Zechariah 13
The closing chapters of Zechariah have been moving toward a great day of cleansing and conflict, and chapter 13 opens that day with a single, vivid image: In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness (v. 1). The verse just before this one ended with Jerusalem mourning, looking on One whom they had pierced (Zech. 12:10). Now, on the heels of that grief, comes water. A fountain is thrown open - a flowing spring, not a stagnant pool - and it is opened expressly for sin and for uncleanness, to wash away the very things that no human effort can cleanse. The whole chapter unfolds from this opening: where God washes a people clean, the things that defiled them must go.3
So the next verses describe a thorough purging. The names of the idols are cut off so that they are no more remembered; the unclean spirit is driven out of the land; and the false prophets - the men who traded in lies dressed up as visions - are unmasked. One is pictured so ashamed of his old trade that he hides his prophet's mantle and swears, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman (v. 5). There is a haunting line in the middle of it about wounds, What are these wounds in thine hands? (v. 6), a phrase that readers across the centuries have heard echoing toward another, wounded in the house of His friends. The cleansing fountain and the cleared-out land belong together: forgiveness and the end of falsehood arrive in the same day.
Then the chapter rises to its summit. A sword is summoned - not against the enemies of God's people, but against God's own Shepherd: 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 (v. 7). Jesus would take this very verse on His own lips the night He was betrayed, naming Himself the smitten Shepherd whose striking would scatter the flock (Matt. 26:31). And out of that scattering the chapter draws a final promise: a third part brought through the fire and refined like silver and gold, until they call on God's name and say, The LORD is my God, and He answers, It is my people (v. 9). The fountain, the smitten Shepherd, the refined remnant - three pictures of one work of redemption.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Zechariah 13:1A Fountain Opened for Sin and for Uncleanness
1In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.
The chapter opens with a single sentence, and it lands with the force of relief after grief. The verses just before it left Jerusalem weeping, looking on One whom they had pierced and mourning as for an only son (Zech. 12:10-14). Now, on the far side of that mourning, comes water: In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness (v. 1). Notice first that it is a fountain, not a cistern or a basin. A cistern holds a fixed amount and runs dry; a fountain is fed by a living spring, and it keeps flowing. Notice next what it is opened for: not for thirst, not for washing the body, but for sin and for uncleanness - the two great categories of defilement, moral guilt and ceremonial pollution, the stains a person can never scrub off by his own effort. And notice who it is opened to: the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem - the leadership and the common people alike, from the palace to the street. No one's guilt is too high to need it; no one's station is too low to reach it. The verb is passive: the fountain is opened. Someone opens it. The cleansing is not something Jerusalem manufactures for herself; it is provided, thrown open from the outside, a spring uncapped by God for a people who could not cleanse themselves.3
It is worth dwelling on what kind of help this fountain is. The Law of Moses had its washings and its sprinklings - water for the unclean, the blood of bulls and goats carried into the holy place year after year - but those rites had to be repeated endlessly, because they reached the body and the calendar but never finally the conscience. Here the promise is different in kind. A single fountain is opened, and it stands open for sin itself, the root and not merely the symptom. The prophets had felt the lack and longed for exactly this. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, David had prayed; purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean (Ps. 51:2, 7). Ezekiel had heard God promise, Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you (Ezek. 36:25). Zechariah gathers those longings into one image and sets it at the head of his great day: the spring is uncapped at last. And because cleansing is bound up with the removal of what defiled, the very next verses turn at once to the cutting off of the idols and the silencing of the lying prophets. Where God opens a fountain to wash a people clean, the things that fouled them cannot remain.
Zechariah 13:2-6The Idols Cut Off and the Prophets Unmasked
2And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land. 3And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth. 4And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive: 5But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth. 6And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
The fountain has been opened; now the land is cleared of what defiled it. I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land (v. 2). Two evils are named together, and they belong together. The idols are dealt with so completely that even their names are cut off - not just the carved images broken, but the very memory of them erased, the way you blot out a name so it is never spoken again. Alongside the idols go the prophets - here meaning the false prophets, the men who claimed to speak for God and did not - and the unclean spirit that drove their lying visions. This is the deep logic of the chapter. A cleansing that washed away guilt but left the idols standing and the deceivers preaching would be no cleansing at all. So the same day that opens the fountain shuts down the falsehood. Forgiveness and truth arrive together: God does not merely wipe the slate and leave the room full of the things that dirtied it. The unclean spirit is sent out of the land along with the sin it fed on. Where God washes a people, He also clears the ground.
The next verses press in on the false prophet himself, and the reversal is total. In an earlier day to be a prophet was to claim honor; in this day the false prophet is so exposed that his own father and mother turn on him, saying Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD (v. 3). The language is severe - it borrows the old penalty for speaking lies in God's name - and the point is the depth of the reckoning: even natural family loyalty will not shield a man who has made a trade of putting his own words in God's mouth. The deceivers themselves feel the shift. The prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision… neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive (v. 4). The rough garment was the recognized uniform of a prophet - the hairy mantle that marked a man as a seer, the costume of authority. Elijah wore such a garb in truth; the false prophets wore it as a disguise, a way to deceive. Now they are ashamed to put it on. One is even pictured scrambling to disown the whole profession: I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth (v. 5). The man who once paraded his visions now insists he is just a farmer, a herdsman, anything but a prophet. When the fountain of truth is opened, the costume of falsehood becomes something to hide.
