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In Zechariah 12, the prophet makes a sudden about-face from the gloomy language and depressing outlook of the previous passage, in which God had declared that he no longer pitied the covenant people (11:6). Yahweh is now back in the role of divine warrior, fighting on behalf of his beloved people, assuring their victory, as if the previous passage was never written. Biblical sections like this make me feel like a student, wanting to raise my hand in class. I need an explanation that will answer the text’s apparent contradictions.
Remember, Zechariah is not the first prophet to give his readers whiplash. The prophetic method often involved swaying from one extreme to another, giving off the feeling that they were unstable leaders with an inconsistent message. Rabbi Heschel acknowledged the prophets’ moodiness but defended their moods as an understandable hazard of their profession. He wrote, “What appears to us as wild emotionalism must seem like restraint to him who has to convey the emotion of the Almighty in the feeble language of man.”[1]
Jerusalem’s deliverance
Still, Zechariah 11’s theme of doom is an outlier in the bigger scope of Zechariah—a brief interruption of pessimistic sign-acts that are sandwiched between otherwise optimistic oracles. Even when the oracles called the people out for their sins or predicted coming trials, they remained hope-adjacent. The restored community would ultimately be victorious over her attackers, even if they first had to go through a season of repentance and purification.
Zechariah wrote, “An Oracle. The word of the Lord concerning Israel” (12:1). During Zechariah’s day, the people were keen to hear from the prophets. Before the exile, God had spoken repeatedly to Judah and Israel through his messengers, but the people were deaf to their pleas. During the exile, prophecy mostly ceased. Only once the remnant had returned to the land was the prophetic office renewed.
Zechariah referred to the community universally as “Israel,” even though the oracle pertained to Judah. It is interesting, and slightly out of step with the rest of his book, that Israel became his inclusive term for all 12 tribes. Malachi, the last of the prophets, continued using the term Israel to refer to all the people of God.
The prophet had described Yahweh, in the opening section, as the one who “stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the human spirit within” (12:1). Depictions of God’s noble acts of creation, both in the heavens and on earth, are common in the prophets (Isa. 42:5; 51:13). Yet, after the withdrawal of God’s protection in the previous chapter, Zechariah needed to reassert Yahweh’s sovereignty. Unlike the localized national gods of their neighbors, Yahweh could intervene in the world of his own creation. He could stretch out the cosmos and touch the human heart.
Yahweh warned, “I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of reeling for all the surrounding peoples” (12:2). Interestingly, the invading armies were unnamed. Zechariah kept their identity generic. The oracle detailed the miraculous ways in which God would deliver Jerusalem and overtake her enemies. Metaphorical descriptions of Yahweh’s saving acts pop up repeatedly, in the passage. He would make Jerusalem a “cup of reeling,” like a potent drink that left the enemy staggering and weakened (12:2). Jerusalem would be a “heavy stone,” injuring anyone who tried to move it (12:3). The harm brought from drinking the cup and moving the stone were both self-inflicted injuries.
When the enemies descended on Jerusalem, God would “strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness” (12:4). In ancient times, possession of horses gave an army a strategic military advantage, but Yahweh would neutralize the calvary by blinding them. Judah had every advantage because God presided over the battle for Judah as the all-seeing “watchful eye” (12:4).
In the last three chapters, the repetition of “on that day” suggests the prophet’s future-oriented perspective. The book of Zechariah becomes progressively more future-oriented, as if he was nudging the date of fulfilled promises out further. In the vision sequence, Zechariah focused on the present purpose of the restored community. When progress seemed slow for the remnant, Zechariah looked to the future.
While the passage emphasizes the threats to Jerusalem, Zechariah intentionally included all greater Judah in the promise of deliverance. The foreign armies would besiege Judah, like Jerusalem, but Yahweh would save Judah, like Jerusalem. God declared almost parenthetically, “it will be against Judah also in the siege against Jerusalem” (12:2). He added, “on the house of Judah I will keep a watchful eye” (12:4).
What was happening in Judah that called for such specific mention of the surrounding areas in the prophecies? Zechariah added Judah onto each statement about Jerusalem, almost like a politically correct afterthought. Perhaps the rural towns of Judah felt neglected. Zechariah established mutual ground for both capital and region, honoring Jerusalem and Judah separately.
He predicted the clans of Judah would experience an awakening. They would recognize Yahweh as the source of strength behind their victory. The text reads, “Then the clans of Judah shall say to themselves, ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the Lord of hosts, their God’” (12:5). “Clans” of Judah also translates as “leaders” of Judah. Gone were the negligent shepherds who had refused to protect their flock. God was strengthening the new leaders of Judah, and they depended on his power.
Judah’s new leaders recognized they were human agents sent to carry out the divine will without taking pride in themselves. God had always hated the pride that came to nations when they exalted their own power and military successes. Isaiah exposed the absurdity of ignoring God’s intervention when he asked, “Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields it or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it? As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up, or as if a staff should lift the one who is not wood!” (Isa. 10:15).
God rewarded the humility of Judah’s leaders by making them “like a blazing pot on a pile of wood” that would ultimately “devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples” (12:6). The idea of fire touching dry kindling conveyed that Judah would easily defeat her enemies.
Judah first
Zechariah was explicit. When the conflict occurred, God would defend Judah first, and then Jerusalem. He said, “And 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” (12:7). Something was going on underneath the surface. Zechariah was establishing equality between Judah’s leaders and the House of David.
