Second Oracle: The Pierced One

The second great oracle of Zechariah, chapters 12 and 13, takes up the figure of the shepherd left in suspense by the first, but carries it to its height. It opens on Jerusalem besieged by all the nations and delivered by God, then reaches its centre in an overwhelming verse: the people will lift their eyes toward the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him. From this mourning a fountain will spring to wash sin away, the land will be purified of its idols and its false prophets, and the oracle will end on the shepherd struck down whose flock scatters. This whole sequence turns around a figure pierced, struck, and yet the source of salvation.

Jerusalem besieged and delivered

The oracle begins by setting Jerusalem in the midst of the nations gathered against her. God makes the city a trap for those who attack it: “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a threshold of reeling, for all the surrounding peoples.” Zechariah 12:2. Then he gives an even stronger image, that of a stone too heavy: “I will make Jerusalem a stone to be lifted, for all the peoples; whoever lifts it will be all bruised, and all the nations of the earth will gather against her.” Zechariah 12:3. Whoever claims to lift this stone is wounded by it: the city God protects breaks those who would tear it away. And God promises to set his own rampart around his people, raising up the weakest: “The Lord will set a rampart around the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the one who staggers among them will be on that day like David.” Zechariah 12:8. The weakest will become strong like King David; God overturns the balance of forces, and the deliverance is his work: “I will set myself to destroy all the peoples that come against Jerusalem.” Zechariah 12:9. Against this background of a battle won by God, an inward reversal will take place, touching no longer the enemies without but the heart of the people itself.

“The one they have pierced”

The centre of the second oracle is one of the most striking verses of the whole Old Testament. God promises to pour out on his people a spirit that will turn them toward him, and then he speaks a strange word: he has been pierced. “I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitant of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication, and they will turn their eyes toward me whom they have pierced. And they will mourn for him, as one mourns for an only son; they will weep bitterly over him, as one weeps bitterly over a firstborn.” Zechariah 12:10. It is God who speaks, and he says “toward me whom they have pierced,” then at once “mourn for him”: the one who has been pierced is mysteriously one with God, and yet he is mourned as a man, as an only son lost. The gift of the spirit of grace opens the eyes of the people: looking upon the one they have pierced, they understand what they have done, and fall into mourning. This is not a mourning of despair, but the mourning of conversion, the grief of one who discovers what he has done and turns back to God. The text measures the depth of this mourning by a comparison: “On that day, the mourning will be great in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddo.” Zechariah 12:11. It was in this plain that King Josiah was killed in battle, and his death gave rise to an immense mourning throughout the land, so much that Jeremiah composed a lamentation over it: “All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.” 2 Chronicles 35:24. Zechariah takes this mourning, kept in the people’s memory, as the measure of the one that will seize Jerusalem, family after family.

The fountain opened

From the mourning purification springs at once. No sooner has the people turned toward the pierced one than a fountain opens to wash them: “On that day, there will be a fountain opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to wash sin and impurity.” Zechariah 13:1. The mourning of conversion calls for pardon, and God answers it with a fountain, a living water that does not run dry and washes what no human effort can cleanse, the sin of the heart. The order of the two moments is laden with meaning: it is the gaze toward the pierced one that opens the fountain, as though the wound of one became the purification of all.

The end of idols and false prophets

The purification of the heart then extends to the whole land, which must be rid of all that turns away from God. God promises to wipe out even the name of the idols, and to remove the false prophets: “I will abolish from the land the names of the idols, and they will no longer be remembered; and I will also remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of impurity.” Zechariah 13:2. The idols and the false prophets are named together because they lead astray in the same way, by speaking in the name of another god or by lying in the name of the true one. The rejection of falsehood becomes so total that the false prophet will no longer dare to call himself such, and will disown his own trade: “The prophets will be ashamed, each of his vision when he prophesies, and they will no longer put on the hairy mantle, in order to lie.” Zechariah 13:4. The hairy mantle was the recognizable garment of the prophet; to wear it no longer is to give up passing oneself off as what one is not. The purified land no longer endures the false word that claims to come from God.

“Strike the shepherd”

The oracle returns at last to the shepherd. God himself commands the sword to strike his shepherd: “Sword, awake against my shepherd, against the man who is my companion! Strike the shepherd, and let the flock be scattered.” Zechariah 13:7. This shepherd is not a bad shepherd like those of the first oracle; God calls him “my shepherd” and “the man who is my companion,” the one near and united to him. And yet it is he who must be struck, and the flock deprived of its shepherd scatters. But this scattering is not the end: God keeps a remnant that he purifies through trial: “I will bring this third into the fire and refine it as one refines silver; I will test it as one tests gold. He will call on my name, and I will answer him. I will say: This is my people! And he will say: The Lord is my God!” Zechariah 13:9. The fire that refines silver and gold separates the metal from its dross; so the trial purifies the remnant of the people, until the covenant is fully renewed, “my people” answering “my God.” The shepherd struck down and the pierced one of the previous chapter answer each other: one same mystery runs through this whole second oracle, that of a figure near to God, struck and pierced, around whom the purification and the salvation of the people are at stake.

The fulfilment in Christ

This second oracle is one of the prophetic summits of the Passion. The shepherd struck down whose flock scatters is fulfilled at Gethsemane: on the evening of the Passion, Jesus applies this word to himself and foretells the flight of his own, “for it is written: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” Matthew 26:31. The word “the one they have pierced” is fulfilled on the cross, when a soldier pierces the side of Jesus; the gospel expressly cites Zechariah: “They will look on the one they have pierced.” John 19:37. And the fountain opened to wash sin is fulfilled in that same opened side, from which the blood and the water flow: “At once there came out blood and water.” John 19:34. The Church recognizes in this water the baptism that washes sin, and in this blood the eucharist; the fountain Zechariah announced is the side of Christ. The three figures of the oracle, the shepherd struck down, the pierced one, the fountain, meet in the one Christ on the cross.