Passage

Zechariah 12.10

Book: Zechariah · NASB95

Verse

"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." (Zechariah 12:10, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"8. In that day the LORD will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the one who is feeble among them in that day will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the angel of the LORD before them. 9. And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem."

"10. 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."

"11. In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12. The land will mourn, every family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves;" (Zechariah 12:8-12, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: YHWH directly. The chapter is structured as YHWH's first-person speech; v. 1 and 4 explicitly mark the speaker as YHWH.
Audience: post-exilic Jerusalem and Judah; by extension, eschatological Israel.
Location: Jerusalem.
Time period: Zechariah ministered c. 520-518 BC during the rebuilding of the second temple under Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest. Chapters 9-14 (the eschatological "burdens") are typically dated later in his ministry; some critical scholars date them post-Zechariah, but conservative scholarship retains Zecharian authorship.

Theological reading

The verse is one of the most explicit YHWH-pierced prophecies in the OT and is cited by NT writers as fulfilled in Christ's crucifixion. Three claims:

The Spirit poured out. Eshpoch al-beit david v'al yoshev yerushalayim ruach chen v'tachanunim, God will pour out the Spirit of grace and supplication. The promise of spiritual outpouring (cf. Joel 2:28-32, also fulfilled at Pentecost, Acts 2).
They will look on Me whom they have pierced. Vehibittu elai et asher daqaru. YHWH is the speaker (v. 1, 4 establish this); YHWH is the Me; YHWH is the one pierced. The grammatical impossibility of the verse on a strict-monotheistic reading: how can the incorporeal YHWH be physically pierced? The verse seems to require either:

A future event in which YHWH Himself takes on piercable flesh.
A textual emendation (e.g., revocalize elai "to me" as elaiv "to him"). The Masoretic text and most Hebrew manuscripts read elai; the LXX also reads eis eme ("to me"). The textual case for the Masoretic reading is robust.
Or an unresolved mystery to be illuminated by later revelation.

They will mourn as for an only son. Vesafdu alaiv kemisped al hayachid uminkar alaiv kehamer al habechor. The grief language is intense, mourning for an only son (yachid, the Hebrew word used of Isaac in Genesis 22:2; cf. G3439 - monogenes LXX equivalent), and firstborn (bechor). The grief is deepest possible.

NT use, John 19:37, Revelation 1:7. Two NT explicit citations:

John 19:37, at the crucifixion, John records: "they shall look on Him whom they pierced" (citing Zechariah 12:10). The soldier's spear-thrust into Jesus's side (John 19:34) fulfilled the daqar-prophecy. John's logic: Jesus is the YHWH-pierced of Zechariah 12:10.
Revelation 1:7, at the parousia: "every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him." The eschatological / second-coming dimension: those who pierced Christ will see Him return.

The dual NT use shows the verse has a now / not-yet fulfillment structure: partial fulfillment at the crucifixion (the historical piercing); full fulfillment at the parousia (the universal recognition and mourning).

Apologetic significance, YHWH-Jesus identification

The verse is one of the strongest OT-to-NT YHWH-Jesus identifications in the corpus:

Zechariah 12:10's Me is YHWH (text-internal).
John 19:37's Him is Jesus (NT identification).
Therefore: Jesus = the YHWH-pierced one of Zechariah 12:10.

This is one of the strongest pre-Christian Hebrew-text grounds for Christ's deity. Jesus is identified with the very YHWH who is poured-out-Spirit-Giver and the simultaneously the One whose body is pierced.

Jewish counter-readings:

Revocalize elai to elaiv: change "to me" to "to him." This is text-emendation without manuscript warrant; the Masoretic text and the LXX both read elai. Some medieval Jewish manuscripts apparently have elaiv, but they are isolated and post-date the Christian use of the verse.
*Read the Me as a representative: YHWH's "look on Me" means "look on My representative whom they pierced." This stretches the Hebrew grammar and has no internal warrant.
The pierced one is corporate Israel: "Me" is the collective people. But this fails because the verse parallels "Me" with "Him" and treats the pierced one as individual (mourning as for an only son, a firstborn).

The Christian reading (the YHWH-pierced is the future Messiah, fulfilled in Christ) is grammatically and contextually most natural.

Patristic. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 32, 64; First Apology 52, c. AD 160) cites Zechariah 12:10 extensively against Trypho, identifying it as one of the strongest OT-to-Christ proof-texts. Tertullian (Against the Jews 14; Apology 21) and Cyprian (Testimonies Against the Jews 2.20-21) develop the same. The verse is among the earliest and most frequently-cited OT prophecies in Christian-Jewish apologetic.

Modern apologetic. Michael Brown (Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 3, 2003) develops the Hebrew-grammatical case in detail. Mitch Glaser (ed., The Gospel According to Isaiah 53, 2012) and Walter Kaiser (The Messiah in the Old Testament, 1995) treat the verse alongside Isaiah 53, Daniel 9:25-26, and Psalm 22 as the four-corner-stone OT messianic prophecies fulfilled in Christ.

Connection to "fifty prophecies fulfilled" apologetic

ris3n's note 50 Prophecies Christ fulfilled includes Zechariah 12:10 as one of the most precise NT-fulfilled OT prophecies. The fulfillment cluster:

Born in Bethlehem (Micah 5.2)
Of a virgin (Isaiah 7.14)
Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53)
Pierced (Zechariah 12.10)
Risen on the third day (Matthew 28.6)
Pre-existent (John 17.5)

Each of these is a pre-Christian Hebrew-text prophecy with a NT-recorded fulfillment; the joint probability of all being fulfilled by chance is astronomically low. This is the basis of the cumulative-prophecy apologetic argument.

Key words

H1856 - daqar, daqar (pierce), the central verb
H3068 - YHWH, the speaker (and the pierced one)
H3173 - yachid, yachid (only son), the mourning analogy
H1060 - bechor, bechor (firstborn), paired with yachid
H7307 - ruach, ruach (Spirit), outpoured
H2580 - chen, chen (grace / favor)