Zechariah — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package)

0. Purpose and Method

This document performs the Phase 1 linguistic gap analysis mandated for the Zechariah curriculum. It answers four questions for the destination language (Hmong, RPA, formal/literary register per the Romans baseline):

1. Doctrine vocabulary matrix — for each of the five assigned doctrines, what Hmong vocabulary already exists (inherited from Romans or newly surfaced in Zechariah), where is it weak, and what is the recommended handling strategy?
2. Crowded semantic neighborhoods — where does one Hmong lexical root (e.g., ruach-family, hwjchim, dab, kevcai, fij) have to bear multiple, doctrinally distinct referents, requiring a fencing/disambiguation strategy so hearers do not collapse distinct categories into one?
3. Missing vocabulary — where does Hmong (rural highland Southeast Asian agrarian/clan culture) simply lack a native referent (donkeys, olives, ephah-measures, anointing oil, Tabernacles booths), producing a comprehension gap rather than a doctrinal collision?
4. Transliteration vs. paraphrase — for proper nouns, titles, and culturally opaque items, which items should be transliterated (following existing Hmong Bible convention) versus rendered by descriptive paraphrase, and why?

This document concludes with a ranked list of the book’s highest-risk ambiguities, prioritized for human theologian review per the escalation conventions of 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §9 (Romans baseline), which this Zechariah package extends without contradiction.

Full-book coverage note: all fourteen chapters of Zechariah have been reviewed for this analysis. Chapters contributing no new linguistic-gap material beyond what is already logged under a given heading are cited by chapter number alongside the relevant heading rather than treated separately (per the full-book-coverage mandate); no chapter has been silently skipped. Chapters 1–8 (night visions, priestly/kingly typology, temple oracles) and chapters 9–14 (Messianic King, Shepherd rejection, Piercing, Day of the LORD, restored order) are treated as two internally coherent halves within the matrix below, consistent with the book’s own literary structure.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

Doctrine	Available Hmong Terms (Status)	Core Weakness(es)	Recommended Strategy
1. The Coming Messianic King	huab tais (king, NEW-High); tus Ceg Ntoo (Branch, NEW-High); tus ncaj ncees (righteous, REUSED-Critical); tau txais kev cawm dim (los ntawm Vajtswv) (saved/vindicated, REUSED-High, passive-nuance); tus uas txo nws tus kheej, ib tug pluag (lowly, NEW-Medium-High); kev thaj yeeb (peace, REUSED-Low); kev kav (dominion, NEW-Low-Medium); Tsev Neeg Daviv (House of David, NEW-Low)	huab tais defaults to a nationalistic/clan-kingship reading; tus Ceg Ntoo reads as incidental botanical scenery without a fixed title-marking convention; the Niphal passive of nosha (9:9) is easily flattened into an active-voice “he saves/gives peace” construction, erasing the crucial nuance that the King himself is given vindication by the Father — the exegetical hinge for the King’s humility being compatible with, not contradictory to, his kingship.	(a) huab tais must never stand alone in Messianic contexts — always co-textually anchored to lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv (REUSED) and to the Davidic promise; (b) tus Ceg Ntoo requires a fixed capitalization-equivalent naming convention (bolded/titled at every occurrence, 3:8 and 6:12) plus a first-occurrence Messianic-title footnote; (c) the passive-voice nuance of tau txais kev cawm dim must be preserved with an explicit “(los ntawm Vajtswv)” agent-clause at 9:9 without exception, teaching that the King’s vindication, like the believer’s justification in Romans, is received, not self-generated.
2. Restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple	hlua ntsuas (measuring line, NEW-Low); tus Tuam Povthawj (High Priest, NEW-High); qub txeeg qub teg (inheritance, REUSED-Low); Dawb Huv rau tus TSWV (Holy to the LORD, NEW-Medium); Kev Nyob Tsev Pheeb Suab (Tabernacles, NEW-Medium); dej muaj txoj sia (living waters, NEW-Low-Medium); Roob Txiv Aliv (Mount of Olives, NEW-Low)	tus Tuam Povthawj is the term of highest structural risk in this doctrine: the OT priestly office (ritual garments, blood/sacrificial mediation, sacred vestments) maps disturbingly well onto the Hmong shamanic office (txiv neeb), which the Romans baseline deliberately avoided replicating for leitourgos. Zechariah cannot avoid the term (Joshua’s cleansing/reclothing in ch.3 and the King-Priest crowning in ch.6 are structurally load-bearing), so avoidance is not available as it was in Romans.	Introduce tus Tuam Povthawj with mandatory, non-optional contrast-teaching at first occurrence (3:1) and reinforce at 6:11-13: this is a divinely instituted, Scripture-bounded, sacrificial-system office pointing forward to Christ’s priesthood (Heb 4-10), categorically distinct from txiv neeb spirit-mediation, which operates by negotiation with ancestral/nature spirits rather than by God’s own gracious cleansing initiative (3:4). This note must repeat at every subsequent occurrence in a new curriculum module per the Romans baseline’s reading-level convention (§6).
3. Visions of God’s Sovereign Plan for His People	hwjchim (power, REUSED-Critical, mandatory “Vajtswv hwjchim”); Vaj Ntsuj Plig (Holy Spirit, REUSED-Critical); plaub tug cua saum ntuj (four winds, NEW-Medium-High); ntsuj plig qias neeg (unclean spirit, NEW-Critical); cov seem (remnant, REUSED-Low); dab mlom (idol, REUSED-High); cov cev Vajtswv Lus dag (false prophet, NEW-High); dab Ntxwg Nyoog (Satan, NEW-Medium)	Zechariah is uniquely dense in ruach-family and spirit-world vocabulary (Holy Spirit, four winds/spirits, unclean spirit, angel of the LORD, Satan, false prophet as diviner) — a linguistic minefield far exceeding Romans’ single Vaj Ntsuj Plig/ntsuj plig pair. Any slip in prefix or qualifier discipline across these categories risks collapsing the divine Spirit into a generic spirit-category indistinguishable from animistic dab/ntsuj plig taxonomy.	Maintain the four-way fence documented in §2 below (Holy Spirit / human soul / four winds / unclean spirit) with zero tolerance for cross-bleeding of the “Vaj” marker; treat 4:6 (“not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit”) as the doctrine’s structural anchor verse and preserve its contrastive syntax intact in every rendering.
4. The Piercing of the One They Have Pierced (Zech 12:10)	raug xuas nkaug (pierced, NEW-Critical); Vaj Ntsuj Plig uas coj txiaj ntsim thiab kev thov tuaj (Spirit of grace and supplication, REUSED-compound-Critical); quaj ntsuag (mourning, NEW-Low); lub qhov dej muaj kua dej ntws tsis tu (fountain, NEW-Medium); tus TSWV (the divine speaker, REUSED-extended-Critical)	This single verse concentrates the book’s highest term-density risk: the divine first-person speaker (“they have pierced me”) requires absolute stability of the tus TSWV rendering to preserve the astonishing claim that YHWH Himself is pierced (fulfilled at the cross, John 19:37); raug xuas nkaug must not be softened to relational/emotional “hurt”; and the compound Spirit-of-grace phrase must carry both the Vaj-prefix and the txiaj ntsim (never koob hmoov) qualifiers simultaneously in the same clause.	Treat 12:10 as requiring triple-locked qualifier discipline in a single sentence: (1) tus TSWV as unambiguous first-person divine speaker, never substituted with a transliterated proper name; (2) raug xuas nkaug retaining full violent/concrete force, glossed with the cross-reference to Num 25:8/Judg 9:54 usage; (3) Vaj Ntsuj Plig uas coj txiaj ntsim thiab kev thov tuaj with both Critical-tier sub-qualifiers intact. No single clause elsewhere in the book carries this much simultaneous risk; flag for mandatory theologian review with no automated-review bypass, matching the Romans baseline’s treatment of Rom 1:16-17.
5. God’s Zeal for Zion	kev khib siab rau Xi-oo (Vajtswv txoj kev hlub uas ceev thiab tiv thaiv nws haiv neeg) (zeal, NEW-Critical); kev npau taws ntawm Vajtswv (wrath, REUSED-High, structurally parallel); txoj kev khuv leej (mercy/chesed, REUSED-nuance-flagged-Medium); kev txiav txim ncaj ncees (true justice, NEW-Low-Medium); social-justice quartet (NEW-Low)	khib siab is the ordinary Hmong word for petty/sinful jealousy (spousal suspicion, envy of a neighbor’s fortune) — a vice to be repented of, not a divine virtue to be celebrated; without the mandatory qualifying clause, God’s zeal reads as capricious pettiness rather than covenant-protective ardor. Separately, chesed (7:9) is under-conveyed by the Romans-established khuv leej (mercy/pity), which foregrounds compassion toward the miserable but under-conveys covenant-loyalty.	khib siab for God’s zeal must NEVER appear bare — the full qualifying clause is mandatory at every occurrence (1:14; 8:2), modeled structurally on the Romans wrath_of_god pattern. chesed/mercy requires a teaching note distinguishing its covenant-loyalty breadth from the narrower Romans-established pity-sense, without introducing a second competing Hmong lexeme that would fracture the term across two Language Packages.

