Thoughts on Zechariah 12

Today’s reading: Zechariah 11-12; James 5

I’m not sure how many times I’ve read Zechariah 12 today, trying to wrap my head around it, and just feeling like I’m completely missing something. But the more I’ve read it, thought about it, and prayed about it, I think that was kind of the point, because Zechariah’s audience was missing something.

As you go through the first three paragraphs of Zechariah 12, it’s a very hopeful oracle for Judah and Jerusalem. God is going to restore their fortunes, and much more than that really, crushing their enemies and protecting them, making even the feeblest among them like David. It’s an incredible vision for Judah’s future, until you get to the fourth paragraph…

There’s no indication in the last paragraph of the chapter that God is shifting to talking about a different time or a different context, in fact, exactly the opposite, the paragraph opens continuing on with the same language from the first three paragraphs. And yet, despite the talk of Judah and Jerusalem being restored, protected, and elevated, it is also a day of unprecedented mourning. And how do we go from unprecedented glory to unprecedented mourning? Evidently by piercing God.

That is the sole inflection point in this chapter, that Yahweh Himself says, “when they look on me, whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for me as one mourns for an only child…” (as a note, if your translation reads, “on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him…” it’s worth calling out that the best texts have “me,” not “him,” but piercing and mourning for God seems really off, so later scribes changed it to “him”). So they day of the Lord that Israel had for so long been looking forward to was also to be a day of great mourning because they (Israel) would pierce Yahweh.

As much as that really would have made no sense to Zechariah’s readers, it does make sense in hindsight. Knowing that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, and that He came to earth as a man in order to die for sins, makes this make sense and fills in the missing piece.

So for all the places in the Old Testament where Jesus showed His disciples that there was more going on than they realized, this is one place where it was truly unavoidable, and it couldn’t have been more clear that, for as much as God had revealed, there were parts of the picture they didn’t yet have.