Buckingham Fountain in Chicago. (Perhaps not the kind of fountain Zechariah saw in his mind’s eye!)
Zechariah 13 (NIV)
Cleansing From Sin
1“On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
–William Cowper
2 “On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more,” declares the LORD Almighty. “I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land. 3 And if anyone still prophesies, their father and mother, to whom they were born, will say to them, ‘You must die, because you have told lies in the LORD’s name.’ Then their own parents will stab the one who prophesies.
4 “On that day every prophet will be ashamed of their prophetic vision. They will not put on a prophet’s garment of hair in order to deceive. 5 Each will say, ‘I am not a prophet. I am a farmer; the land has been my livelihood since my youth.’ 6 If someone asks, ‘What are these wounds on your body?’ they will answer, ‘The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.’
The “wounds” that are spoken of are wounds that the false prophet inflicted on himself in the throes of his idol worship (see 1 Kings 18:28 for an example of this). The false prophet described here denies that the wounds had anything to do with idol worship. He gives the somewhat implausible explanation that the wounds were given him “at the house of his friends.”
The picture is clear. There will be such a commitment to the LORD and His truth that even the family of a false prophet will condemn the false prophet. At the very least, the false prophet himself would pretend NOT to be a prophet.
The Shepherd Struck, the Sheep Scattered
7 “Awake, sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who is close to me!”
declares the LORD Almighty.
“Strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered,
and I will turn my hand against the little ones.
“The Lord Is My Shepherd” by Morgan Weistling, 1999.
Matthew 26:30-31 (ESV)
And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.'”
In the context, and especially in light of the quotation of this passage in Matthew 26:31, we understand that the Shepherd is Jesus the Messiah — and it is God the Father Himself who calls for the Shepherd to be struck.
Zechariah relates a thought also said in Isaiah 53:10: Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. The prophets Isaiah and Zechariah gloriously and emphatically, state that the suffering of the Servant of the Lord was ordained by the Lord. This was God’s doing! He gave the command to strike the Shepherd. Jesus was no victim of circumstance or at the mercy of political or military power. It was the planned, ordained work of the Lord God, prophesied by Isaiah hundreds of years before it happened. This was God’s victory, not Satan’s or man’s triumph.
As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:19, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. The Father and the Son worked together at the cross. Though Jesus was treated as if He were an enemy of God, He was not. Even as Jesus was punished as if He were a sinner, He was performing the most holy service unto God the Father ever offered.
–David Guzik
8 In the whole land,” declares the LORD,
“two-thirds will be struck down and perish;
yet one-third will be left in it.
9 This third I will put into the fire;
I will refine them like silver
and test them like gold.
They will call on my name
and I will answer them;
I will say, ‘They are my people,’
and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God.’”
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Music:
“Rock of Ages” is sung HERE by the Antrim Mennonite Choir. Note the fountain imagery in verse 3.
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New International Version (NIV) Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica
DWELLING in the Word 