This passage may illuminate tension between Judah and Jerusalem. Zechariah, a fair-minded prophet who was sensitive to insecurities, wanted to let his audience know that Judah was not less important than Jerusalem. He was concerned for the House of David, Judah’s leaders, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah. Perhaps the Judeans remembered that during the days of Hezekiah, God had only saved Jerusalem from the Assyrian onslaught. The Judean towns had fallen to Assyria. “On that day” in the future, Zechariah promised that God would save every town.
House of David
Biblical historians speculate that Zechariah was alluding to a time of trouble for the House of David and questions of succession. Zerubbabel had seven sons and one daughter. If the Davidic line was supposed to pass through him, he had descendants to carry on the name. However, all we know from historical sources is that the governorship in the Persian province had passed down from Zerubbabel to his daughter, Shelomith, and his son-in-law, Elnathan. After Shelomith and Elnathan, there is no record of a Davidic line in political power.
Zechariah democratized the restoration promises. The future blessings would elevate everyone. The rank of David would transfer even to the “feeblest among them” (12:8). David’s warrior status took on legendary proportions in the postexilic period, when the people lacked independence, an army, and a king. They saw David’s kingdom as the golden age of their history.
The House of David would be “like the angel of the Lord at their head” (12:8). The angel of the Lord was a reference to the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire that had protected the Hebrews in the desert (Ex. 13:21). Perhaps it was more acceptable to connect the House of David with a manifestation of God’s presence and not God himself.
Zechariah’s talk of war abruptly ends and turns toward spiritual revival (12:10). Once Jerusalem and Judah were victorious over their enemies, Yahweh performed a fresh act of redemption. He delivered them from their external threats, but he wanted them to pursue inward deliverance and salvation. Zechariah was continuing a thread that had begun through the prophets who ministered a century before him. Jeremiah, before the exile, looked forward to a spiritual transformation in the community—a time when God would put his law in their minds and write it on their hearts (Jer. 31:33). Ezekiel, while in exile, also foresaw a day when God would remove their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh (Ezek. 36:26).
Pouring out of the spirit
God, in his grace, prompted a spiritual revival in Zechariah’s day. He “pour[ed] out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the House of David,” (12:10). The pouring out of his spirit elicited mourning and repentance among the people. Zechariah added, “They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (12:10, NIV).
Zechariah never failed to add a messianic component to his oracles. Like the other texts, this messianic text is shrouded in mystery, and like all biblical mysteries, debate surrounds the prophecy. When describing the “one they have pierced,” Yahweh was speaking in first-person, and his voice was more dominant than in prior sections (12:9-14).
When the Hebrew word for pierce, daqar, appears in the Bible, it usually means a fatal stab (Jer. 37:10). However, Yahweh was speaking about himself in the oracle. He said, “they will look on me, the one they have pierced” (12:10, NIV). How could a human mortally wound Yahweh? The New Revised Standard Version, the translation I usually prefer, avoids communicating that God is the one who was wounded by translating the line, “when they look on the one whom they have pierced.” They provide a footnote that “the one” is translated as “me” in most textual traditions, in Hebrew. Perhaps Yahweh was speaking metaphorically. Their rejection of him was like a deadly blow.
The subsequent line is made more confusing by a pronoun shift. After the piercing, Zechariah wrote, “and they will mourn for him” (12:10). If God was the one whom they had pierced, why were they mourning for someone else? Who was referred to as “him” in the oracle, and how was that distinct from “me”?
To Trinitarian Christians, we cannot read this scripture without thinking of Jesus and the oneness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All three seem to appear in this one prophecy. Also, in our theology, an assault on Jesus is equivalent to an assault on God. As we interpret the passage through the lens of New Testament theology, the pronouns “me” and “him” are synonymous because Father and Son are the same God.
Messianic typology
I mentioned before that the only way to know if we are reading a messianic typology for Christ is if the New Testament makes the connection. John the Apostle connected Zechariah’s pierced figure to Jesus at his crucifixion. A spear was used on Jesus’s side by the Roman soldiers to verify his death, unlike the other crucified men, whose bones were broken. In that moment, John saw the prophecy come true. He wrote, “these things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘none of his bones shall be broken.’ Again, another passage of scripture says, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced’” (John 19:36). Once again, the New Testament finds in Zechariah a messianic typology for a moment in Jesus’s passion and explains the significance.
Still, with all messianic and eschatological passages, we also must ask what the verse meant to the original audience. Zechariah’s audience likely connected the “one they have pierced” with the righteous shepherd who is killed in the next chapter (13:7-8). The pierced one might also be the good shepherd from the previous chapter (11:4-14). The three persecuted figures could theoretically be one. When the people realized that by rejecting the good shepherd, they were rejecting God, and that by wounding the good shepherd, they were wounding God, they fell to their knees.
When the people saw the one they had pierced, they demonstrated a sudden awareness of the implications of their sin. They observed something they had missed. Zechariah described the depth of repentance and mourning that came with the awareness of their guilt for persecuting God. Mourning spread all over Jerusalem. They mourned corporately as families and clans. The House of David, Nathan, Levi, and Shimei all mourned. David’s house represented the royal household, and Levi stood for the priestly class (12:12-14). They also mourned as individuals. Zechariah pointed out that the wives mourned on their own; they did not rely on their husbands to mourn on the family’s behalf.
In Revelation, John proclaims that everyone will recognize Christ as the Messiah upon his return to earth. John was blending Daniel’s Son of Man, riding in on the clouds with Zechariah’s description of a pierced figure who awakened a spiritual revival (Dan. 7:13). The prophecy states, “Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him” (Rev. 1:7).
The realization of Jesus’ sacrifice and suffering on our behalf often leads new believers to repentance and gratitude. That is why this passage in Zechariah feels both obscure and deeply familiar.
[1] Heschel, The Prophets, 395.