From my commentary on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi:
13:2-6. ‘On that day,’ declares the Lord of hosts, ‘I will cut off the names of the idols from the land and they will be remembered no more. I will also remove the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness from the land. If someone still prophesies, his father and mother who gave him birth will say to him: “You shall not live for you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord.” His father and mother who gave him birth shall pierce him when he prophesies. In that day, the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision in his prophesying. He will not put on his garment of hair in order to deceive]. He will say, “I’m not a prophet. I am someone who works the soil; indeed the soil has been my property from my youth.” When someone says to him “What are these wounds between your hands?” and he shall say “The wounds I was struck at the house of my friends”’.
The people’s need for cleansing comes from their devotion to idols. This devotion to idolatry is the sin that ‘pierced’ the Lord in 12:10, metaphorically in its original context and actually in the person of Jesus. As he does consistently in the Book of Zechariah, the Lord promises not merely to cleanse his people from the guilt of their sin but to break its power over them as well. Here he declares that he will excise the names of the idols from the land, terminating their influence and even their memory. Since much of the influence of the idols was exercised through false prophets, who told the people what they wanted to hear (see 10:1-3), they too will be removed from the land. Their own parents will execute them, in line with Deuteronomy 13:6-10. The punishment of ‘piercing’ – fatally stabbing – fits the impact that their sin had of ‘piercing’ the Lord (12:10).
This public antipathy will make the false prophets eager to conceal their activities. They will no longer dress in a garment of hair, as did Elijah (see 1 Kings 19:13). The exact phrase ‘garment of hair’ is found in Genesis 25 to describe Esau’s skin, which Jacob mimicked in order to trick his blind father, an allusion that underlines their intent to deceive the people. If confronted, they will explicitly deny that they are prophets: instead, they claim to be workers of the soil (Gen. 4:2), a profession they have followed from their youth. Yet the true nature of the false prophet’s activity will be exposed by the ‘wounds between his hands,’ that is, on his back (see 2 Ki. 9:24). These are the ritual scars related to pagan practices that he will confess that he received at the house of his friends (or ‘lovers’), the fellow-idolaters with whom he practiced pagan worship (see Ezek. 16:33-37).
