Zechariah 13King James Version
A fountain shall be opened to the house of David for sin and for uncleanness. The idols will be cut off. And the prophets will be ashamed of having called themselves prophets. The pastor will be smitten and the sheep scattered, a line Jesus quotes the night he is arrested.
A fountain is opened for the house of David to cleanse sin and impurity. Idols will be cut off, false prophets will be ashamed of their visions, and the spirit of uncleanness will leave the land. Then God declares: strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. Two-thirds of the land will be cut off, but one-third will survive, refined through fire like silver and gold. That remnant will call on God's name and be answered: 'It is my people.' They will say: 'The LORD is my God.'
Purification comes through a fountain opened freely and through fire that the remnant survives, and covenant identity is renewed through the loss.
"Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." (13:7) Jesus quotes this directly in Matthew 26:31 the night of his arrest, identifying himself as the shepherd, the disciples as the sheep about to scatter, and the event as the fulfillment of a divine command issued centuries earlier.
A spring opens up at the center of the city, clear water for washing the things that cannot be washed by ritual alone. The false prophets who have cluttered the spiritual landscape slink away, claiming they never prophesied, showing wounds they can only explain by saying they got into a fight with a friend. Then God turns to his shepherd, the one he calls his fellow, and issues the command that will shatter everything: strike him. The flock scatters. Two out of every three people do not make it through what follows. The third comes out on the other side like metal from a furnace: refined, real, and ready to say the covenant words again.
The house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem receive the cleansing fountain. False prophets are embarrassed into silence, disowning their own gifts and hiding behind agricultural identities. The shepherd called 'my fellow' by God is the central figure, struck by divine command. The two-thirds who perish and the third who survive represent the whole population facing judgment that is simultaneously catastrophic and redemptive.
Zechariah 13 completes the mourning of chapter 12 with its cleansing counterpart. The fountain opened for sin and uncleanness answers the grief over the pierced one: mourning and cleansing are sequential movements. The striking of the shepherd is quoted by Jesus himself, making it one of the few Old Testament verses Jesus personally applied to his own death. The refining of the remnant through fire becomes the template for tribulation theology throughout the New Testament.
The chapter moves from relief to violence to hope. The fountain is beautiful and clean. The purging of prophecy is strange and unsettling. The striking of the shepherd lands hard. The survival of the refined third carries quiet, costly joy.
1In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.
2And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.
3And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.
4And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive:
5But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.
6And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
7Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.
8And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.
9And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.