Zechariah 13:7

Zechariah was a prophet in Israel around 500 BC, writing after the Jewish people had returned from exile in Babylon. This verse is part of a larger section about God's future plans for his people. The "shepherd" refers to a leader entrusted to guide and protect. Remarkably, Jesus quoted this exact verse on the night he was arrested (Matthew 26:31), saying it was being fulfilled as his disciples fled. The image is stark: God himself commands the sword to strike the very person he calls "close to me," knowing the flock will scatter. It stands as one of Scripture's most jarring prophecies about the cost of redemption.

Lord, this verse is hard and I don't fully understand it. You called your Son close and still let the sword fall — and somehow that became the rescue of the world. When pain comes despite my nearness to you, keep me from running. Teach me to trust what I cannot yet see. Amen.

There's a phrase in this verse that stops you cold if you sit with it long enough: "the man who is close to me." God isn't describing a stranger or an enemy. He's describing someone intimately near — and yet the sword is still called. This isn't an accident, a tragedy, or a plan gone sideways. God is commanding it. The closeness is precisely what makes the sacrifice so costly, and so staggering. This is not a God who stands at a safe distance, keeping his hands clean while others suffer. We tend to assume that nearness to God is a kind of armor — that the closer you are, the more you're shielded from the hard things. But Zechariah's prophecy, and the cross itself, refuse that comfort. Closeness to God can place you right at the center of where the hardest things happen. If you are in a stretch of life where your faithfulness hasn't kept pain away, you are in good company with the shepherd himself. The sheep scattered that night in the garden. They thought it was over. They were devastatingly, beautifully wrong.