Zechariah 9–14

Chapter 9

¹An Oracle

The word of the Lord is against the land of Hadrach

and will rest upon Damascus.

For to the Lord belong the cities of Aram,

even as all the tribes of Israel;

²Hamath also, which borders thereon,

Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise.

³Tyre has built herself a rampart,

and heaped up silver like dust,

and gold like the dirt of the streets.

⁴But lo, the Lord will strip her of her possessions

and hurl her wealth into the sea,

and she shall be devoured by fire.

⁵Ashkelon shall see it, and be afraid;

Gaza too, and shall writhe in anguish;

Ekron also, because its hopes are confounded.

The king shall perish from Gaza;

Ashkelon shall be uninhabited;

⁶a mongrel people shall dwell in Ashdod;

and I will make an end of the pride of Philistia.

⁷I will take away its blood from its mouth,

and its abominations from between its teeth;

it too shall be a remnant for our God;

it shall be like a clan in Judah,

and Ekron shall be like the Jebusites.

⁸Then I will encamp at my house as a guard,

so that none shall march to and fro;

no oppressor shall again overrun them,

for now I see with my own eyes.

⁹Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you;

triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on an ass,

on a colt the foal of an ass.

¹⁰I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim

and the war horse from Jerusalem;

and the battle bow shall be cut off,

and he shall command peace to the nations;

his dominion shall be from sea to sea,

and from the River to the ends of the earth.

¹¹As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,

I will set your captives free from the waterless pit.

¹²Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;

today I declare that I will restore to you double.

¹³For I have bent Judah as my bow;

I have made Ephraim its arrow.

I will brandish your sons, O Zion,

over your sons, O Greece,

and wield you like a warrior’s sword.

¹⁴Then the Lord will appear over them,

and his arrow go forth like lightning;

the Lord God will sound the trumpet,

and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.

¹⁵The Lord of hosts will protect them,

and they shall devour and tread down the slingers;

and they shall drink their blood like wine,

and be full like a bowl,

drenched like the corners of the altar.

¹⁶On that day the Lord their God will save them

for they are the flock of his people;

for like the jewels of a crown

they shall shine on his land.

¹⁷Yea, how good and how fair it shall be!

Grain shall make the young men flourish,

and new wine the maidens.

Chapter 10

¹Ask rain from the Lord

in the season of the spring rain,

from the Lord who makes the storm clouds,

who gives men showers of rain,

to every one the vegetation in the field.

²For the teraphim utter nonsense,

and the diviners see lies;

the dreamers tell false dreams,

and give empty consolation.

Therefore the people wander like sheep;

they are afflicted for want of a shepherd.

³“My anger is hot against the shepherds,

and I will punish the leaders;

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

and will make them like his proud steed in battle.

⁴Out of them shall come the cornerstone,

out of them the tent peg,

out of them the battle bow,

out of them every ruler.

⁵Together they shall be like mighty men in battle,

trampling the foe in the mud of the streets;

they shall fight because the Lord is with them,

and they shall confound the riders on horses.

⁶“I 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 Ephraim shall become like a mighty warrior,

and their hearts shall be glad as with wine.

Their children shall see it and rejoice,

their hearts shall exult in the Lord.

⁸“I will signal for them and gather them in,

for I have redeemed them,

and they shall be as many as of old.

⁹Though I scattered them among the nations,

yet in far countries they shall remember me,

and with their children they shall live and return.

¹⁰I will bring them home from the land of Egypt,

and gather them from Assyria;

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

till there is no room for them.

¹¹They shall pass through the sea of Egypt,

and the waves of the sea shall be smitten,

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 glory in his name,”

says the Lord.

Chapter 11

¹Open your doors, O Lebanon,

that the 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!

³Hark, the wail of the shepherds,

for their glory is despoiled!

Hark, the roar of the lions,

for the jungle of the Jordan is laid waste!

⁴Thus said the Lord my God: “Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. ⁵Those who buy them slay them and go unpunished; and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, I have become rich’; and their own shepherds have no pity on them. ⁶For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, says the Lord. Lo, I will cause men to fall each into the hand of his shepherd, and each into the hand of his king; and they shall crush the earth, and I will deliver none from their hand.”

⁷So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slain for those who trafficked in the sheep. And I took two staffs; one I named Grace, the other I named Union. And I tended the sheep. ⁸In one month I destroyed the three shepherds. But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me. ⁹So 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.” ¹⁰And I took my staff Grace, and I broke it, annulling the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. ¹¹So it was annulled on that day, and the traffickers in the sheep, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. ¹²Then I said to them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. ¹³Then the Lord said to me, “Cast it into the treasury”—the lordly price at which I was paid off by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and cast them into the treasury in the house of the Lord. ¹⁴Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

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

¹⁷Woe to my worthless shepherd,

who deserts the flock!

May the sword smite his arm

and his right eye!

Let his arm be wholly withered,

his right eye utterly blinded!”

Chapter 12

¹An Oracle

The word of the Lord concerning Israel: Thus says the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him: ²“Lo, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of reeling to all the peoples round about; it will be against Judah also in the siege against Jerusalem. ³On 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 will come together against it. ⁴On that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with panic, and its rider with madness. But upon the house of Judah I will open my eyes, when I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. ⁵Then the clans of Judah shall say to themselves, ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the Lord of hosts, their God.’

⁶“On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves; and they shall devour to the right and to the left all the peoples round about, while Jerusalem shall still be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem.

⁷“And the Lord will give victory to 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. ⁸On that day the Lord will put a shield about 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. ⁹And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

¹⁰“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him 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 first-born. ¹¹On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo. ¹²The 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 Shime-ites by itself, and their wives by themselves; ¹⁴and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.

Chapter 13

¹“On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

²“And on 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. ³And if any one again appears as a prophet, his father and mother who bore him will…