1 On that day a spring will well up for the family of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse themselves of sin and defilement.
Yahweh, God of hosts says:
2 On that day I will wipe out the names of idols from the land and never again will they be mentioned.
3 I will also remove the prophets and their un clean spirits and expel them from the land. If a prophet does prophesy, his parents: father and mother, will say to him: “You shall live no longer for you uttered lies in the name of Yahweh.” His own father and mother will stab him when he prophesies.
4 On that day the prophets will be ashamed of their prophetical visions and no longer wear a prophet’s garment of hair in order to deceive.
5 Instead, each of them will say: “I am not a prophet, I am a farmer, the land has owned me since my youth.”
6 And if anyone says to him: “What are these wounds on your hands?” He will answer: “With these I was wounded in my friend’s house.”
Final persecution
7 “Sword, awake and strike my shepherd, the man who is near to me!” says Yahweh, God of hosts. “Strike the shepherd and let the flock be scattered!” Yahweh threatens, “I will turn against the little ones,
8 and in all the land, two thirds shall be destroyed and one third left.
9 This third shall be cleansed by fire; I shall refine them as silver is refined; I shall test them as gold is tested. They shall call upon my Name and I will hear them. I will say, ‘They are my peo ple,’ and they shall say, ‘Yahweh is my God.’”
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Comments Zechariah, Chapter 13
• 13.1 In the final days an answer will be given to the thirst for forgiveness, which the Bible itself aroused in the faithful (see Jn 7:37 and 20:22). The foun tain mentioned here is like the river coming from the Temple (Ezk 47).
I will also remove the prophets and their unclean spirits. The days of the great prophets are over and the author of these lines realizes that the only prophets left are fortune-tellers, liars and charlatans. There is no room for those in a community which has received all the truth that God can reveal to us in the person of his Son.
• 7. Another text referring to the good shepherd, whom Yahweh strikes. This means that the shepherd will be wounded and that Yahweh will use this event for his plan of salvation. See what was said in Isaiah 66:8 about this form of expression of the Jews.
Matthew remembers this place in 26:31.