Zechariah 14

Pay attention! God has appointed a time when enemies will plunder the city of Jerusalem, deciding who will take what valuables while they are still in the city where you have to watch them.

God will gather the armies of all the nations to come and fight against Jerusalem. Those armies will capture the city, ransack the houses, and rape the women. Half of the people who live there they will take away to other lands as captives, but they will not remove the rest of the people from the city. \*

Then God will go out and fight against those nations, just as he fought his enemies in battles long ago.

On that day, God himself will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is east of Jerusalem. He will split the Mount of Olives in two from east to west, and a very large valley will open up between the two parts. Half of the mountain will move away toward the north, and half of it will move away toward the south. \*

You people will escape through that valley between the mountains, because the valley will reach all the way to Azal. You will run away just as your ancestors ran away because of the earthquake that happened when Uzziah was the king of Judah. Then God my God will come, and all his holy angels will come with him. \*

At that time, there will be no daylight; the bright lights in the sky will grow dim.

That will be a unique day, and only God knows when it will happen. It will not follow the normal cycle of day and night. Even in the evening, when it is usually dark, there will still be light.

At that time, fresh water will flow out from Jerusalem. Half of it will flow east to the Salt Sea, and half of it will flow west to the Great Sea. The water will keep flowing throughout the whole year. \*

Then God will rule as king over the whole earth. At that time, people everywhere will worship God alone, and they will honor him alone as God.

The whole land from Geba in the north to Rimmon, south of Jerusalem, will become a flat plain. But Jerusalem will rise up high and will remain where it has always stood. The city will stretch from the Gate of Benjamin to the place of the First Gate, on to the Gate of the Corners, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses.

People will live in Jerusalem, and enemies will never again completely destroy it. The people who live in Jerusalem will always be safe. \*

God will cause all the nations who fought against Jerusalem to have these terrible diseases. Their flesh will rot away while they are still alive and standing. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.

At that time, God will cause those people to panic completely. They will grab one another by the hand, and they will attack each other. \*

The people of Judah will also fight with Jerusalem. They will gather the wealth of all the surrounding nations—huge amounts of gold, silver, and clothing.

The horses, mules, camels, donkeys, and all the other animals in the camps of those enemies will suffer from that same disease. \*

Then everyone who survives from all the nations that attacked Jerusalem will go up to Jerusalem every year to worship the King, God, the commander of the heavenly armies, and to celebrate the Festival of Shelters, when the people live in temporary shelters.

If any of the people groups on the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, God, the commander of the heavenly armies, then God will not send any rain on their land{, and their crops will fail}.

If the people of Egypt do not go up to Jerusalem to worship there, God will not judge them the same way. {Since they depend on the Nile River rather than on rain, God will} cause them to have the same diseases experienced by all the other nations that do not go up to celebrate the Festival of Shelters. \*

That is how God will punish the people of Egypt and the people of every other nation that does not go up to celebrate the Festival of Shelters. \*

At that time, someone will engrave the words “Sacred to God” on the bells that hang on the horses. People will consider the cooking pots in the temple of God to be just as sacred as the bowls that the priests use in front of the altar.

Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah will be sacred to God, the commander of the heavenly armies. Everyone who comes to offer sacrifices will take some of those pots and boil the meat of their sacrifices in them. At that time, there will no longer be any merchant selling goods in the temple of God, the commander of the heavenly armies.