Zechariah 10–14

Restoration of Judah and Israel

¹⁰Ask rain from the Lord

in the season of the spring rain,

from the Lord who makes the storm clouds,

who gives showers of rain to you,ⁱ

the vegetation in the field to everyone.^*

²For the teraphim^j utter nonsense,

and the diviners see lies;

the dreamers tell false dreams

and give empty consolation.

Therefore the people^k wander like sheep;

they suffer for lack of a shepherd.^*

³My anger is hot against the shepherds,

and I will punish the leaders,^l

for the Lord of hosts cares for his flock, the house of Judah,

and will make them like his proud war horse.^*

⁴Out of them shall come the cornerstone,

out of them the tent peg,

out of them the battle bow,

out of them every commander.^*

⁵Together they shall be like warriors in battle,

trampling the foe in the mud of the streets;

they shall fight, for the Lord is with them,

and they shall put to shame the riders on horses.^*

⁶I will strengthen the house of Judah,

and I will save the house of Joseph.

I will bring them back because I have compassion on them,

and they shall be as though I had not rejected them,

for I am the Lord their God, and I will answer them.^*

⁷Then the people of Ephraim shall become like warriors,

and their hearts shall be glad as with wine.

Their children shall see it and rejoice;

their hearts shall exult in the Lord.^*

⁸I will signal for them and gather them in,

for I have redeemed them,

and they shall be as numerous as they were before.^*

⁹Though I scattered them among the nations,

yet in far countries they shall remember me,

and they shall rear their children and return.^*

¹⁰I will bring them home from the land of Egypt

and gather them from Assyria;

I will bring them to the land of Gilead and to Lebanon,

until there is no room for them.^*

¹¹They^m shall pass through the sea of distress,

and the waves of the sea shall be struck down,

and all the depths of the Nile dried up.

The pride of Assyria shall be laid low,

and the scepter of Egypt shall depart.^*

¹²I will make them strong in the Lord,

and they shall walk in his name,

says the Lord.^*

¹¹Open your doors, O Lebanon,

so that fire may devour your cedars!^*

²Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen,

for the glorious trees are ruined!

Wail, oaks of Bashan,

for the thick forest has been felled!^*

³Listen, the wail of the shepherds,

for their glory is despoiled!

Listen, the roar of the lions,

for the thickets of the Jordan are destroyed!^*

Two Kinds of Shepherds

⁴“Thus says the Lord my God: Be a shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter.^{* 5}Those who buy them kill 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.^{* 6}For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord. I will cause them, every one, to fall each into the hand of a neighbor and each into the hand of the king, and they shall devastate the earth, and I will deliver no one from their hand.”^*

⁷So on behalf of the sheep merchants,ⁿ I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. I took two staffs; one I named Favor, the other I named Unity, and I tended the sheep.^{* 8}In one month I disposed of the three shepherds, for I had become impatient with them, and they also detested me.^{* 9}So I said, “I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die; what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let those that are left devour the flesh of one another!” ¹⁰I took my staff Favor and broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples.^{* 11}So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep merchants^o who were watching me knew that it was the word of the Lord.^{* 12}I then said to them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages, but if not, keep them.” So they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver.^{* 13}Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it into the treasury”^p—this lordly price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury^q in the house of the Lord.^{* 14}Then I broke my second staff Unity, annulling the family ties between Judah and Israel.

¹⁵Then the Lord said to me: “Take once more the implements of a worthless shepherd.^{* 16}For I am now raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for the perishing, or seek the wandering,^r or heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy,^s but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.

¹⁷Oh, my worthless shepherd,

who deserts the flock!

May the sword strike his arm

and his right eye!

Let his arm be completely withered,

his right eye utterly blinded!”^*

Jerusalem’s Victory

¹²An Oracle.

The word of the Lord concerning Israel: Thus says the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the human spirit within:^{* 2}See, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of reeling for all the surrounding peoples; it will be against Judah also in the siege against Jerusalem.^{* 3}On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it shall grievously hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth shall come together against it.^{* 4}On that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness. But on the house of Judah I will keep a watchful eye, when I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness.^{* 5}Then the clans of Judah shall say to themselves, “The inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the Lord of hosts, their God.”^*

⁶On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot on a pile of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves, and they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem.^*

⁷And the Lord will save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not be exalted over that of Judah.^{* 8}On that day the Lord will shield the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord, at their head.^{* 9}And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.^*

Mourning for the Pierced One

¹⁰And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that, when they look on the one^t whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn.^{* 11}On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.^{* 12}The land shall mourn, each family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves; ¹³the family of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself and their wives by themselves; ¹⁴and all the families that are left, each by itself and their wives by themselves.

¹³On that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.^*

Idolatry Cut Off

²On that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more, and also I will remove from the land the prophets and the unclean spirit.^{* 3}And if any prophets appear again, their fathers and mothers who bore them will say to them, “You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the Lord,” and their fathers and their mothers who bore them shall pierce them through when they prophesy.^{* 4}On that day the prophets will be ashamed, every one, of their visions when they prophesy; they will not put on a hairy mantle in order to deceive,^{* 5}but each of them will say, “I am no prophet; I am a tiller of the soil, for the land has been my possession^u since my youth.” ⁶And if anyone asks them, “What are these wounds on your chest?”^v the answer will be “The wounds I received in the house of my friends.”

The Shepherd Struck, the Flock Scattered

⁷“Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,

against the man who is my associate,”

says the Lord of hosts.

“Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered;

I will turn my hand against the little ones.^*

⁸In the whole land, says the Lord,

two-thirds shall be cut off and perish,

and one-third shall be left alive.^*

⁹And I will put this third into the fire,

refine them as one refines silver,

and test them as gold is tested.

They will call on my name,

and I will answer them.

I will say, ‘They are my people,’

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

Future Warfare and Final Victory

¹⁴See, a day is coming for the Lord, when the plunder taken from you will be divided in your midst.^{* 2}For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped; half the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall 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}On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the mount shall withdraw northward and the other half southward.^{* 5}And you shall flee by the valley of the Lord’s mountain,^w for the valley between the mountains shall reach to Azal,^x and you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with him.^*

⁶On that day there shall not be^y either cold or frost.^{z 7}And there shall be continuous day (it is known to the Lord), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light.^*

⁸On that day living water shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of it to the eastern sea and…