Zechariah 10–14

The Lord’s Promises

10Ask the Lord for rain during the springtime rains.

The Lord is the one who makes the clouds.

He sends the showers

and gives everyone green fields.

²Idols tell lies;

fortune-tellers see false visions

and tell about false dreams.

The comfort they give is worth nothing.

So the people are like lost sheep.

They are abused, because there is no shepherd.

³The Lord says, “I am angry at my shepherds,

and I will punish the leaders.

I, the Lord All-Powerful, care

for my flock, the people of Judah.

I will make them like my proud war horses.

⁴From Judah will come the cornerstone,

and the tent peg,

the battle bow,

and every ruler.

⁵Together they will be like soldiers

marching to battle through muddy streets.

The Lord is with them,

so they will fight and defeat the horsemen.

⁶“I will strengthen the people of Judah

and save the people of Joseph.

I will bring them back,

because I care about them.

It will be as though

I had never left them,

because I am the Lord their God,

and I will answer them.

⁷The people of Ephraim will be strong like soldiers;

they will be glad as when they have drunk wine.

Their children will see it and rejoice;

they will be happy in the Lord.

⁸I will call my people

and gather them together.

I will save them,

and they will grow in number as they grew in number before.

⁹I have scattered them among the nations,

but in those faraway places, they will remember me.

They and their children will live and return.

¹⁰I will bring them back from the land of Egypt

and gather them from Assyria.

I will bring them to Gilead and Lebanon

until there isn’t enough room for them all.

¹¹They will come through the sea of trouble.

The waves of the sea will be calm,

and the Nile River will dry up.

I will defeat Assyria’s pride

and destroy Egypt’s power over other countries.

¹²I will make my people strong,

and they will live as I say,” says the Lord.

11Lebanon, open your gates

so fire may burn your cedar trees. ⁿ

²Cry, pine trees, because the cedar has fallen,

because the tall trees are ruined.

Cry, oaks in Bashan,

because the mighty forest has been cut down.

³Listen to the shepherds crying

because their rich pastures are destroyed.

Listen to the lions roaring

because the lovely land of the Jordan River is ruined.

The Two Shepherds

⁴This is what the Lord my God says: “Feed the flock that are about to be killed. ⁵Their buyers kill them and are not punished. Those who sell them say, ‘Praise the Lord, I am rich.’ Even the shepherds don’t feel sorry for their sheep. ⁶I don’t feel sorry anymore for the people of this country,” says the Lord. “I will let everyone be under the power of his neighbor and king. They will bring trouble to the country, and I will not save anyone from them.”

⁷So I fed the flock about to be killed, particularly the weakest ones. Then I took two sticks; I called one Pleasant and the other Union, and I fed the flock. ⁸In one month I got rid of three shepherds. The flock did not pay attention to me, and I got impatient with them. ⁹I said, “I will no longer take care of you like a shepherd. Let those that are dying die, and let those that are to be destroyed be destroyed. Let those that are left eat each other.”

¹⁰Then I broke the stick named Pleasant to break the agreement God made with all the nations. ¹¹That day it was broken. The weak ones in the flock who were watching me knew this message was from the Lord.

¹²Then I said, “If you want to pay me, pay me. If not, then don’t.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver.

¹³The Lord said to me, “Throw the money to the potter.” That is how little they thought I was worth. ⁿ So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the Temple of the Lord.

¹⁴Then I broke the second stick, named Union, to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

¹⁵Then the Lord said to me, “Get the things used by a foolish shepherd again, ¹⁶because I am going to get a new shepherd for the country. He will not care for the dying sheep, or look for the young ones, or heal the injured ones, or feed the healthy. But he will eat the best sheep and tear off their hoofs.

¹⁷“How terrible it will be for the useless shepherd

who abandoned the flock.

A sword will strike his arm and his right eye.

His arm will lose all its strength,

and his right eye will go blind.”

Jerusalem Will Be Saved

12This message is the word of the Lord to Israel. This is what the Lord says, who stretched out the skies, and laid the foundations of the earth, and put the human spirit within: ²“I will make Jerusalem like a cup of poison to the nations around her. They will come and attack Jerusalem and Judah. ³One day all the nations on earth will come together to attack Jerusalem, but I will make it like a heavy rock; anyone who tries to move it will get hurt. ⁴At that time I will confuse every horse and cause its rider to go crazy,” says the Lord. “I will watch over Judah, but I will blind all the horses of the enemies. ⁵Then the leaders of Judah will say to themselves, ‘The people of Jerusalem are strong, because the Lord All-Powerful is their God.’

