Passage

Zechariah 14.1-2

Book: Zechariah · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

1. Behold, a day of Jehovah cometh, when thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. 2. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

Then shall Jehovah go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. 4. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east; and the mount of Olives shall be cleft in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. (Zechariah 14:1-4, ASV)

WEB

1. Behold, a day of Yahweh comes, when your plunder will be divided within you. 2. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city will be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. Half of the city will go out into captivity, and the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.

Then Yahweh will go out and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. 4. His feet will stand in that day on the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in two, from east to west, making a very great valley. Half of the mountain will move toward the north, and half of it toward the south. (Zechariah 14:1-4, WEB)

KJV

1. Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. 2. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. 4. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. (Zechariah 14:1-4, KJV)

YLT

1. Lo, a day hath come to Jehovah, And divided hath been thy spoil in thy midst. 2. And I have gathered all the nations unto Jerusalem to battle, And captured hath been the city, And spoiled have been the houses, And the women are lain with, Gone forth hath half the city in a removal, And the remnant of the people are not cut off from the city.

And gone forth hath Jehovah, And He hath fought against those nations, As in the day of His fighting in a day of conflict. 4. And stood have His feet, in that day, On the mount of Olives, That [is] before Jerusalem eastward, And cleft hath been the mount of Olives at its midst, To the east, and to the west, a very great valley, And removed hath the half of the mount towards the north. And its half towards the south. (Zechariah 14:1-4, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: the prophetic voice of the book, in an oracle (massa) carrying no date formula
Audience: Judah and Jerusalem, addressed in the second person throughout
Location: Jerusalem and the surrounding land, with the nations in view
Time period: undated. Chapters 9-14 stand apart from the dated material of 1-8, and their date and composition are disputed; the reading below rests on the text rather than on a settled dating

Theological reading

"Behold, a day of Jehovah cometh, when thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city."

The chapter that ends with the LORD reigning over all the earth begins here, and the sequence should not be softened. The day of the LORD arrives first as catastrophe for Jerusalem, not for her enemies.

Two clauses carry the theological weight. "I will gather all nations against Jerusalem" makes God the subject of the gathering, which is the same pattern by which the prophets read Assyria and Babylon as instruments (Isaiah 10:5-6; Habakkuk 1:6). The attackers are not outside his government even while they are attacking.

And the last clause is the hinge: the residue shall not be cut off. Against the total loss described in the preceding lines, a remnant remains in the city. The judgment is severe and it is bounded, and everything from v. 3 forward depends on that boundary having held.

The passage is the standing rebuke to any eschatology that promises the people of God exemption from the trouble rather than preservation through it. Half the city goes into captivity in the same verse that guarantees the city will not be erased.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

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Quoted in

Concepts:

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.