NRSV

[10] And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.  [11] On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.  [12] The land shall mourn, each family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathin by itself, and their wives by themselves; [13] the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves; [14] and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.

LXX

[10] And I shall pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pity, and they shall gaze upon me, because they celebrated and they shall beat their breast in mourning, lamenting upon him as upon a beloved and they shall suffer grief as upon a firstborn. [11] In this day the lamentation shall be magnified in Jerusalem as the lamentation of an orchard in a plain being cut down, [12] and the earth shall beat its breast in mourning each tribe by tribe, a tribe by itself and their women by themselves, the tribe of the house of David by itself and their women by themselves, a tribe of the house of Nathan by itself and their women by themselves, [13] a tribe of the house of Levi by itself and their women by themselves, a tribe of Simeon by itself and their women by themselves [14] all the tribes remaining by themselves and their women by themselves. 

Notes on Text

This passage is relevant to John 19:37, which reads:

 And again another writing says: they shall look unto the one who they have pierced.¹

It is also cited in Revelation 1:7, which reads:

See he comes with the clouds,

And they shall see him every eye

Even the ones who pierced him,

And they shall beat their breast in mourning all the tribes of the earth.

In both these citations it is obvious that the Hebrew text form was used, simply because only the Hebrew text form describes someone who is pierced in Zechariah 10:10.  The LXX replaces “the one who is pierced” with “me.” In both versions, it is not entirely clear who the subject of mourning is, or why they have become the subject of mourning.  Remember, the passages preceding this describe God’s defense of Jerusalem, Judah’s recognition of the faithfulness of Jerusalem, the victory (or evangelized piety) of Judah spreading like wildfire, and the elevation of both Judah and Jerusalem to utopian states of power and divine favor.  

Nowhere in this was anyone pierced, and even in the LXX version it is not entirely clear why there is the turn to mourning.  There is a certain logic to families cited (David, the Levites, Nathan, Simeon/the Shimeites), which include the ostensibly ruling family, the family containing the Levitical priesthood, and the family of Nathan the prophet (associated with the original Davidic dynasty).  Simeon/the Shimeites is a more mysterious reference, The New Interpreter’s Bible suggests that it might refer to another priestly family associated with the Levites but the commentary is not particularly certain.  After these specific families, “all the other families of the earth” mourn.  

In the text of Zechariah itself, then, it is somewhat unclear why there is the turn to mourning, but the reading that makes the most sense to me is that what we are seeing is mourning in repentance for past lack of fidelity.  For New Testament authors, this repentance is clearly in response to Jesus’ death, John cites this while describing the events of Jesus’ crucifixion and Revelation includes the passage in a preamble to the apocalypse itself, as the conclusion to a section describing Jesus. Revelation’s citation is particularly interesting, since “see he comes with the clouds” is spliced from elsewhere in Scripture, and the passage from Zechariah is paraphrased substantially.  Here again we see that New Testament authors played somewhat fast and loose with their use of Scripture.

1. In these citations I am adopting  the convention used by the Greek New Testament from which I am translating, which is to italicize direct quotations from Hebrew Scripture. ↩︎