What Does Zechariah 12:11 Mean in the King James?
In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Jerusalem’s name carries wholeness, yet the verse lets its mourning reach the scale of a citywide lament.
THE MEANING
Grief here is immense and public: it fills Jerusalem and echoes the mourning at Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. The verse speaks now to the reader: a place of wholeness can carry shared grief without making the loss small.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that wholeness means being untouched by grief breaks here: Jerusalem itself is filled with mourning.
THE ROOT
מִסְפֵּד
mispēd
GROWS FROM
ספד
s-p-d
To lament or mourn.
English “mourning” can sound like an inward feeling, while this root also names the act of lamenting. The verse repeats מִסְפֵּד (mispēd, lament) to make Jerusalem’s grief echo another remembered lament.
ALSO GROWS
sāfad: The verb for mourning or lamenting.
סָפַד
This is the action named by the noun in the verse: grief expressed as lament.
mispēd: A lament or act of mourning.
מִסְפֵּד
The noun appears twice in the verse, turning grief into the shared measure by which Jerusalem’s mourning is understood.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
sh-l-m
To be whole or complete.
The name יְרוּשָׁלַיִם (Yerushalayim, Jerusalem) carries the doubled resonance of שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness). The verse places communal grief within that wholeness, so mourning does not mean wholeness has vanished.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
This name-resonance lets the verse hold mourning and wholeness together in Jerusalem.
shalem: Whole or complete.
שָׁלֵם
The root’s sense of completeness deepens the tension: the city can be named for wholeness while openly grieving.
THE PATTERN
When loss is recognized together, grief becomes a shared and visible act.
And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.And they mourned, and wept, and fasted until even, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of the LORD, and for the house of Israel; because they were fallen by the sword.When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,THE THREAD
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.Zechariah 12:10 uses the root ספד (s-p-d, to mourn or lament) for the response to seeing the pierced one. Verse 11 repeats that root as מִסְפֵּד (mispēd, mourning), widening the grief from a comparison to the loss of a son to the mourning of the whole city.
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