Zechariah 12 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

A weight of a message. The word of Yahweh about Israel. This is what Yahweh says, who spreads out the sky, who lays the foundations of the earth, who forms the breath of a human being inside them.

Watch me. I am making Jerusalem a cup that sends every people around her staggering. When the siege closes on Jerusalem, Judah will be caught in it too.

On that day I will make Jerusalem a stone too heavy to lift, and every people on earth will try to lift it. Every one of them will tear himself open, and all the nations of the earth will gather against her.

On that day, says Yahweh, I will strike every horse with panic and every rider with madness. I will keep my eyes open over the house of Judah, and I will strike the horses of the nations blind.

Then the clan chiefs of Judah will say to themselves, "The people living in Jerusalem are strong, because Yahweh who commands armies is their God."

On that day I will make the clan chiefs of Judah like a pot of live coals set down in a woodpile, like a burning torch among cut sheaves. They will burn up the peoples around them, on the right and on the left, and Jerusalem will stay where she is, on her own ground.

Yahweh will rescue the tents of Judah first, so that the splendour of David's house and the splendour of the people living in Jerusalem will not be lifted above Judah.

On that day Yahweh will be a shield around the people living in Jerusalem. On that day the weakest man stumbling among them will fight like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the messenger of Yahweh walking ahead of them.

On that day I will set out to destroy every nation that comes against Jerusalem.

I will pour out on the house of David and on the people living in Jerusalem a breath of favour and of begging for mercy. They will look to me, the one they ran through, and they will mourn for him the way a family mourns an only son, crying bitterly for him the way you cry for a firstborn.

On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as loud as the mourning for Hadad Rimmon on the plain of Megiddo.

The land will mourn, one family at a time, each on its own: the family of David's house on its own, and their wives on their own; the family of Nathan's house on its own, and their wives on their own;

the family of Levi's house on its own, and their wives on their own; the family of Shimei on its own, and their wives on their own;

and every family that is left, one at a time, each on its own, and their wives on their own.