Then comes the chapter's most enigmatic line: And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends (v. 6). In its immediate setting the verse continues the scene of the unmasked prophet. Such men sometimes cut and gashed themselves in their ecstatic rites - the prophets of Baal on Carmel cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out (1 Kings 18:28) - and a man caught with such scars, now ashamed of his old trade, might explain them away as wounds got in some ordinary quarrel in the house of my friends. Read that way, the verse exposes one more deceiver covering his tracks. Yet readers across the centuries have not been able to hear this line without a second voice rising beneath it - a Sufferer asked about wounds in thine hands, who answers that He was wounded in the house of my friends. The chapter is, after all, about to turn to a Shepherd struck down; the surrounding context is dense with the pierced and the smitten. It is wisest not to over-press the connection as if the prophet of verse 6 simply is the Messiah - the immediate scene is of false prophets - and at the same time not to pretend the words do not reach toward the One who came to His own, and was wounded in the house of His friends. The verse stands at the hinge: the deceivers are being cleared out, and a single sentence about wounded hands hangs in the air just before the sword is called against the true Shepherd.
Zechariah 13:7-9Smite the Shepherd, and the Sheep Shall Be Scattered
7Awake, 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: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. 8And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. 9And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.
The chapter rises now to its summit, and the language turns startling: 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: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones (v. 7). A sword is summoned as if roused from sleep - but it is not called against the enemies of God's people, the nations massing around Jerusalem. It is called against my shepherd, God's own Shepherd, the One He immediately names the man that is my fellow. That phrase is the heart of the verse's mystery. This is no hireling, no merely human leader; He is God's own near companion, the One who stands beside Him as an equal - and against this One the sword is bidden to awake. The command is given by the LORD Himself: smite the shepherd. The striking is no accident of history, no tragedy that slipped past God's guard; it is His own deliberate word. And the consequence follows at once: the sheep shall be scattered. When the Shepherd falls, the flock breaks and runs. Yet even here mercy is not withdrawn from the helpless: I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. The same hand that lifts the sword turns toward the small and the weak - not to crush them but, the rest of the chapter shows, to keep and to refine. The Shepherd is struck so that the scattered little ones may at last be gathered and saved.
The last two verses follow the scattered flock through fire to the far side. In all the land… two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried (vv. 8-9). The picture is sobering and hopeful at once. A great portion is lost; a remnant - a third part - is left. But being left is not the same as being spared trouble. The remnant is brought through the fire, refined as silver and tried as gold. The image is the refiner's crucible: the metal is put to the flame not to destroy it but to burn away its dross, until the silver runs pure and the refiner sees his own face in it. This is what God does with the remnant the smitten Shepherd leaves behind. Their faith is not left untested; it is purified, and purified faith is more precious than the gold that perishes. And the fire is the threshold of the deepest intimacy the book has yet reached. On the far side, three things happen in quick succession: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God. The covenant, long broken, is spoken again from both sides at once - God claiming the people, the people claiming God. The whole movement of the chapter ends here: a Shepherd struck, a flock scattered, a remnant brought through the fire, and on the other side a people who belong to God and know it.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Zechariah 13 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the phrase maqor niftach (v. 1, the “fountain opened”), for the description of the unmasked prophet in verses 4-6, and for the much-discussed words geber amiti (v. 7, “the man that is my fellow”).
- Zechariah 13 ↔ Matthew 26 · 1 John 1 · 1 Peter 1 · Hosea 2Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Zechariah 13 to the rest of Scripture - the smitten shepherd of verse 7 read alongside Jesus' own quotation of it on the night of His arrest (Matt. 26:31; Mark 14:27), the cleansing fountain of verse 1 beside the blood that cleanseth us from all sin (1 John 1:7), and the refined remnant of verse 9 beside I will say… Thou art my people (Hos. 2:23).
- Zechariah 13 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Zechariah 13 - the opened fountain and the phrase for sin and for uncleanness in verse 1, the unmasking of the false prophet and the difficult line about the wounds in verses 4-6, and the rendering of the man that is my fellow in verse 7.
Where this echoes in Scripture
A Fountain Opened for Sin and for Uncleanness
- Ezekiel 36:25Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.The same promise as verse 1 - water that cleanses from sin and from the idols in one act.
- Psalm 51:2, 7Wash me throughly from mine iniquity... purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.The longing the opened fountain answers - to be washed clean from sin itself, not merely covered.
- 1 John 1:7The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.The source from which the fountain of verse 1 finally flows - cleansing for all sin.
- John 19:34But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.The fountain opened - blood and water from the pierced side of the Shepherd of verse 7.
- Revelation 1:5Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.The cleansing of verse 1 named in person - washed from sin in the blood of the One who loved us.
The Idols Cut Off and the Prophets Unmasked
- Ezekiel 36:25-26from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you.The double work of verses 1-2 - cleansing from sin and the cutting off of the idols in one act.
- Deuteronomy 13:5And that prophet... shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God.The old penalty behind verse 3 - the lying prophet who speaks in God’s name held to account.
- 1 Kings 18:28And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.The self-inflicted wounds of false prophets - one immediate background to the question of verse 6.
- Psalm 41:9Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.Wounded in the house of His friends (v. 6) - the betrayal of One by His own table-companions.
- John 20:27Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands.The wounds in the hands of verse 6 - shown by the risen Shepherd to a doubting friend.
Smite the Shepherd, and the Sheep Shall Be Scattered
- Matthew 26:31All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.Jesus quotes verse 7 of Himself the night of His arrest - the Shepherd struck, the disciples scattered.
- Isaiah 53:10Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief... thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.The sword summoned by the LORD Himself (v. 7) - the smiting of the Shepherd as God’s own deliberate act.
- John 10:11, 30I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep... I and my Father are one.The Shepherd who is the man that is God’s fellow (v. 7) - laying down His life for the flock.
- 1 Peter 1:6-7the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire.The refining of the third part through fire (v. 9) - a tested faith more precious than gold.
- Hosea 2:23I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.The covenant restored at verse 9 - God owning the people, the people owning God, in one breath.