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When the people saw the pierced figure, the nation erupted in mourning and repentance (12:10). In response to the heartfelt cries, and as a symbol of his forgiveness, God would graciously provide a spring to cleanse the royal family and all of Jerusalem’s inhabitants. The cleansing and mourning would be communal. Zechariah prophesied, “On that day a fountain shall be opened for the House of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity” (13:1). There are two words for impurity in the Hebrew: hattāt connects to moral failings, and the Hebrew nidda refers to physical defilement from contact with unclean things. The cleansing fountain would purify both and fulfill the spiritual revival that would begin with the sight of the pierced one.
Purification process
Purity rituals were and still are essential to the Jewish faith. The rituals mentioned in Leviticus and Numbers were not strictly hygiene practices, even though some had public health advantages, such as the need to cleanse oneself ritually after giving birth, or to isolate oneself after encountering a dead body (Lev. 12-15; Num. 19). The rituals were instead primarily symbolic—kinetic ways for humans to declare their purification before God. The impure ritually cleansed themselves so they could reenter the community of Yahweh and take part in sacrificial worship.
In Zechariah, with the purifying of the people also came the cleansing of the land. To protect the restored relationship between Yahweh and his people, Yahweh purged Judah of all forms of residual idolatry and false prophecy. Those two things had brought on the corruption and loss of faith in the preexilic community. God did not want the returnees to go down that road again. Yahweh said, “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” (13:2).
Detaching the names and origin stories once associated with the cultic pillars and statues exposed their emptiness. God predicted that people would forget the names of pagan gods, one day. Indeed, who still prays to Baal, Chemosh, Dagon, or Marduk? Polytheism has largely disappeared, with most people either having faith in the one true God or having no faith. Thomas Cahill, in his book The Gift of the Jews, observed, “Because of their unique belief—monotheism—the Jews could give us the Great Whole, a unified universe that makes sense and that, because of its evident superiority as a worldview, completely overwhelms the warring and contradictory phenomena of polytheism.”[1]
False prophets
Zechariah called for a ban on false prophets (13:3). He encouraged the community to take the ban so seriously that if a false prophet surfaced, his own parents should stab him to death. Zechariah implied that zeal against lying prophets should overwhelm even a parent’s love. Zechariah was following the proscription of Deuteronomy, the laws of which commanded that false prophets who attempted to lead people astray from God with their own dreams and visions should receive the death penalty (Deut. 13:5).
Apparently, false prophecy was a problem that had carried over from the preexilic to the postexilic era. Nehemiah also complained about false prophets. He described a scheme where local enemies paid the false prophet Shemaiah to act as a double agent (Neh. 6:10-13). Shemaiah lied to Nehemiah about an assassination attempt on his life, and he tried to convince Nehemiah to hide in the temple sanctuary. Trespassing into the part of the sanctuary reserved for priests would have discredited Nehemiah in the eyes of the people. Nehemiah’s discernment exposed the corruption of prophets for hire.
To illustrate God’s complete prohibition against false prophecy, Zechariah described a hypothetical situation in which a false prophet tried to conceal his past identity to avoid the death penalty. He got rid of his uniform, lied about his scars, and invented a different profession. The uniform of the prophet was apparently a garment made of hair. Zechariah recorded that the false prophets would be so ashamed of their visions, “they will not put on a hairy mantle” (13:4). The prophet Elijah famously wore a garment of hair (2 Kings 1:8). When Elijah passed his prophetic authority to Elisha, he did so by wrapping him in his distinct mantle (1 Kings 19:19). Both Elijah and Elisha held the mantle when they miraculously parted the River Jordan (2 Kings 2:8,14). False prophets were probably trying to imitate Elijah and Elisha. Imposters could easily deceive people by wearing a hairy garment, dressing the part of the prophet.
In Zechariah’s hypothetical scenario, the false prophet invented a cover story. If someone recognized him as a prophet, he would lie and say he was a farmer (13:5). Zechariah had him stretching the lie even further: “I am no prophet; I am a tiller of the soil, for the land has been my possession since my youth” (13:5).
In this hypothetical scenario, the false prophet had an anonymous accuser. If the accuser asked, “what are these wounds on your chest?” (13:6), the prophet would reply that they were, “the wounds I received in the house of my friends” (13:6). Apparently, false prophets, as part of an ecstatic ceremony, would cut and harm their own bodies, and the scars remained. The best biblical example of the bloody, religious rite so common in the ancient Near East is when Elijah had challenged the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel to see whose god would send rain. When the Baal prophets had received no response after their sacrifice and dancing, they lacerated themselves with swords (1 Kings 18:28). Judah’s false prophets must have imitated the ecstasy of pagan prophets, even though Yahweh had forbidden self-harm (Lev. 19:28). Therefore, the imposter prophet’s answer to the question was ambiguous and exposed his sense of shame.
