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Zechariah 13:5-7
New English Translation
Zechariah 13:5-7
New English Translation
5 Instead he will say, ‘I am no prophet; indeed, I am a farmer, for a man has made me his indentured servant since my youth.’[a] 6 Then someone will ask him, ‘What are these wounds on your chest?’[b] and he will answer, ‘Some that I received in the house of my friends.’
7 “Awake, sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who is my associate,”
says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
“Strike the shepherd that the flock may be scattered;[c]
I will turn my hand against the insignificant ones.
Footnotes
- Zechariah 13:5 tn Or perhaps “for the land has been my possession since my youth” (so NRSV; similar NAB).
- Zechariah 13:6 tn Heb “wounds between your hands.” Cf. NIV “wounds on your body”; KJV makes this more specific: “wounds in thine hands.”sn These wounds on your chest. Pagan prophets were often self-lacerated (Lev 19:28; Deut 14:1; 1 Kgs 18:28) for reasons not entirely clear, so this false prophet betrays himself as such by these graphic and ineradicable marks.
- Zechariah 13:7 sn Despite the NT use of this text to speak of the scattering of the disciples following Jesus’ crucifixion (Matt 26:31; Mark 14:27), the immediate context of Zechariah suggests that unfaithful shepherds (kings) will be punished by the Lord precisely so their flocks (disobedient Israel) can be scattered (cf. Zech 11:6, 8, 9, 16). It is likely that Jesus drew on this passage merely to make the point that whenever shepherds are incapacitated, sheep will scatter. Thus he was not identifying himself with the shepherd in this text (the shepherd in the Zechariah text is a character who is portrayed negatively).
New English Translation (NET)
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