Bird's-eye view
This remarkable prophecy in Zechariah describes the spiritual turning point for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. After God grants them a great military victory over their enemies (Zech 12:1-9), He promises an even greater internal victory. He will pour out His Spirit upon them, leading to a profound and personal repentance. The centerpiece of this passage is the astonishing statement that they will look upon "Me whom they have pierced." This is Yahweh speaking, identifying Himself with the one who is pierced. This spiritual sight, granted by the Spirit, will trigger a deep, national, and yet intensely personal mourning. The grief will be as profound as the mourning for a firstborn son, and as historically significant as the lament for King Josiah at Hadadrimmon. The passage systematically details this mourning, family by family, demonstrating a corporate repentance that is nevertheless composed of individual, heartfelt contrition. This is a prophecy of the new covenant's arrival, where God's people are given new hearts to see their sin for what it is and to grieve over the cost of their redemption, which is the death of God's own Son.
This is not just any repentance. It is a gospel repentance. It is not a sorrow that leads to death, but a godly sorrow that leads to life. It is not prompted by the terrors of the law alone, but by a gracious work of the Spirit that enables them to look upon the very one they have wronged. And in looking, they find not just guilt, but a profound sense of loss that breaks their hearts. This passage finds its ultimate fulfillment in the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and the subsequent turning of thousands of Jews to their crucified and risen Messiah, and it continues to be fulfilled whenever the Spirit opens a sinner's eyes to behold the Lamb of God.
Outline
- 1. A Promised Outpouring and a Piercing Gaze (Zech 12:10-14)
- a. The Divine Initiative: The Spirit Poured Out (Zech 12:10a)
- b. The Object of Faith: Looking on the Pierced One (Zech 12:10b)
- c. The Nature of Grief: Mourning for a Firstborn (Zech 12:10c)
- d. The Scale of Grief: A Great Mourning in the Land (Zech 12:11)
- e. The Specificity of Grief: Families Mourning Apart (Zech 12:12-14)
Context In Zechariah
This passage is part of the second great "burden" or oracle that makes up the final section of Zechariah (chapters 12-14). Chapter 12 begins with God declaring His intention to make Jerusalem a "cup of staggering" to the surrounding nations and an immovable rock. He promises to defend His people, striking their enemies with confusion and blindness. After this promise of physical deliverance, the prophecy pivots in our text to the spiritual deliverance that must accompany it. The salvation God provides is never merely external. He saves His people from their enemies, but more importantly, He saves them from their sins. This section, therefore, provides the spiritual foundation for the subsequent prophecies, including the opening of a fountain for cleansing in chapter 13 and the ultimate coming of the Lord to reign in chapter 14. The mourning described here is the necessary prerequisite for the cleansing and restoration that follows.
Key Issues
- The Identity of the Pierced One
- The Outpouring of the Spirit in the Old Testament
- The Nature of Gospel Repentance
- Corporate and Individual Responsibility
- The Historical Reference to Hadadrimmon
- Fulfillment in the New Testament
The Grief of Grace
We live in a therapeutic age that views grief and mourning as unfortunate pathologies to be managed, medicated, and moved past as quickly as possible. But the Bible presents a different picture. There is a kind of grief that is not only good, but is absolutely essential for spiritual life. Paul calls it a "godly sorrow" that produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret (2 Cor. 7:10). This is the kind of grief described here in Zechariah. It is not the worldly sorrow of getting caught, nor the despairing grief of hopelessness. It is the grief of grace.
Notice the divine order of operations. God does not say, "If you will mourn and repent, then I will pour out my Spirit." No, the action begins with Him. "I will pour out..." This is sovereign grace from start to finish. God Himself provides the cause of the repentance He requires. The Spirit of grace is poured out, and the result is a spirit of supplication. Grace received results in prayers sent up. And what is the content of this Spirit-wrought gaze? They look upon the one they pierced. This is the central pivot of the gospel. True repentance is not just feeling bad about your sin in the abstract. It is seeing what your sin did to Jesus Christ. It is looking up at the cross and realizing, "I did that. My pride, my lust, my rebellion drove those nails." This Spirit-given sight is what shatters the heart of stone and makes it a heart of flesh, capable of true, godly, and grace-filled grief.
Verse by Verse Commentary
10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.
