Zechariah

¹ to God, the rainmaker, Spring thunderstorm maker, maker of grain and barley.

² Religious experts spout rubbish. They pontificate hot air. Their prescriptions are nothing but smoke. And so the people wander like lost sheep, poor lost sheep without a shepherd.

³ They're worse than billy goats, and I'll treat them like goats." God-of-the-Angel-Armies will step in and take care of his flock, the people of Judah. He'll revive their spirits, make them proud to be on God's side.

⁴ use them as foundations and pillars, Use them as tools and instruments, use them to oversee his work.

⁵ their heads held high, striding through swamps and mud, Courageous and vigorous because God is with them, undeterred by the world's thugs.

⁶ I'll save the people of Joseph. I know their pain and will make them good as new. They'll get a fresh start, as if nothing had ever happened. And why? Because I am their very own God, I'll do what needs to be done for them.

⁷ their lives brimming with joy. Their children will get in on it, too— oh, let them feel blessed by God!

⁸ I've set them free—oh, how they'll flourish!

⁹ they'll remember me in the faraway places. They'll keep the story alive in their children, and they will come back.

¹⁰ and round them up from the Assyrian east. I'll bring them back to sweet Gilead, back to leafy Lebanon. Every square foot of land will be marked by homecoming.

¹¹ Roaring rivers will turn to a trickle. Gaudy Assyria will be stripped bare, bully Egypt exposed as a fraud.

¹² and they'll live my way." God says so!