Zechariah 13:6 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

These wounds— Two ancient usages are clearly alluded to here; the one, that of the idolatrous priests and prophets, who sought to engage the attention and favour of their deity by cutting and slashing themselves, as the priests of Baal did, 1 Kings 18:28.; the other, that of those who cut themselves as a token of their grief and mourning for their deceased relations and friends. It appears also from Jeremiah 48:37 that these cuttings were performed on the hands in particular. When therefore the man, now ashamed of his pretensions to prophesy, came to be challenged for those fears which were visible on his hands, he would deny them to have proceeded from any idolatrous cause; but would have them thought to be marks left by those wounds which he gave himself in the house of his relations and friends, in the paroxysms of his grief for the loss of them.