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“‘Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd,
Against the Man who is My Companion,’
Says the Lord of hosts.
‘Strike the Shepherd,
And the sheep will be scattered;
Then I will turn My hand against the little ones.
And it shall come to pass in all the land,’
Says the Lord,
‘That two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die,
But one–third shall be left in it:
I will bring the one–third through the fire,
Will refine them as silver is refined,
And test them as gold is tested.
They will call on My name,
And I will answer them.
I will say, “This is My people;”
And each one will say, “The Lord is my God”’” (Zechariah 13:7-9).
“Generally speaking, the divine actions and powerful effects meant by the Holy Spirit are the acts of reforming and regenerating us. Depending on the outcome of this reformation and regeneration, the divine actions and powerful effects also include the acts of renewing us, bringing us to life, sanctifying us, and making us just; and depending on the outcome of these in turn, the divine actions and powerful effects also include the acts of purifying us from evils, forgiving our sins, and ultimately saving us. These are the powerful effects, one after the other, that the Lord has on people who believe in him and who adapt and modify themselves in order to welcome him and invite him to stay…
The divine truth in connection with goodness, that is, faith in connection with goodwill, is the force that reforms and regenerates us…It is important to know that the Lord is carrying out these salvation processes in every single one of us all the time. They are the steps to heaven. The Lord wants to save everyone” (True Christianity 142).
“The Lord constantly tries (and cannot help trying) to implant truth and goodness, or faith and goodwill, in everyone” (True Christianity 145).
“The essence of spiritual love is to do good to others for their sake and not for our own” (Divine Love and Wisdom 335).
The passage from Zechariah seems to be interpreted commonly as a prophecy of Jesus, and rightly so. Several translations capitalize Shepherd and Man, etc. because it is very easy to see the parallels—a companion to God who must be struck to allow for the ultimate salvation of God’s people. I get it and it makes sense. Swedenborg writes beautifully about how all of sacred scripture is about Jesus and that is what makes it holy:
“The whole Sacred Scripture was written concerning the Lord alone. From this circumstance, and from no other, the Word derives its holiness. This also is what is meant by these words in Revelation: The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Rev. 19:10” (The Lord 7).But the connection of a passage like this one from Zechariah to Jesus as a historical figure that lived some 2000 years ago doesn’t quite cover it for me. Although this one does seem to have that literal correlation, I think on another level it is describing the action of divine truth from divine goodness as it works personally in our spiritual lives to re-center us.
The other day I woke with a line reverberating in my mind from a dream. It was, “The work must be done and the work is being done when we strive to align our outer self with our inner self.” Although that idea seems pretty obvious, it struck me as really profound in my dream. It’s straightforward (connect outer self to inner one) yet just as there are a series of actions the Lord takes as part of our salvation, there are many stages of this process of connection. I see this passage in Zechariah as a cool description of this process.
Here’s what I got from contemplating these verses from Zechariah with respect to how they could apply to each of us personally:
The shepherd is our sense of self, our ego or outer self, a companion to God, “the man who is close to me” (as the NIV translation puts it). The Lord gifts us with this sense of autonomy and individuality, yet when the appearance is taken for reality it can cause a lot of trouble. At first we feel whole and complete, content with our attachment to the appearance of our sense of autonomous selfhood. It’s happy being its own shepherd. But it must be struck by the sword. The sword is “truth,” which I’ve been playing around with using synonymously with “reality.” Sometime or another, reality hits; we realize our utter powerlessness and nothingness without the Lord. This realization initially brings on the feeling that life is nothing but a bunch of disparate parts that have no cohesion—the sheep get scattered. It sounds bad and it doesn’t feel good either, yet it is good. Breaking stuff up in this way allows for a separation to occur. 2/3 of who we are, or who we think ourselves to be, is cut off and dies; I see this portion as the false beliefs and thoughts and feelings about ourselves that we accumulate throughout our lifetime that really don’t serve our own or others’ wellbeing, the chaff. And then the 1/3 that’s left undergoes further processing: it is refined as silver and tested as gold. We are led from false ideas to true ones, self-absorbed desires to compassionate ones. We are brought through the transformative fire of divine love. Our earthly self gradually aligns with and becomes a vessel for a heavenly self implanted by the Lord.
Right before this description in Zechariah, there is a bit about prophets:
“‘And it shall be in that day that every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies; they will not wear a robe of coarse hair to deceive. But he will say, “I am no prophet, I am a farmer; for a man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.” And one will say to him, “What are these wounds between your arms?” Then he will answer, “Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends”’” (Zechariah 13:4-6).
This describes to me a humbling we need to go through before we can be led through the refining of that 1/3 transformable part of ourselves. As long as we’re holding up a pretense of feeling whole unto ourselves, we don’t leave much room for transformation—we’ve got it all figured out. Our sense that we’ve got everything under control has to take a hit. It’s uncomfortable! We may find ourselves desperately calling out like the Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” But when we finally get to a state of acknowledging the way things actually are (“I’m no prophet, I’m just a guy that’s been taught how to keep cattle—yeah, and those wounds? Got hurt at a friend’s house”) we have hope of a true connection with the Lord as our God, the source of all goodness and truth. This is a reliable center. And it turns out the burden is a whole lot lighter this way, too.
When we go through this process we find that it is only through our connection to God, trusting the divine love that is at work in our lives and striving each day to live in alignment with it, that all things, all the parts of ourselves hold together ("And each one will say, 'The Lord is my God'"). The crazy cool thing is that this happens to each of us over the course of our entire lifetime but it also happens on a micro level, so to speak, about individual issues as they come up. We’re living every part of the story in some way all the time.
Chelsea lives with her husband and three children in Willow Grove, PA. She enjoys making music, doing yoga, talking and writing about spiritual topics, and living life overall.