The promise begins with a divine act: "I will pour out." This is the language of sovereign initiative and overwhelming abundance, like the pouring of water from a great height. What is poured out? The Spirit. He is described in two ways here: as the Spirit of grace and of supplication. He is the Spirit of grace because He is the unmerited gift of God, and His work is to apply God's grace to the hearts of men. He is the Spirit of supplication because this grace, once received, cannot remain silent. It moves the heart to cry out to God in prayer, confession, and petition. The direct result of this outpouring is a new kind of sight. "They will look on Me whom they have pierced." The speaker is Yahweh, yet they mourn for "Him." This is one of the profound Trinitarian mysteries of the Old Testament. The sin was against God Himself, and it was accomplished by piercing a man. The New Testament makes the identification explicit in John 19:37, applying it directly to the crucifixion of Jesus. This Spirit-wrought looking produces a mourning of the deepest possible kind, like the grief for an only son or a firstborn. This is not a shallow or fleeting emotion; it is a foundational, heart-rending sorrow. This is the kind of repentance that happens at the foot of the cross.
11 In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo.
To give a historical anchor to the intensity of this grief, Zechariah compares it to a famous national tragedy. The mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo refers to the national lament over the death of the good king Josiah, who was killed in battle against Pharaoh Neco (2 Kings 23:29, 2 Chron. 35:22-25). His death was a catastrophe for the nation, extinguishing the last great hope of reform before the Babylonian exile. The prophet Jeremiah composed laments for him, and the mourning was so profound that it became a proverbial expression for the deepest national sorrow. Zechariah is saying that the coming gospel repentance will be a public event of that magnitude. The sorrow for the pierced Messiah will eclipse even the sorrow for their greatest earthly king. The death of the King of kings will cause a grief far greater than the death of a son of David.
12 And the land will mourn, each family alone; the family of the house of David alone and their wives alone; the family of the house of Nathan alone and their wives alone;
The mourning is both corporate ("the land will mourn") and intensely personal ("each family alone"). This is a crucial point. True revival and repentance is not a matter of mere crowd dynamics or emotional contagion. It is a work that God does in individual hearts, which then aggregates into a corporate reality. Zechariah emphasizes the personal nature of this by noting that even husbands and wives will mourn separately. This is not because of alienation, but because the encounter with one's own sin in the face of the crucified Christ is a profoundly personal transaction. Before you can be reconciled to your spouse, you must first be reconciled to God. The list of families begins with the royal line: the house of David, representing the throne, and the house of Nathan (another son of David, from whom Mary was descended), representing the broader royal family.
13 the family of the house of Levi alone and their wives alone; the family of the Shimeites alone and their wives alone;
Next comes the priestly line. The house of Levi represents the entire priesthood, those who ministered in the temple and offered the sacrifices. Shimei was a grandson of Levi, representing a specific and prominent priestly clan. The point is that both the kings and the priests, the civil and the religious authorities who were most directly responsible for the covenant life of the nation, will be brought to their knees in repentance. Their office and status will not exempt them; in fact, their responsibility makes their need for repentance all the more acute. The very men whose job it was to point to the coming Lamb were complicit in His slaughter, and the Spirit will bring this reality home to them with devastating clarity.
14 all the families that remain, each family alone and their wives alone.
Lest anyone think this repentance is limited to the leadership, Zechariah concludes with a comprehensive statement. "All the families that remain." This is everybody. No one is exempt. The repentance will sweep through the entire land, from the greatest to the least. The repetition of "each family alone and their wives alone" drives the point home a final time. This is not a spectator event. When the Spirit of grace and supplication is poured out, everyone is summoned to deal with God personally. Every individual must look upon the one they have pierced and give an account of their own heart. This is the pattern of all true revival. It is broad in its scope, but deeply personal in its application.
Application
This passage is a potent remedy for a shallow and superficial Christianity. We are often tempted to think of repentance as a one-time event at the beginning of our Christian life, a box to be checked. But Zechariah shows us that repentance is the ongoing posture of a heart that has been touched by the Spirit of grace. We never move past our need to look upon the one we have pierced.
The Christian life is a life of continual, grateful mourning. We do not grieve as those who have no hope, but we grieve nonetheless. We grieve over our remaining sin, not to wallow in guilt, but because we see how offensive it is to the one who loved us and gave Himself for us. The more we understand the grace of the gospel, the more sensitive we should become to the sin that made it necessary. A hard heart can sin and shrug. A heart softened by the Spirit sins and weeps.
We must ask God to pour out this Spirit of grace and supplication on us, on our families, and on our churches. We should pray for the gift of sight, to truly see Christ crucified for us. We should not be afraid of the sorrow this sight produces, for it is a cleansing sorrow. It is the grief that precedes joy, the brokenness that precedes healing. It is only when we have mourned for Him as for an only son that we can truly rejoice in Him as our risen and reigning King.