Zechariah 12

¹The oracle of the word of the Lord concerning Israel : Thus declares the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him:

²Behold , I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples . The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah .

³On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples . All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it.

⁴On that day , declares the Lord, I will strike every horse with panic , and its rider with madness . But for the sake of the house of Judah I will keep my eyes open , when I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness .

⁵Then the clans of Judah shall say to themselves , The inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the Lord of hosts , their God .

⁶On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood , like a flaming torch among sheaves . And they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples , while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem .

⁷And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first , that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not surpass that of Judah .

⁸On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem , so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David , and the house of David shall be like God , like the angel of the Lord, going before them.

⁹And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem .

¹⁰And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy , so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced , they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child , and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn .

¹¹On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo .

¹²The land shall mourn , each family by itself : the family of the house of David by itself , and their wives by themselves ; the family of the house of Nathan by itself , and their wives by themselves ;

¹³the family of the house of Levi by itself , and their wives by themselves ; the family of the Shimeites by itself , and their wives by themselves ;

¹⁴and all the families that are left , each by itself , and their wives by themselves .