Death poem
A fresh oracle from the Lord suddenly interrupts the prophet’s scenario. From the humorous tale of the lying prophet, the mood shifts to a somber death poem. The shift is drastic, both in form and content. God was loudly commanding a sword to wake up and strike a shepherd: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is my associate” (13:7). This command is hard to interpret in its context. The Hebrew possessive pronoun is used in the context to refer to the shepherd, indicating that the sword was commanded to strike “my shepherd” by God. The prophecy again emphasizes the relationship between the shepherd and Yahweh, as Yahweh calls him “my associate.” Zechariah does not give us further insight into the relationship. The feeling is that Yahweh has sanctioned the death of his shepherd partner.
The shepherd’s death results in the scattering of the sheep. Without a caretaker, they would lack protection against predators and the harsh environment. The sheep in all of Zechariah’s shepherd metaphors symbolize the people of Jerusalem and Judah. Two-thirds of the people would perish. A third would live, but only after they survived another exile. Captivity would refine their faith. Yahweh declares, “I will put this third into the fire, refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested” (13:9). Refinement by fire provides a contrasting bookend to a section that opens with cleansing by water.
After the period of persecution, God restores the people into a right relationship with himself: “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’” (13:9). The image of God calling upon his people and their answering him wholeheartedly is the climactic resolution to the tension that runs through the last unit of Zechariah. For Zechariah’s audience, the message was heavy. They were the prophesied remnant, the ones who survived exile and had returned to rebuild. Now, Zechariah was kicking the blessing can further down the road. He was building a new remnant theology for future survivors of another exile.
Shepherd motif
The shepherd motif is the unifying link between the last six chapters of Zechariah. Shepherd units occur at regular intervals with each shepherd scene getting progressively more severe (10:2-3; 11:1-17; 13:7-9).
Shepherd metaphors most commonly lend themselves to positive descriptions of leaders who are carrying out the duties of protecting their flock, but in Zechariah there were good and bad shepherds. In Zechariah 10, Yahweh had disposed of corrupt shepherd leaders and had assumed the leadership role himself. In Zechariah 11, God had appointed the prophet as a good shepherd, but the people had rejected him. As a result, a foolish shepherd leader took over and promptly led the people to their own destruction. Zechariah might have been saying that the sheep were to blame for their own fate, not the shepherds, buyers, or sellers.
The identity of the shepherds is difficult to determine. While the prophecy does not equate the pierced figure with a shepherd, scholars connect the “one whom they have pierced” with the stabbed shepherd in Zechariah 13. In neither case did Zechariah overtly say that they killed the shepherd. It is possible that the two figures are the same murdered shepherd.
However, inconsistencies arise if we assume the pierced figure and the stabbed shepherd are the same person, as Zechariah explains their deaths differently in the two chapters. People who had accepted moral responsibility for the pierced figure’s death redeemed themselves by admitting their guilt. After the shepherd was stabbed, the sheep endured for an extended period of persecution, but they were eventually rescued.
Aspects of Zechariah’s pierced figure and the stabbed shepherd have parallels with Isaiah’s suffering servant. Isaiah wrote, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). If Zechariah’s audience perceived his allusions to the suffering servant, they also would have understood that the message of the pierced one and stabbed shepherd was proclaiming the hope of salvation.
Zechariah wrote, “Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered” (13:7). In three of the gospels, Jesus dramatically quotes Zechariah’s prophecy (Matt. 26:31; Mark 14:27; John 16:32). At the Mount of Olives, the night before Jesus was crucified, Jesus identified himself as the stabbed shepherd and his disciples as the scattered sheep. Jesus said, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered’” (Matt. 26:31).
In the gospel of John, the dialogue also incorporates Zechariah’s theme of peace on the other side of persecution. Jesus assured the disciples, “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution but take courage: I have conquered the world!” (John 16:32-33).
Zechariah and Jesus had the same message. They did not promise protection from exile or persecution. In fact, both guaranteed tough times ahead. However, as messengers of the Lord, they shared God’s promise that the hardship would refine their faith. And “on that day” God would cleanse them from all their sin.
[1] Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (New York City: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010), 240.