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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,^*
   the vegetation in the field to everyone.
² For 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 suffer for lack 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 warhorse.
⁴ Out of them shall come the cornerstone,
   out of them the tent-peg,
out of them the battle-bow,
   out of them every commander.
⁵ Together 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.

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.
⁷ Then 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.

⁸ I will signal for them and gather them in,
   for I have redeemed them,
   and they shall be as numerous as they were before.
⁹ Though I scattered them among the nations,
   yet in far countries they shall remember me,
   and they shall rear their children and return.
¹⁰ I 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.
¹¹ They^* 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 sceptre of Egypt shall depart.
¹² I 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!
² Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen,
   for the glorious trees are ruined!
Wail, oaks of Bashan,
   for the thick forest has been felled!
³ Listen, 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 said the Lord my God: Be a shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. ⁵Those 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. ⁶For 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 neighbour, and each into the hand of the king; and they shall devastate the earth, and I will deliver no one from their hand.

7 So, on behalf of the sheep dealers, I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. I took two staffs; one I named Favour, the other I named Unity, and I tended the sheep. ⁸In one month I disposed of the three shepherds, for I had become 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!’ ¹⁰I took my staff Favour and broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples. ¹¹So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep dealers, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. ¹²I 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. ¹³Then the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it into the treasury’^*—this lordly price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury^* in the house of the Lord. ¹⁴Then I broke my second staff Unity, annulling the family ties between Judah and Israel.

15 Then the Lord said to me: Take once more the implements of a worthless shepherd. ¹⁶For I am now 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 healthy,^* but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.
¹⁷ Oh, 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: ²See, 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. 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 shall come together against it. ⁴On 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. 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 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.

7 And the Lord will give victory to the tents of Judah first, so 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 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. ⁹And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

Mourning for the Pierced One

10 And 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^* 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. ¹¹On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon 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 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

2 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 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. ⁴On 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, ⁵but each of them will say, ‘I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the soil; for the land has been my possession^* since my youth.’ ⁶And if anyone asks them, ‘What are these wounds on your chest?’^* 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.
⁸ In the whole land, says the Lord,
   two-thirds shall be cut off and perish,
   and one-third shall be left alive.
⁹ And 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. ²For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses looted 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. ³Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. ⁴On 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 half of the Mount shall withdraw northwards, and the other half southwards. ⁵And you shall flee by the valley of the Lord’s mountain,^* for the valley between the mountains shall reach to Azal;^* 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.

6 On that day there shall not be^* either cold or frost.^{* 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.

8 On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter.

9 And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.

10 The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem shall remain aloft on its site from the Gate of Benjamin to the place of the former gate, to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s wine presses. ¹¹And it shall be inhabited, for never again shall it be doomed to destruction; Jerusalem shall abide in security.

12 This shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet; their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths. ¹³On that day a great panic from the Lord shall fall on them, so that each will seize the hand of a neighbour, and the hand of one will be raised against the hand of the other; ¹⁴even Judah will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected—gold, silver, and garments in great abundance. ¹⁵And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whatever animals may be in those camps.

16 Then all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year by year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the festival of booths.^{* 17}If any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain upon them. ¹⁸And if the family of Egypt do not go up and present themselves, then on them shall^* come the plague that the Lord inflicts on the nations that do not go up to keep the festival of booths.^{* 19}Such shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to keep the festival of booths.^*

20 On that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, ‘Holy to the Lord.’ And the cooking-pots in the house of the Lord shall be as holy as^* the bowls in front of the altar; ²¹and every cooking-pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and use them to boil the flesh of the sacrifice. And there shall no longer be traders^* in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.