NOTES for Zec 12:1-13:9

Yet another prophecy about the coming of the Messiah uttered by Second Zechariah, like the previous one, speaks of the tragic mystery of the rejection of Christ. The prophet sees the coming Kingdom not as a victorious march across countries and lands, subjugating the nations to the faith of Israel and its King, but as a time of tension and struggle. The enmity between Israel and foreigners will reach a degree of frenzy, and the burden of the confrontation will be unbearable for everyone; only Jerusalem will be strong in the faith of its inhabitants. It is into this tension, to a people far from spiritual unity, that salvation from the Lord and the cessation of enmity will come. Many prophets, like Second Zechariah, use this image of victory over enemies to show that in the Kingdom of the Messiah, God Himself will defend the people, that human life will no longer be determined by earthly dangers and confrontation. But this is not about heavenly hosts marching into battle instead of humans or even alongside them. God's protection consists in strengthening the people themselves, who are scorched by the flame of renewal. The prophet says that under the Lord's protection, the weakest of the Jerusalemites "shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the Angel of the Lord." Thus, he is speaking of the inner spiritual strength of the faithful, which makes them inaccessible to the evil reigning in the world. And therefore, the words about the Descendant of the house of David cease to be merely a poetic image and become a prophecy of His God-manhood.

This inner ability to resist evil will be revealed in people with the coming of the Messiah because God will pour out His Spirit upon them — the Spirit of grace and supplication, granting the ability to see God and to comprehend His saving intervention. Joel also prophesied about this outpouring of the Spirit during the same years as Second Zechariah. But Second Zechariah speaks of the sorrow and mourning that will seize Jerusalem for what it has done. What is this? The prophet's text allows for different translation variants: "they shall look upon Me, Whom they have pierced" and "they shall look upon Him, Whom they have pierced." But the meaning of these words is unambiguous. The prophet speaks of a pierced heart, and since he spoke earlier of the Descendant of David, Who will be the Presence of God among humans, this refers to the pierced heart of the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel. All Jerusalem, acting here as a symbol of the people beloved by God, will look upon the Pierced One and mourn for Him, as for a firstborn and only begotten Son.

It will forever remain a mystery to us how a prophet inspired by God chooses his words. We see only the fruit of it: willingly or unwillingly, the prophet utters the very words that in a theological sense most accurately correspond to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God. Perhaps the prophet had the Messiah in mind as the only begotten son of David, but reading these words, we cannot help but recall the liturgical hymn "Only Begotten Son and Word of God...". The mourning for the Pierced Messiah is, moreover, marked by an important feature inherent in the worship of the One God in the Old Testament: each tribe, each part of the chosen people performs this mourning "apart," separately from the others. Thus the law prescribes offering a solemn sacrifice to God. And this separateness of the mourning also contains a pointer to the mystery of God-manhood.

But what prevails over all this is the main thing the prophet wants to convey to his listeners and readers. The Kingdom of the Messiah will come when people begin to weep upon seeing the Pierced Anointed of God. This is exactly what the prophet considers the main, turning point in the spiritual history of humanity. The suffering that humans inflict on God through their betrayal of His love will become visible, incarnated in the wounds of Christ. This makes the terror that gripped many prophets at the thought of the Day of Visitation extremely concrete for Second Zechariah. But it is only in this sorrow, in these lamentations, that the prophet discerns the source of purification, the source of life, the source of strength for humanity.

"They shall look upon Him Whom they have pierced," as this prophecy resounds during the days of Holy Week — these words are closely connected to the events of the Exodus, when Moses lifted up the serpent on a cross-shaped staff, and those who looked at this staff became invulnerable to the snake's venom. This prophecy gains its ultimate clarity in the words spoken by the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14–15).

The conclusion of this prophecy is the words attributed by scribes to the first verse of the 13th chapter. "In that day," says the prophet, "a fountain shall be opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for cleansing from sin and uncleanness." On the one hand, the prophet sees that sorrow for the wounds of the Pierced Messiah, tears for Him, is the only thing that can cleanse and free the human heart from the sin lurking within it. But at the same time, one cannot help but think, when reading these words, of the true source of cleansing — the Blood flowing from the wounds of Christ.

At the beginning of the 13th chapter, Second Zechariah places a brief prophecy about the coming of the Day of the Lord, in which he speaks again about the deliverance of the people from idolatry and all falsehood. The prophet depicts a formidable picture, the essence of which is that nothing earthly will triumph over God's truth. First of all, this means that people will not boast of their spiritual strength or spiritual gifts, but in humility will fulfill the dictates of the Spirit. And here Second Zechariah turns to the famous words of the first of his predecessors, the prophet Amos. In the middle of the 8th century BC, in response to an attempt to silence him, Amos said that he was not prophesying of his own will. "I was no prophet... I was a herdsman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit," says Amos, "And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy..." (Amos 7:14-15). Speaking of the Kingdom of the Messiah, Second Zechariah quotes these words: "each will say, I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground, for someone made me a slave..." The fulfillment of God's commands with the coming of the Messiah will become the sole motivation of people, and their spiritual strength will be determined only by this.

But here too, Second Zechariah is unable to look away from the main thing that the Lord has revealed to him. Therefore, the obedience of Amos becomes for him a symbol of the obedience of the Messiah, that obedience of which the Apostle Paul will say: "He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Phil 2:8). This is the meaning of the prophet's mysterious words about the scars on the hands of the one who walks into the Kingdom of God by the path of obedience. The words "I was wounded in the house of my friends" become here a prophecy about the Way of the Cross of Christ and those who follow Him.

The last three verses of this chapter contain another prophecy, again dedicated to the destiny of the Messiah and the people. The prophet sees a sword raised against the Shepherd of Israel, and he sees the confusion and scattering of His sheep. "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered" — the prophet sees the solitude of the Messiah, His abandonment in the terrible moment of arrest. But he also sees that there is and can be no one who would stand beside Him, because there is none like Him. And therefore, the striking of the Messiah will become for His confounded sheep a smelting furnace, in which their hearts will be refined and come alive. In this striking of the Messiah and their own scattering, His sheep, the disciples, will find God Himself, as the final words of the chapter declare. And therefore, despite the scattering, the sheep of the Shepherd of Israel will become the pure gold of the Church, the gold about which the prophet Ezekiel spoke and about which the Apostle Peter will later speak.