Zechariah 9–14

Chapter 9

Judgment against Israel’s Enemies

This is the message from the Lord against the land of Aram and the city of Damascus, for the eyes of humanity, including all the tribes of Israel, are on the Lord.

²Doom is certain for Hamath,

near Damascus,

and for the cities of Tyre and Sidon,

though they are so clever.

³Tyre has built a strong fortress

and has made silver and gold

as plentiful as dust in the streets!

⁴But now the Lord will strip away Tyre’s possessions

and hurl its fortifications into the sea,

and it will be burned to the ground.

⁵The city of Ashkelon will see Tyre fall

and will be filled with fear.

Gaza will shake with terror,

as will Ekron, for their hopes will be dashed.

Gaza’s king will be killed,

and Ashkelon will be deserted.

⁶Foreigners will occupy the city of Ashdod.

I will destroy the pride of the Philistines.

⁷I will grab the bloody meat from their mouths

and snatch the detestable sacrifices from their teeth.

Then the surviving Philistines will worship our God

and become like a clan in Judah.

The Philistines of Ekron will join my people,

as the ancient Jebusites once did.

⁸I will guard my Temple

and protect it from invading armies.

I am watching closely to ensure

that no more foreign oppressors overrun my people’s land.

Zion’s Coming King

⁹Rejoice, O people of Zion!

Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem!

Look, your king is coming to you.

He is righteous and victorious,

yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—

riding on a donkey’s colt.

¹⁰I will remove the battle chariots from Israel

and the warhorses from Jerusalem.

I will destroy all the weapons used in battle,

and your king will bring peace to the nations.

His realm will stretch from sea to sea

and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.

¹¹Because of the covenant I made with you,

sealed with blood,

I will free your prisoners

from death in a waterless dungeon.

¹²Come back to the place of safety,

all you prisoners who still have hope!

I promise this very day

that I will repay two blessings for each of your troubles.

¹³Judah is my bow,

and Israel is my arrow.

Jerusalem is my sword,

and like a warrior, I will brandish it against the Greeks.

¹⁴The Lord will appear above his people;

his arrows will fly like lightning!

The Sovereign Lord will sound the ram’s horn

and attack like a whirlwind from the southern desert.

¹⁵The Lord of Heaven’s Armies will protect his people,

and they will defeat their enemies by hurling great stones.

They will shout in battle as though drunk with wine.

They will be filled with blood like a bowl,

drenched with blood like the corners of the altar.

¹⁶On that day the Lord their God will rescue his people,

just as a shepherd rescues his sheep.

They will sparkle in his land

like jewels in a crown.

¹⁷How wonderful and beautiful they will be!

The young men will thrive on abundant grain,

and the young women will flourish on new wine.

Chapter 10

The Lord Will Restore His People

¹Ask the Lord for rain in the spring,

for he makes the storm clouds.

And he will send showers of rain

so every field becomes a lush pasture.

²Household gods give worthless advice,

fortune-tellers predict only lies,

and interpreters of dreams pronounce

falsehoods that give no comfort.

So my people are wandering like lost sheep;

they are attacked because they have no shepherd.

³“My anger burns against your shepherds,

and I will punish these leaders.

For the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has arrived

to look after Judah, his flock.

He will make them strong and glorious,

like a proud warhorse in battle.

⁴From Judah will come the cornerstone,

the tent peg,

the bow for battle,

and all the rulers.

⁵They will be like mighty warriors in battle,

trampling their enemies in the mud under their feet.

Since the Lord is with them as they fight,

they will overthrow even the enemy’s horsemen.

⁶“I will strengthen Judah and save Israel;

I will restore them because of my compassion.

It will be as though I had never rejected them,

for I am the Lord their God, who will hear their cries.

⁷The people of Israel will become like mighty warriors,

and their hearts will be made happy as if by wine.

Their children, too, will see it and be glad;

their hearts will rejoice in the Lord.

⁸When I whistle to them, they will come running,

for I have redeemed them.

From the few who are left,

they will grow as numerous as they were before.

⁹Though I have scattered them like seeds among the nations,

they will still remember me in distant lands.

They and their children will survive

and return again to Israel.

¹⁰I will bring them back from Egypt

and gather them from Assyria.

I will resettle them in Gilead and Lebanon

until there is no more room for them all.

