Zechariah 14:12-19 describes cosmic/apocalyptic events (a plague consuming the flesh, eyes, and tongues of Jerusalem's attackers while they stand, panic among the nations, and all surviving nations required to make annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem or face drought/plague) that have not literally occurred, indicating a failed, unfulfilled biblical prophecy.

Zechariah 9-14 belongs to apocalyptic-prophetic literature using the conventionalized 'Day of the LORD' topos — cosmic battle/theophany imagery (cf. Joel 2:1-11, 30-31; Isaiah 13:9-13; Amos 8:9) deployed throughout the prophets to depict divine judgment in cosmic, hyperbolic terms as stock imagery signaling the enormity of judgment rather than a modern-style forecast intended for flat, literal fulfillment-checking (Frank Moore Cross traces this to the ANE 'Divine Warrior' theophany tradition; the same convention is applied, and undisputedly non-literally by all sides, to Joel's 'blood, fire, and vapor of smoke... sun turned to darkness' in Acts 2:19-20's citation at Pentecost). On fulfillment timing, this text is genuinely and respectably debated within conservative, inerrantist eschatology across three schools: futurist/premillennial readings hold these events remain future ('not yet,' a category distinct from 'failed,' a distinction the objection collapses by presuming the text asserts imminent fulfillment); preterist/partial-preterist readings see typological or partial fulfillment in the fall of Jerusalem (AD 70) or earlier historical judgments, with the cosmic imagery applied figuratively; idealist/symbolic readings take the chapter's enduring claim — Yahweh's eventual universal, uncontested kingship (v.9) — as the theological point, with plague/pilgrimage imagery as vivid poetic dress. Declaring the prophecy 'failed' presupposes, without argument, that it must already have been due for literal fulfillment — begging the question against futurist and idealist readings held by careful, informed interpreters.

Zechariah 14's controlling claim — Yahweh's eventual universal kingship and worship — coheres with the entire prophetic corpus's trajectory (Isa 2:2-4; Isa 66; Rev 21-22) and is precisely the claim the NT presents as inaugurated, not yet consummated, in Christ's first coming and awaiting his return — the 'already/not yet' structure of Christian eschatology is a coherent, textually-grounded position, not an ad hoc excuse invented to dodge falsification.