Jerusalem’s Deliverance from Heathen Attack

12 An oracle. This is the message of the Lord about Israel. The Lord who stretches out the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the human spirit within people says:

2 Look! I am about to make Jerusalem

a cup of drunkenness for all the surrounding peoples.

There will be a siege of Jerusalem.

3 On that day that I will make Jerusalem

a stone to be lifted up by all the peoples.

All who lift it up will surely hurt themselves!

And all the nations of the earth will be gathered together against it.

4 On that day, says the Lord, I will strike

every horse with panic and its rider with madness.

But over the house of Judah I will keep watch,

though I strike every horse belonging to the peoples with blindness.

5 And the chieftains of Judah will say to themselves,

‘The strength of the inhabitants is in the Lord of hosts their God.’

6 In that day I will make the chieftains of Judah

like a pan of fire in the woods,

like a torch among sheaves,

they will devour right and left all the surrounding peoples.

But Jerusalem will abide on its own site.

7 And the Lord will first give victory to the tents of Judah,

so that the glory of the house of David, and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem be not exalted above Judah.

8 In that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem,

and the feeblest among them will in that day be like David,

and the house of David like God, like the messenger of the Lord before them.

9 And in that day I will seek to destroy all the nations who have come up against Jerusalem.

10 And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem

the spirit of pity and compassion. They will look on him whom they have pierced

and they will lament for him as one laments for an only son.

They will bitterly grieve for him as one grieves for the firstborn.

11 In that day mourning will be as great in Jerusalem

as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

12 And the land will mourn, each family by itself:

the family of the house of David by itself,

and their wives by themselves,

and the family of the house of Nathan by itself,

and their wives by themselves,

13 and the 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,

14 and all the families who are left, each by itself,

and their wives by themselves.

13 On that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David,

and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.

2 And it will be on that day, says the Lord of hosts,

I will cut off the names of the idols from the land and they will be remembered no more.

And the prophets and the unclean spirit I will banish from the land.

3 If any man prophesy any more,

his father and his mother who bore him, will say to him,

‘You will not live, for you speak falsehood in the name of the Lord.’

And his father and his mother who bore him will stab him through when he is seized by the prophetic frenzy.

4 And it will be in that day that the prophets will be ashamed, each of his vision,

and will not wear the hairy mantle in order to deceive.

5 Each will say, ‘I am not a prophet,

a tiller of the ground am I, for the ground is my possession from my youth.’

6 And they will say to him, ‘What are these scars on your back?’

And he will say, ‘The scars which I received in the house of my friends.’

7 Awake, sword, against my shepherd,

against the man who stands near to me,

says the Lord of hosts.

I will strike the shepherd so that the sheep may be scattered,

I will turn my hand against the little ones.

8 In all the land, says the Lord,

two-thirds in it will be cut off and die,

but a third will be left in it.

9 I will bring the third into the fire,

and melt it as one melts silver,

and test it as one tests gold.

Then they will call on my name,

and I myself will answer them.

I will say, ‘They are my people.’

They will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’