Zacharias 13:9
And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined: and I will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say: Thou art my people: and they shall say: The Lord is my God.
Open Zacharias 13:9 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →In the palace
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et ducam tertiam partem per ignem, et uram eos sicut uritur argentum, et probabo eos sicut probatur aurum. Ipse vocabit nomen meum, et ego exaudiam eum. Dicam : Populus meus es : et ipse dicet : Dominus Deus meus.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ διάξω τὸ τρίτον διὰ πυρός, καὶ πυρώσω αὐτοὺς ὡς πυροῦται τὸ ἀργύριον, καὶ δοκιμῶ αὐτοὺς ὡς δοκιμάζεται τὸ χρυσίον· αὐτὸς ἐπικαλέσεται τὸ ὄνομά μου, κἀγὼ ἐπακούσομαι αὐτῷ, καὶ ἐρῶ Λαός μου οὗτός ἐστιν, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐρεῖ Κύριος ὁ θεός μου.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְהֵבֵאתִ֤י אֶת הַשְּׁלִשִׁית֙ בָּאֵ֔שׁ וּצְרַפְתִּים֙ כִּצְרֹ֣ף אֶת הַכֶּ֔סֶף וּבְחַנְתִּ֖ים כִּבְחֹ֣ן אֶת הַזָּהָ֑ב ה֣וּא יִקְרָ֣א בִשְׁמִ֗י וַֽאֲנִי֙ אֶעֱנֶ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ אָמַ֨רְתִּי֙ עַמִּ֣י ה֔וּא וְה֥וּא יֹאמַ֖ר יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהָֽי
Haydock's commentary
Fire. The Church was persecuted during the first centuries; but always became more pure, and the blood of martyrs increased her numbers. (Calmet)
She faithfully adhered to God. (Haydock)
The Jews say this will not take place at last: "but we assert that it is already accomplished." (St. Jerome)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian Scorpiace, Chapter VII
If the scorpion, swinging his tail in the air, still reproach us with having a murderer for our God, I shall shudder at the altogether foul breath of blasphemy which comes stinking from his heretical mouth; but I will embrace even such a God, with assurance derived from reason, by which reason even He Himself has, in the person of His own Wisdom, by the lips of Solomon, proclaimed Himself to be more than a murderer: Wisdom ( Sophia ), says He has slain her own children. Sophia is Wisdom. She has certainly slain them wisely if only into life, and reasonably if only into glory. Of murder by a parent, oh the clever form! Oh the dexterity of crime! Oh the proof of cruelty, which has slain for this reason, that he whom it may have slain may not die! And therefore what follows? Wisdom is praised in hymns, in the places of egress; for the death of martyrs also is praised in song. …
Tertullian De Fuga in Persecutione
3. Seeing therefore, too, these cases occur in persecutions more than at other times, as there is then among us more of proving or rejecting, more of abusing or punishing, it must be that their general occurrence is permitted or commanded by Him at whose will they happen even partially; by Him, I mean, who says, “I am He who make peace and create evil,”, that is, war, for that is the antithesis of peace. But what other war has our peace than persecution? If in its issues persecution emphatically brings either life or death, either wounds or healing, you have the author, too, of this. “I will smite and heal, I will make alive and put to death.” “I will burn them,” He says, “as gold is burned; and I will try them,” He says, “as silver is tried,” for when the flame of persecution is consuming us, then the stedfastness of our faith is proved. …