Zechariah 12:10
And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.
The LORD is speaking: They will look on Me, the First Person; then immediately, they will mourn for Him, the Third Person. God is simultaneously the speaker and the one pierced, the subject and the object of mourning.
The text reflects an extraordinary divine mystery; one God in whom distinction exists, and it points forward to a moment in history when the LORD Himself would be pierced in human flesh. Both are true in Jesus Christ.
After Jesus breathed His last on the cross, Roman soldiers, checking that the condemned were dead, pierced His side with a spear (John 19:34). John, an eyewitness, records this and cites Zechariah 12:10: And again, another Scripture says, ‘They shall look on Him whom they pierced’ (John 19:37). The God who declared they will look on Me whom they pierced was looked upon in the body of His Son, hanging on the cross.
The phrase the Spirit of grace and supplication is the context in which this looking-upon takes place. The Spirit is poured out, and this outpouring produces mourning, grief, and repentance. This is the Spirit’s convicting work. Jesus said: And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment (John 16:8). The piercing of the Messiah, revealed by the Spirit of grace, produces in the human heart the grief of recognizing that our sin is what drove the nails, our transgression is what drew the spear.
This mourning is described with grief language: as one mourns for his only son… as one grieves for a firstborn. In the ancient world, the death of an only son was the ultimate human catastrophe; the end of the family line, the loss of the future. The language resonates with John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God grieved the loss of His Son so that we could be brought into the family as adopted children.
The mourning of Zechariah 12:10 is not the mourning of despair, but the mourning of repentance, and repentance is the gateway to life. Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost produced exactly this response: Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? (Acts 2:37). The pierced Messiah, proclaimed by the power of the Spirit, pierces the hearts of the hearers. Mourning over sin becomes the doorway through which grace rushes in.
The very One whom we pierced, the One our sin crucified, is the One who pours out the Spirit of grace upon us. He does not pour out judgment on those who pierced Him. He pours out grace. The cross that was the instrument of our guilt becomes the source of our pardon. The wound in His side becomes the fountain from which flow blood and water, for our atonement and cleansing.
Revelation 1:7 applies Zechariah 12:10 to the Second Coming: Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. The first looking at the pierced Messiah is the look of faith, of repentance, of gratitude, the look that saves; the second looking, at His return, will be universal and unavoidable – every eye will see Him.
Let’s look upon Him whom they pierced. Look often. Look long. Let the Spirit of grace and supplication work in our hearts the mourning that leads to life. And let that same Spirit empower others to invite others to look.
Ask God to:
- Let the wounds Jesus bore be forever before our eyes as the measure of His love for us.
- Bring deep, genuine repentance that turns us fully toward Him.
- Make us a community where repentance is not shameful but welcomed as the doorway to grace.
- Let many more come to the look of faith before the look of judgment and use our witness as instruments of the Spirit’s grace.
