In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying,

On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying,

And the angel who was talking to me said to me, Let your voice be loud and say, These are the words of the Lord of armies: I am greatly moved about the fate of Jerusalem and of Zion.

And again let your voice be loud and say, This is what the Lord of armies has said: My towns will again be overflowing with good things, and again the Lord will give comfort to Zion and take Jerusalem for himself.

Ho! Zion, go in flight from danger, you who are living with the daughter of Babylon.

Give songs of joy, O daughter of Zion: for I come, and I will make my resting-place among you, says the Lord.

And let them put a clean head-dress on his head. So they put a clean head-dress on his head, clothing him with clean robes: and to him he said, See, I have taken your sin away from you.

Give ear now, O Joshua, the high priest, you and your friends who are seated before you; for these are men who are a sign: for see, I will let my servant the Branch be seen.

For see, the stone which I have put before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes: see, the design cut on it will be my work, says the Lord of armies, and I will take away the sin of that land in one day.

And he said, This is Sin; and pushing her down into the ephah, he put the weight of lead on the mouth of it.

Take the offerings of those who went away as prisoners, from Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, and from the family of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah, who have come from Babylon;

And the crown will be for grace to Heldai and Tobijah and Jedaiah and the son of Zephaniah, to keep their memory living in the house of the Lord.

These are the words of the Lord of armies: I am angry about the fate of Zion, I am angry about her with great wrath.

This is what the Lord has said: I have come back to Zion, and will make my living-place in Jerusalem: and Jerusalem will be named The town of good faith; and the mountain of the Lord of armies The holy mountain.

And I will put my forces in position round my house, so that there may be no coming and going: and no cruel master will again go through them: for now I have seen his trouble.

Be full of joy, O daughter of Zion; give a glad cry, O daughter of Jerusalem: see, your king comes to you: he is upright and has overcome; gentle and seated on an ass, on a young ass.

And they will come back to you, O daughter of Zion, as prisoners of hope: today I say to you that I will give you back twice as much;

For I have made Judah a bow bent for my use, I have made Ephraim the arrows of the bow; I will make your sons, O Zion, take up arms against your sons, O Greece, and will make you like the sword of a man of war.

And the Lord will be seen over them, and his arrow will go out like the thunder-flame: and the Lord God, sounding the war-horn, will go in the storm-winds of the South.

For the images have said what is not true, and the readers of signs have seen deceit; they have given accounts of false dreams, they give comfort to no purpose: so they go out of the way like sheep, they are troubled because they have no keeper.

Whose owners put them to death and have no sense of sin; and those who get a price for them say, May the Lord be praised for I have much wealth: and the keepers of the flock have no pity for them.

And I will send down on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of prayer; and their eyes will be turned to the one who was wounded by their hands: and they will be weeping for him as for an only son, and their grief for him will be bitter, like the grief of one sorrowing for his oldest son.

In that day there will be a fountain open to the family of David and to the people of Jerusalem, for sin and for that which is unclean.