I will pour on David’s house, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they will look to Me whom they have pierced; What did the Israelites think when they read the prophet speaking of piercing the Lord, Yahweh? How is that possible? He’s not a man is he that he can be harmed. So, did He mean it metaphorically, like how we can wound another with our words? Little did they see that Yahweh would indeed become a Man, fashioned in the likeness of sinful flesh. Sinful flesh is mortal flesh, capable of dying. They would indeed pierce him. With 5 wounds. 5 is the number of Grace. We are saved by his Grace and taught to turn from evil by Grace. We grow in Grace and it’s by his Grace we seek him. When Jesus returns to deliver his people, Israel, they will finally know the One they have rejected and crucified was theirs all along.
and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and will grieve bitterly for him, as one grieves for his firstborn. They put the Firstborn to death, their own firstborn. The Firstborn of Creation. This mourning puts us in mind of the 10th plague of Egypt:
Exodus 12: 29 At midnight, Yahweh struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of livestock. 30 Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
That Israel should mourn like Egypt, only more grievously, is a fitting recompense for their history-long rejection of the Lord who loved them. In Acts 7:39 Stephen had said how they rejected Moses, who is type of Christ, when he was on the mount, “to whom our fathers wouldn’t be obedient, but rejected him, and turned back in their hearts to Egypt,” In turning their hearts back to Egypt from where they were freed by the mighty hand of the Lord, they would one day mourn like them over their own Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had put to death.
11 In that day there will be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. 12 The land will mourn, every family apart; the family of David’s house apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; The family of David is his descendants of whom is Joseph, Jesus’s stepfather. Nathan is the line through which Mary was born. So, both main royal lines are represented through which Messiah had come in his earthly life. Jesus had always been their King. They rejected him in the wilderness with Moses, in the days of Samuel when they demanded an earthly king like the nations that surrounded them. Finally when they put him to death on a cross. Even on there, Pilate had made sure (by God’s hand no doubt) that the world in that time, in their 3 languages, would read that this is “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” 13 the family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of the Shimeites apart, and their wives apart; Levi and Shimeites represent the priestly lines, the ones who officiated the death of Jesus long ago. It was the priests who were the ones authorized by God to sacrifice the Passover lambs. Therefore they, at the Passover in 29 A.D., would sacrifice the Lamb of God. Their descendants would mourn this most grievous of offices their family was charged with. 14 all the families who remain, every family apart, and their wives apart. The grief will be so intense, so personal, that the closest of Israelites at Jesus’s return, even husbands and wives, will not be able to look at each other in their overwhelming grief. Now they look upon this Jesus. Jesus who had freed them from Egypt; who had died at their hands to set them free of their sins; and who had just come back to destroy Antichrist and his armies who had oppressed them worse than Pharaoh, was their true and only Firstborn King.
This is how the Millennium begins for them, such grief and national self-loathing. It fulfills also what the Lord said to them in Ezekiel 36:24-31: I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. 26 I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my ordinances, and do them. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness: and I will call for the grain, and will multiply it, and lay no famine on you. 30 I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that you may receive no more the reproach of famine among the nations. 31 Then you shall remember your evil ways, and your doings that were not good; and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.
And this other witness from Ezekiel 16: 62-63 I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall know that I am Yahweh; 63 that you may remember, and be confounded, and never open your mouth [in rebellion] any more, because of your shame, when I have forgiven you all that you have done, says the Lord Yahweh. [my brackets]
All these millennia, the Lord has been working to bring national Israel to a place when their rebellion was truly and permanently over. With a new heart and an eternally humble attitude toward their God, they will one day forever enjoy the blessings promised to them so long ago through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And as Paul said in Romans 11: 15 For if the rejection of them [that is, their rejection by God because of their rejection of the Gospel] is the reconciling of the world, what would their acceptance be, but life from the dead? [my brackets] The world is waiting for the restoration of national Israel. When it happens History changes for good and all the dead come out of the ground. This age of sin, lust and corruption will be forever over.
Walking The Ancient Paths 