Zechariah 13:9

Zechariah spoke to the Jews who had come back from exile in Babylon. They lived under Persian rule, struggling to rebuild their temple, their city and their life as a nation, and they longed for the full keeping of God’s covenant promises and for the coming of the Messiah. The later chapters of his book (9–14) look far ahead, to the king who comes to Zion (Zechariah 9:9), the price set on the shepherd (Zechariah 11:12–13), and the cleansing and restoration of Judah and Jerusalem. Chapters 12–14 speak of a final conflict, the pouring out of the Spirit, and the purifying of Israel.

Just before this passage God promises a fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, and the removal of idols and false prophets from the land (Zechariah 13:1–6). Verse 7 then turns to the suffering of the shepherd, and verses 8 and 9 follow with the purifying of the people. The cleansing God has promised comes through the shepherd’s suffering.

The shepherd is Jesus Christ, and he said so himself. On the night of his betrayal he told his disciples, “All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad” (Matthew 26:31), and Mark records the same words (Mark 14:27). Jesus took “the shepherd” as himself and “the sheep” as the men around him. In his quotation God himself is the one who strikes, which is what the command “Awake, O sword” in Zechariah already means.

In Israel the shepherd was a common picture of a leader, whether king, priest or prophet, who was responsible for guiding and protecting God’s people. A struck shepherd and a scattered flock would make any Israelite think of a leader who had failed or a nation that had been defeated. Here the command comes from God, and he calls the one struck “my shepherd”, a shepherd who belongs to him in a way that sets him apart from every ordinary ruler.

“Awake, O sword” addresses the sword as though it were asleep and summons it to its work. The word chereb means a sword, and also a knife or another cutting tool, and Strong’s ties the name to its destructive effect. The verb in “smite the shepherd”, nâkâh, means to strike, beat, kill or slay. It can describe a light blow or a heavy one, and here it is the blow that takes the shepherd’s life. The call is given twice, “Awake, O sword” and “smite the shepherd”, and both times it is the LORD who gives it.

So the death of the Messiah was in God’s plan from the start. When Peter preached at Pentecost he said that Jesus was handed over by the settled purpose and foreknowledge of God, and that men took him and crucified him with wicked hands (Acts 2:23). Both are true at once. Isaiah gives the reason: the Servant was wounded for our transgressions, and “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4–6). The shepherd is struck in the place of straying sheep. His suffering is a sacrifice in their stead, and because the one who suffers is God’s fellow, it carries the weight of his person. Through it God opens the fountain that cleanses his people.

“The sheep shall be scattered” came true within hours. When Jesus was arrested his disciples fled, as he had told them they would be scattered, every man to his own, and leave him alone (John 16:32). A flock whose shepherd is taken is helpless and confused, and that night the disciples were exactly that.

The verse closes with a promise: “and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.” The little ones are the weak and vulnerable of the flock, the remnant who are left. God turns his hand to them to protect them, refine them and bring them back, and verse 9 shows what that refining is. For the disciples this came in the resurrection, in the gathering of the church, and in the gift of the Spirit. Jesus promised that he would come to them and leave them comfortless no longer (John 14:18), and he told them they would receive power when the Holy Ghost came upon them (Acts 1:8). The scattered men became the first of a people gathered and kept by God.

Verse 8 widens the view from the flock to “all the land”. The word ʼerets can mean the earth as a whole or a particular land, country or ground. In Zechariah, “the land” is the land of Israel and its people, so this is a judgment on the whole of God’s covenant nation. “Saith the LORD” marks it as his own word, certain to come to pass.

“Two parts therein shall be cut off and die.” The verb kârath means to cut off, cut down or destroy, and it is also the verb used when Israel “cut” a covenant, that is, made one. Here it means removal from the community by death. The second verb, gâvaʻ, means to breathe out, to expire, and it makes the death plain and physical. The loss is enormous. Israel had known national devastation under the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and this is God’s own purifying of his people on the same scale.

“But the third shall be left therein.” The verb yâthar means to remain or be left over, and in its causative form to leave something over or preserve it. It is the language of the remnant, which runs right through Scripture. God kept a remnant through the Flood, the Exodus and the exile itself. Isaiah speaks of a holy seed remaining in a land cut down (Isaiah 6:13) and of a remnant of Israel that will return (Isaiah 10:20–22), and Paul takes up that hope (Romans 9:27). Through Jeremiah God promises to save Israel and make a full end of the nations, while correcting his own people in measure (Jeremiah 30:11), and Paul says that in his own day there was a remnant chosen by grace (Romans 11:5). God is just in his anger against sin, and merciful in keeping a people for himself.

“And I will bring the third part through the fire.” God himself leads them in and brings them out. The fire is the trial and suffering he appoints, and he means it to purify.

Two verbs describe what happens there. tsâraph means to fuse metal and so to refine it, to melt it and purge away what is impure, and the same word names the goldsmith or founder who does the work. bâchan means to test, especially metals, and more widely to examine and prove. Refining removes the dross, and trying shows what is genuine. In Israel silver and gold were refined by heat, which separated the precious metal from its dross, and it took skill and patience. Every hearer knew the picture. God, the skilled refiner, will put his people through the heat to burn away their idolatry, sin and unfaithfulness, and to leave them pure.

God had done this before. Moses reminded Israel that the LORD had brought them out of the iron furnace of Egypt (Deuteronomy 4:20). Malachi foretold the messenger of the covenant coming like a refiner’s fire, sitting as a refiner of silver to purify the sons of Levi (Malachi 3:2–3). Christ is that Refiner, and he cleanses his people by his blood and by the Holy Spirit.

The refining ends in prayer and in belonging. “They shall call on my name, and I will hear them.” The people who have been through the fire turn to God in real dependence, and he answers them.

Then God speaks, “It is my people”, and they answer, “The LORD is my God.” The word for people, ʻam, means a people as a congregated unit, a tribe such as those of Israel, a whole community gathered together. God claims them as his own, and they take him as theirs. These are the words of the covenant from its beginning, when God told Israel in Egypt that he would take them to himself for a people and be their God (Exodus 6:7), and he repeated them through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 30:22). God’s faithfulness holds through all of Israel’s unfaithfulness, and at the end of the fire the covenant is spoken from both sides.

Jesus established the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20), and through him believers become God’s people, “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation”, who once were no people and now are the people of God (1 Peter 2:9–10).

These three verses hold the whole gospel in small. God gave his own shepherd, the man who is his fellow, to the sword. The sheep fled, and God turned his hand to the little ones and gathered them again. He keeps a people through judgment, and he refines them in the fire until their prayer is heard and he calls them his own.

When the fire comes, we have the shepherd’s word for it that the God who allowed his Son to be struck is the God who brings his people through. The last words of the passage belong to every one of them: “The LORD is my God.”