Zechariah 12:11 - Exposition

As if the above comparisons were not strong enough, the prophet presents a new one, referring to an historical event, which occasioned a universal mourning in Jerusalem. As the mourning of ( at ) Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. This is generally supposed to refer to the death of King Josiah of a wound received at Megiddo, in the battle with Pharaoh-Necho (B.C. 60) ),and to the national lamentation made for him and long observed on the anniversary of the calamity (see 2 Kings 23:29 ; 2 Chronicles 35:20-25 ). This universal and perennial mourning is a figure of the continual remembrance of the death of Christ in the Church. There is a difficulty about the identification of Hadadrimmon. St. Jerome says it was a place in the Plain of Megiddo, near Jezreel, and known in his day by the name of Maximianopolis. This is supposed to be Rummaneh, seven miles northwest of Jezreel, on the southern edge of the Plain of Esdraelon. But the identification is far from certain. The Assyrian name given to the place may, as Lowe suggests, be a confirmation of the post-exilian origin of the prophecy. The site of Megiddo also is undetermined, though Condor suggests Mujedda, a ruined city about three miles south of Bethshean. The opinion that the name Hadadrimmon is that of a Syrian or Phoenician god, whose rites were celebrated as those of Adonis ("the weeping for Tammuz" of Ezekiel 8:14 ), is preposterous; and the idea that the prophet would thus refer to the worship of an abominable idol is one that could have occurred only to disbelievers in revelation. The LXX ; mistaking the text, gives, ὡς κοπετὸς ῥοῶνος ἐν πεδίῳ ἐκκοπτομένου , "as mourning for a pomegranate cut off in the plain."