Zechariah 9-11
New Catholic Bible
The New People of God[a][b]
Chapter 9
The New Land
1 [c]An oracle:
The word of the Lord
is against the land of Hadrach,
and it will come to rest upon Damascus.
For the cities of Aaron belong to the Lord,
as do all the tribes of Israel,
2 as well as Hamath also,
which borders on it,
and on Tyre and Sidon,
even though they are very wise.
3 Tyre has built a stronghold for itself
and heaped up silver like dust
and gold like the dirt of the streets.
4 But the Lord will strip it of its possessions
and destroy its power on the sea,
and the city itself will be consumed by fire.
5 Ashkelon will witness this and be terrified,
as will Gaza who will writhe in anguish;
the same will be true of Ekron
whose hopes will come to naught.
The king will vanish from Gaza,
and Ashkelon will be uninhabited.
6 Foreigners will settle in Ashdod,
and I will demolish the pride of the Philistines.
7 I will snatch the bloody meat from their mouths
and their abominations from between their teeth.
They, too, will be a remnant belonging to our God;
they will be like a clan in Judah,
and Ekron will become like the Jebusites.[d]
8 I will stand guard at my house
so that no one may pass by unchallenged.
No oppressor will ever again overrun them,
for now I am determined to protect them.
Behold, Your King Comes to You[e]
9 Rejoice with all your heart, O daughter Zion.
Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem.
See, your king is coming to you,
triumphant and victorious,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
10 He will banish the chariot from Ephraim
and the horses of war from Jerusalem.
The warrior’s bow will be banished,
and he will proclaim peace to the nations.
His dominion will be from sea to sea,
and from the river to the ends of the earth.
The Reestablishment of Israel
11 As for you,
because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set free your prisoners
from the waterless dungeon.
12 Return to the fortress,
you prisoners who have waited in hope.
This very day I promise
that I will reward you twofold.
13 For I have strung Judah as my bow
and made Ephraim its arrow.
I have roused your sons, O Zion,
and have made you like a warrior’s sword
against your sons, O Javan.
14 Then the Lord will appear over them,
and his arrow will flash forth like lightning.
The Lord God will sound the trumpet
and march forth in the stormwinds of the south.
15 The Lord of hosts will protect them,
and they will overcome
as they trample underfoot the slingstones.
They will drink blood like wine,
filled to the brim like a bowl,
drenched like the corners of the altar.
16 The Lord, their God, will save them on that day,
for they are his flock, his own people.
Like the precious stones of a crown
they will sparkle throughout his land.
17 What wealth and what beauty will be theirs,
with grain to make the young men flourish
and with new wine for the maidens!
Chapter 10
Be Faithful to the Lord
1 Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime.
It is the Lord who makes the storm clouds.
He will send forth the showers of rain
and grass in the fields for everyone.
2 For the household gods utter nonsense,
and diviners are misled by false signs.
The dreams they relate are deceitful,
offering empty consolation.
That is why the people
wander about like sheep;
they are in distress
for lack of a shepherd.
I Will Reunite and Save
3 My anger has been set ablaze by the shepherds,
and I will punish the leaders of the flock.
For the Lord of hosts cares for his flock,
the house of Judah,
and will make it his royal warhorse.
4 From Judah will emerge the cornerstone,
from it the tent peg,
from it the bow ready for battle,
from it all the commanders.
5 Together they will be like warriors
trampling the mud of the streets in battle.
They will fight because the Lord is with them,
and they will rout even those on horseback.
6 I will strengthen the house of Judah,
and I will save the house of Joseph.
I will bring them back
because I have taken pity on them,
and they will be
as though I had never cast them off;
for I am the Lord, their God,
and I will answer them.
7 Then the people of Ephraim will be like warriors,
and their hearts will be cheered as if by wine.
Their children will see it and rejoice;
their hearts will rejoice in the Lord.
8 I will signal them to gather together,
for I have redeemed them;
they will be as numerous
as they were before.
9 I scattered them among the nations,
yet in far-off countries they will remember me;
they will rear their children and return.
10 I will bring them home from the land of Egypt
and gather them from Assyria.
I will lead them into Gilead and into Lebanon,
until there is no more room to accommodate them.
11 They will pass through the Sea of Egypt,
and the waves of the sea will be subdued,
while the depths of the Nile will be dried up.
The pride of Assyria will be cast down,
and the scepter of Egypt will be taken away.
12 I will make them strong in the Lord,
and they will march in my name,
says the Lord.
