalem,
¹⁰    but I will pour out a spirit of grace and mercy on David’s house
        and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
They will look to me concerning the one whom they pierced;
        they will mourn over him like the mourning for an only child.
        They will mourn bitterly over him like the bitter mourning over the death of^[h] an oldest child.

¹¹On that day, the mourning in Jerusalem
    will be as great as the mourning of Hadad-Rimmon in the Megiddo Valley.
¹²The land will mourn, each of the clans by itself:
    the clan of David’s house by themselves, and their women by themselves;
            the clan of Nathan’s house by themselves, and their women by themselves;
¹³            the clan of Levi’s house by themselves, and their women by themselves;
            and the Shimeites’ clan by themselves, and their women by themselves;
¹⁴            and all the remaining clans, each clan by itself, and their women by themselves.