The Doomed Flock

⁴ Thus says the Lord my God, “Pasture the flock doomed for slaughter, ⁵ whose buyers slay them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich!’ And their own shepherds have no pity on them nor protect them [from the wolves]. ⁶ For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land,” declares the Lord; “but behold, I will cause the men to fall, each into the hand of another and into the hands of his [foreign] king. And the enemy will strike the land, and I will not rescue the people from their hand.”

⁷ So I [Zechariah] pastured the flock doomed for slaughter, truly [as the name implies] the most miserable of sheep. And I took two [shepherd’s] staffs, the one I called Favor (Grace) and the other I called Union (Bonds); so I pastured the flock. ⁸ Then I eliminated the three [incompetent, unfit] shepherds [the civil rulers, the priests, and the prophets] in one month, for I was impatient with them, and they also were tired of me and despised me.^{(A) 9} So I said, “I will not pasture you. What is to die, let it die, and what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let the survivors devour one another’s flesh.” ¹⁰ I took my staff, Favor, and broke it in pieces, breaking the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. ¹¹ So the covenant was broken on that day, and thus the most wretched of the flock who were watching me realized that it was the word of the Lord. ¹² I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, do not.” So they weighed out ^[a]thirty pieces of silver as my wages. ^13 [b]Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter [as if to the dogs]—that magnificent sum at which I am valued by them!” So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord.^{(B) 14} Then I broke my second staff, Union, into pieces to break the brotherhood between Judah (the Southern Kingdom) and Israel (the Northern Kingdom).

¹⁵ The Lord said to me, “Take again for yourself the equipment [of a shepherd, but this time] of a foolish shepherd.^{(C) 16} For behold, I am going to raise up a [false] shepherd in the land who will not care for the perishing, seek the scattered, heal the broken, or feed the healthy; but will eat the flesh of the fat ones and tear off their hoofs [to consume everything].

Jerusalem to Be Attacked

12 The ^[c]oracle (a burdensome message) of the word of the Lord concerning Israel.

Thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundation of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him: ² “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling (staggering) to all the surrounding peoples; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah. ³ And in that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will come and be gathered against it. ⁴ In that day,” declares the Lord, “I will strike every horse with panic and his rider with madness; but I will open My eyes and watch over the house of Judah, and will strike every horse of the [opposing] nations with blindness. ⁵ Then the clans of Judah will say in their hearts, ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem are our strength in the Lord of hosts, their God.’

⁶ “In that day I will make the clans of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, and like a flaming torch among sheaves [of grain]. They will devour all the surrounding peoples on the right hand and on the left; and the people of Jerusalem will again live [securely] in their own place, in Jerusalem. ⁷ The Lord shall save the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem will not be magnified above Judah. ⁸ In that day the Lord will defend the people of Jerusalem, and the one who is impaired among them in that day [of persecution] will become [strong and noble] like David; and the house of David ^[d]will be like God, like the ^[e]Angel of the Lord [who is] before them. ⁹ And in that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

¹⁰ “I will pour out on the house of David and on the people of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace (unmerited favor) and supplication. And they will look at Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him as one who weeps bitterly over a firstborn.^{(E) 11} In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of [the city of] Hadadrimmon in the Valley of ^[f]Megiddo [over beloved King ^[g]Josiah].^{(F) 12} The land will mourn, every family by itself; the [royal] family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan [David’s son] by itself and their wives by themselves; ¹³ the [priestly] family of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of Shimei [grandson of Levi] by itself and their wives by themselves; ¹⁴ all the families that remain, each by itself, and their wives by themselves [each with an overwhelming individual regret for having blindly rejected their Messiah].

False Prophets Ashamed

13 “In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the people of Jerusalem for [cleansing from] sin and impurity.

² “In that day,” declares the Lord of hosts, “I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered. I will also remove the [false] prophets and the unclean spirit from the land. ³ And if anyone still [appears as a prophet and falsely] prophesies, then his father and his mother who gave birth to him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, for you have spoken lies in the name of the Lord’; and his father and his mother who gave birth to him shall pierce him through when he prophesies. ⁴ And in that day the [false] prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and they will not wear a hairy robe [of true prophets] in order to deceive, ⁵ but he will [deny his identity and] say, ‘I am no prophet. I work the ground, because a man sold me as a slave in my youth.’ ⁶ And one will say to him, ‘What are these ^[h]wounds between your arms?’ Then he will answer, ‘Those wounds I received in the house of my friends.’

God Will Battle Jerusalem’s Foes

14 Behold, a day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you (Jerusalem) will be divided in your midst. ² For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured and the houses plundered and the women ravished; and half of the city will be exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city. ³ Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. ⁴ In that day His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in half from the east to the west by a very large valley, and half of the mountain will move toward the north and half of it toward the south.^{(I) 5} You will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; and you will flee just as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord my ^[i]God will come, and all the holy ones (believers, angels) with Him.^(J)

⁶ In that day there will be no light; the glorious ones (heavenly bodies) shall be darkened. ⁷ But it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord—not day and not night, but at evening time there will be light.

⁸ And in that day living waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea (Dead Sea) and half of them to the western sea (the Mediterranean); it will be in summer as well as in winter.

God Will Be King over All

⁹ And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord shall be the only one [worshiped], and His name the only one.

¹⁰ All the land will be changed into a plain from Geba to Rimmon, [the Rimmon that is] south of Jerusalem; but Jerusalem will rise and remain [lifted up] on its site from Benjamin’s Gate to the place of the First Gate to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s wine presses. ¹¹ It will be inhabited, for there will no longer be a curse, for Jerusalem will dwell in security.^(K)

¹² Now this will be the plague with which the Lord shall strike all the peoples that have warred against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth. ¹³ In that day a great panic and dismay from the Lord will fall on them; and they will seize one another’s hand, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other. ¹⁴ Judah also will fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all the surrounding nations will be gathered together—gold and silver and garments in great abundance. ¹⁵ So like this plague [on men] there will be the plague on the horses, mules, camels, donkeys, and all the livestock in those camps.

¹⁶ Then everyone who is left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and celebrate the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles). ¹⁷ And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them. ¹⁸ If the family of Egypt does not go up [to Jerusalem] and present themselves, then no rain will fall on them. It will be the plague with which the Lord will strike the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles). ¹⁹ This will be the [consequent] punishment [for the sin] of Egypt, and the [consequent] punishment [for the sin] of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles).

²⁰ In that day there will be written on the little bells on the horses, “^[j]HOLY TO The Lord.” And the cooking pots in the Lord’s house will be [holy to the Lord] like the bowls before the altar. ²¹ Every cooking pot in [all the houses in] Jerusalem and in Judah will be holy to the Lord of hosts, and all who sacrifice will come and take them and boil [their sacrifices] in them. And in that day there will no longer be a Canaanite [that is, any godless or spiritually unclean person, whether Jew or Gentile] in the house of the Lord of hosts.^(L)