¹¹They will pass safely through the sea of distress,

for the waves of the sea will be held back,

and the waters of the Nile will dry up.

The pride of Assyria will be crushed,

and the rule of Egypt will end.

¹²By my power I will make my people strong,

and by my authority they will go wherever they wish.

I, the Lord, have spoken!”

Chapter 11

¹Open your doors, Lebanon,

so that fire may devour your cedar forests.

²Weep, you cypress trees, for all the ruined cedars;

the most majestic ones have fallen.

Weep, you oaks of Bashan,

for the thick forests have been cut down.

³Listen to the wailing of the shepherds,

for their rich pastures are destroyed.

Hear the young lions roaring,

for their thickets in the Jordan Valley are ruined.

The Good and Evil Shepherds

⁴This is what the Lord my God says: “Go and care for the flock that is intended for slaughter. ⁵The buyers slaughter their sheep without remorse. The sellers say, ‘Praise the Lord! Now I’m rich!’ Even the shepherds have no compassion for them. ⁶Likewise, I will no longer have pity on the people of the land,” says the Lord. “I will let them fall into each other’s hands and into the hands of their king. They will turn the land into a wilderness, and I will not rescue them.”

⁷So I cared for the flock intended for slaughter—the flock that was oppressed. Then I took two shepherd’s staffs and named one Favor and the other Union. ⁸I got rid of their three evil shepherds in a single month.

But I became impatient with these sheep, and they hated me, too. ⁹So I told them, “I won’t be your shepherd any longer. If you die, you die. If you are killed, you are killed. And let those who remain devour each other!”

¹⁰Then I took my staff called Favor and cut it in two, showing that I had revoked the covenant I had made with all the nations. ¹¹That was the end of my covenant with them. The suffering flock was watching me, and they knew that the Lord was speaking through my actions.

¹²And I said to them, “If you like, give me my wages, whatever I am worth; but only if you want to.” So they counted out for my wages thirty pieces of silver.

¹³And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—this magnificent sum at which they valued me! So I took the thirty coins and threw them to the potter in the Temple of the Lord.

¹⁴Then I took my other staff, Union, and cut it in two, showing that the bond of unity between Judah and Israel was broken.

¹⁵Then the Lord said to me, “Go again and play the part of a worthless shepherd. ¹⁶This illustrates how I will give this nation a shepherd who will not care for those who are dying, nor look after the young, nor heal the injured, nor feed the healthy. Instead, this shepherd will eat the meat of the fattest sheep and tear off their hooves.

¹⁷“What sorrow awaits this worthless shepherd

who abandons the flock!

The sword will cut his arm

and pierce his right eye.

His arm will become useless,

and his right eye completely blind.”

Chapter 12

Future Deliverance for Jerusalem

This message concerning the fate of Israel came from the Lord: “This message is from the Lord, who stretched out the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the human spirit. ²I will make Jerusalem like an intoxicating drink that makes the nearby nations stagger when they send their armies to besiege Jerusalem and Judah. ³On that day I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock. All the nations will gather against it to try to move it, but they will only hurt themselves.

⁴“On that day,” says the Lord, “I will cause every horse to panic and every rider to lose his nerve. I will watch over the people of Judah, but I will blind all the horses of their enemies. ⁵And the clans of Judah will say to themselves, ‘The people of Jerusalem have found strength in the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, their God.’

⁶“On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a flame that sets a woodpile ablaze or like a burning torch among sheaves of grain. They will burn up all the neighboring nations right and left, while the people living in Jerusalem remain secure.

⁷“The Lord will give victory to the rest of Judah first, before Jerusalem, so that the people of Jerusalem and the royal line of David will not have greater honor than the rest of Judah. ⁸On that day the Lord will defend the people of Jerusalem; the weakest among them will be as mighty as King David! And the royal descendants will be like God, like the angel of the Lord who goes before them! ⁹For on that day I will begin to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

¹⁰“Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died. ¹¹The sorrow and mourning in Jerusalem on that day will be like the great mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddo.

¹²“All Israel will mourn, each clan by itself, and with the husbands separate from their wives. The clan of David will mourn alone, as will the clan of Nathan, ¹³the clan of Levi, and the clan of Shimei. ¹⁴Each of the surviving clans from Judah will mourn separately, and with the husbands separate from their wives.

Chapter 13

A Fountain of Cleansing

“On that day a fountain…