Zechariah 13

The vision of the previous chapter continues, describing what God can do if His people take seriously the call to live in repentance. The blessings cannot be described literally, so Zechariah indulges in rich symbolic imagery of a new age with someone far greater than even David and Solomon would rule the people righteously.
This New Davidic Kingdom would receive from God a new kind of fountain that washes clean the lives of the people. If people want His holiness, He pours it out in abundance. That’s how God does business with people who keep His Word. He’ll wash away all the idolatry so completely their names will be forgotten. The people wouldn’t even remember what it’s like to be unfaithful. False prophets will become anathema socially. Their own parents would execute them out of shame.
Those false prophets who survive will go underground. They will deny ever having been one of the idolatrous scum who often claimed to be such great men, with all sorts of special authority. They’ll quit wearing the prophetic garments and claim they have always been a poor farm slave. The telltale scars on the chests and arms of false prophets from the heathen blood rituals would give them away, but they would insist it was something resulting from accidents, simple childish roughhousing. Their very lives will be at risk if any suspects their sordid past.
Where will this purifying fountain come from? God would provide His own blood sacrifice — His own Shepherd Son. When the appointed Shepherd of His people is rejected and killed, the nation will be scattered. The majority of them would never return to the truth; the figure of thirds is not meant literally here in the midst of a parabolic vision. A substantial portion of Israel could be saved, but only by passing through the fire of cleansing suffering. So it is with all mankind once the Covenant of the Cross is established. We suffer here the opposition of the fallen world until our time is finished.