Zechariah13chapter 13

The chapter opens with a fountain opened to the house of David for sin and uncleanness. Israel's purification rituals used running water — "living water" — rather than a still basin, so an open spring is the picture of cleansing that keeps flowing rather than a washing that must be repeated.

Then two things are cut off together: idols, and prophets. Lying prophecy had been one of the causes of the exile — Jeremiah fought it his whole ministry — and here the false prophet is dealt with so severely that his own father and mother would act against him.

The result is a culture where nobody wants to be mistaken for a prophet. A man will refuse the hairy mantle that was the prophet's recognizable dress, from Elijah onward, and will say, "I am no prophet, I am an husbandman" — I work the land.

Then a strange line: what are these wounds in thine hands? Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Read in context it is the false prophet deflecting, but the wording has struck Christian readers for two thousand years.

The chapter's center is a command: "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." Jesus quoted that sentence to His disciples on the night He was arrested, and told them it was about to happen to them.

The end is a refining image — two parts cut off, a third brought through the fire, refined as silver is refined and tried as gold is tried. Refining silver meant heating it until the impurities rose to be skimmed off, and the refiner watched the whole time.