⁶“At that time I will make the leaders of Judah like a fire burning a stack of wood or like a fire burning straw. They will destroy all the people around them left and right. But the people of Jerusalem will remain safe.

⁷“The Lord will save the homes of Judah first so that the honor given to David’s family and to the people of Jerusalem won’t be greater than the honor given to Judah. ⁸At that time the Lord will protect the people in Jerusalem. Then even the weakest of them will be strong like David. And the family of David will be like God, like an angel of the Lord in front of them. ⁹At that time I will go to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem.

Crying for the One They Stabbed

¹⁰“I will pour out on David’s family and the people in Jerusalem a spirit of kindness and mercy. They will look at me, the one they have stabbed, and they will cry like someone crying over the death of an only child. They will be as sad as someone who has lost a firstborn son. ¹¹At that time there will be much crying in Jerusalem, like the crying for Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. ¹²The land will cry, each family by itself: the family of David by itself and their wives by themselves, the family of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves, ¹³the family of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves, the family of Shimei by itself and their wives by themselves, ¹⁴and all the rest of the families by themselves and their wives by themselves.

13“At that time a fountain will be open for David’s descendants and for the people of Jerusalem to cleanse them of their sin and uncleanness.”

²The Lord All-Powerful says, “At that time I will get rid of the names of the idols from the land; no one will remember them anymore. I will also remove the prophets and unclean spirits from the land. ³If a person continues to prophesy, his own father and mother, the ones who gave birth to him, will tell him, ‘You have told lies using the Lord’s name, so you must die.’ When he prophesies, his own father and mother who gave birth to him will stab him.

⁴“At that time the prophets will be ashamed of their visions and prophecies. They won’t wear the prophet’s clothes made of hair to trick people. ⁵Each of them will say, ‘I am not a prophet. I am a farmer and have been a farmer since I was young.’ ⁶But someone will ask, ‘What are the deep cuts on your body?’ And each will answer, ‘I was hurt at my friend’s house.’

The Shepherd Is Killed

⁷“Sword, hit the shepherd.

Attack the man who is my friend,”

says the Lord All-Powerful.

“Kill the shepherd,

and the sheep will scatter,

and I will punish the little ones.”

⁸The Lord says, “Two-thirds of the people

through all the land will die. They will be gone,

and one-third will be left.

⁹The third that is left I will test with fire,

purifying them like silver,

testing them like gold.

Then they will call on me,

and I will answer them.

I will say, ‘You are my people,’

and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’ ”

The Day of Punishment

14The Lord’s day of judging is coming when the wealth you have taken will be divided among you.

²I will bring all the nations together to fight Jerusalem. They will capture the city and rob the houses and attack the women. Half the people will be taken away as captives, but the rest of the people won’t be taken from the city.

³Then the Lord will go to war against those nations; he will fight as in a day of battle. ⁴On that day he will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives will split in two, forming a deep valley that runs east and west. Half the mountain will move toward the north, and half will move toward the south. ⁵You will run through this mountain valley to the other side, just as you ran from the earthquake when Uzziah was king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with him.

⁶On that day there will be no light, cold, or frost. ⁷There will be no other day like it, and the Lord knows when it will come. There will be no day or night; even at evening it will still be light.

⁸At that time fresh water will flow from Jerusalem. Half of it will flow east to the Dead Sea, and half will flow west to the Mediterranean Sea. It will flow summer and winter.

⁹Then the Lord will be king over the whole world. At that time there will be only one Lord, and his name will be the only name.

¹⁰All the land south of Jerusalem from Geba to Rimmon will be turned into a plain. Jerusalem will be raised up, but it will stay in the same place. The city will reach from the Benjamin Gate and to the First Gate to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses. ¹¹People will live there, and it will never be destroyed again. Jerusalem will be safe.

¹²But the Lord will bring a terrible disease on the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot away while they are still standing up. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. ¹³At that time the …