Chapter 11
1 Open your doors, O Lebanon,
so that the fire may devour your cedars.
2 Wail, you cypress trees,
for the cedars have fallen,
the majestic trees have been ravaged.
Wail, you oaks of Bashan,
for the impenetrable forest has been felled.
3 Listen to the wailing of the shepherds,
for their majesty has been destroyed.
Listen to the roar of the lions,
for the dense thickets of the Jordan have been ravaged.
The New Shepherd of Israel
The Two Shepherds.[f] 4 Thus says the Lord, my God: Be a shepherd to the flock destined for slaughter. 5 Those who buy them kill them and go unpunished, while those who sell them say, “Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich.” Even their own shepherds feel no pity for them.
6 I will no longer have any pity for the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord. Rather, I will deliver each one of them into the power of his neighbor or into the clutches of the king. They will devastate the earth, and I will not deliver anyone from their hands.
7 And so I became a shepherd of the flock that was destined to be slaughtered by the sheep dealers. I took two staffs, one of which I named Favor and the other one of which I named Unity, and I pastured the sheep myself. 8 In a single month I got rid of the three shepherds. However, I soon lost patience with the flock, and they detested me.
9 Finally I said. “I will not be your shepherd any longer. What is to die, let it die. What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. Those who are left can devour one another.”
10 Then I took my staff “Favor” and snapped it in two, thereby annulling the covenant I had made with all the peoples. 11 Therefore, it was annulled on that day, and the dealers who were watching me realized that this was the word of the Lord. 12 I said to them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages; if not, then forget about it.” Then they weighed out my wages, thirty pieces of silver.
13 However, the Lord said to me, “Throw it into the treasury—the princely sum at which they valued my efforts.” Therefore, I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the treasury of the house of the Lord. 14 Then I broke my second staff, “Unity,” in half, annulling the ties of brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
15 The Lord thereupon said to me: Take once again the equipment of a worthless shepherd. 16 For I am now going to raise up a shepherd in the land who will have no concern for those who are perishing, nor go off in search of the strays, nor heal the injured, nor nourish those who survive, but who will eat the meat of the fat animals, tearing off even their hoofs.
17 Woe to the worthless shepherd
who abandons his flock.
May the sword fall upon his arm
and upon his right eye.
Let his arm be completely withered
and his right eye be totally blinded.
Footnotes
- Zechariah 9:1 In the second part of the Book, concrete situations and their difficulties are forgotten; the perspectives are vaguer and more distant, the visions more grandiose. The tiny populace of Judah remains the chosen people and becomes the agent of a universal conquest in which God exerts his power and makes his presence felt in the midst of people of every nation; after having conquered the last terrible assaults of evil, he dedicates all of these people to his worship. The only connection these chapters have with the first eight is that they proclaim a promise of salvation. They contain ideas that are at times difficult to understand. They are broken up into a number of short passages, composed of bits from other sources or from writings that date from two or three centuries after the initial restoration. Their basic concern is with the new era that the Messiah will inaugurate and that involves the entire people. This second part of the Book of Zechariah is like a repository of Messianic texts; two rather different portraits of the Messiah himself are sketched. The hope that is roused projects into a still inscrutable future a number of experiences that will, in fact, come together in the person and life of Jesus.
- Zechariah 9:1 The following oracles depict essentially an ideal restoration of Israel and, therefore, a new image of the earth, the king, freedom, fidelity, and so on.
- Zechariah 9:1 The references are to Syria, Phoenicia, and Philistia. Hadrach was the capital of a small Syrian state. Damascus: literally, “the pearl of Aram.” The cities in verses 5-6 are in Philistia.
- Zechariah 9:7 The reference is to the custom of eating meat with blood in it, contrary to the practice in Israel. The Jebusites were the former inhabitants of Jerusalem, before it was captured by David.
- Zechariah 9:9 The plan of God will be brought to fulfillment not amid military and political greatness but in humility and peace. When Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he will fulfill this prediction to the letter (see Mt 21:4f). Ephraim stands for the entire kingdom of Israel, of which it was the principal tribe. The prophet is thinking, therefore, of a gathering of all the nations. From sea to sea: from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. The river is the Euphrates.
- Zechariah 11:4 The separation of the Samaritans became final around 328 B.C., and foreign invasions will occur from the fourth to the second century. At the end, an editor has added a curse against a wicked leader. Matthew 27:9-10 quite rightly applies to Jesus what is said (Zec 11:12-13) about the derisive wage of thirty pieces of silver: the one who came to save humankind was repaid with hatred and betrayal.
