Zechariah12chapter 12

Two images carry the first half. Jerusalem is made "a cup of trembling" to the surrounding peoples — a cup of strong drink that makes whoever picks it up stagger. And she is made "a burdensome stone": a heavy stone that men try to lift and cut themselves on. Test lifting-stones were a real feature of ancient towns, used to prove strength, and men did injure themselves on them.

For a province with no army and no walls, both pictures were absurd on their face. That is the point of them.

The chapter also insists on something socially unusual: God saves the tents of Judah first, "that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves." The countryside gets rescued before the capital, on purpose.

Then the tone drops. God pours out on the house of David and on Jerusalem "the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son."

The mourning is compared to "the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon." Megiddo is where King Josiah — the last good king, whose death ended Judah's last hope of reform — was killed by an Egyptian arrow, and Chronicles says the mourning for him became a lasting custom.

The chapter then breaks the mourning into families, each grieving apart, and the wives apart from the husbands. It is private grief on a national scale, not a public ceremony.