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2. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

Zechariah reuses several Hmong lexical roots already flagged in the Romans baseline, but multiplies the number of distinct referents sharing a single root far beyond what Romans required. Each neighborhood below needs an explicit fencing strategy — a documented rule for keeping referents lexically distinguishable even though they share a root morpheme.

2.1 The ruach / spirit-root neighborhood (four distinct referents)

Hebrew ruach underlies four theologically distinct referents in Zechariah, all of which must map to different Hmong forms:

Referent	Hmong Form	Vaj-prefix?	Occurrences
The Holy Spirit / divine Spirit	Vaj Ntsuj Plig	Mandatory, always	4:6; 12:10
Human spirit/soul (anthropological)	ntsuj plig	Never	(implicit anthropological references)
Four winds/spirits of heaven (angelic/creaturely)	plaub tug cua saum ntuj	Never (rendered as “wind,” not “spirit,” precisely to avoid the ambiguity)	6:5
Unclean spirit	ntsuj plig qias neeg	Never; must carry qias neeg marker	13:2

Fencing rule: the “Vaj” prefix is the single load-bearing marker distinguishing referent #1 from all others; it must be added or withheld with zero exceptions. Referent #3 is deliberately NOT translated with any ntsuj plig vocabulary at all (rendered as “wind,” cua, rather than “spirit”) specifically to keep it out of this neighborhood’s ambiguity zone — this is a stronger fence than referents #2 and #4 receive, and is recommended precisely because “four spirits of heaven” has no natural qualifier that would prevent confusion with the Holy Spirit if the word ntsuj plig were used at all. Referent #4 uses the shared root but locks in the opposite polarity marker (qias neeg, unclean) as a permanent, non-droppable suffix, structurally parallel to how “Vaj” is a non-droppable prefix for referent #1. This is a stricter neighborhood-management requirement than anything in the Romans baseline, which had only two referents (Holy Spirit / human soul) to fence; Zechariah quadruples the fencing burden and must be treated as a standalone risk category in curriculum design, not merely an extension of the Romans pattern.

2.2 The dab (spirit/idol) root neighborhood

• dab mlom (idol) — REUSED exactly from Romans; stable.
• dab Ntxwg Nyoog (Satan) — fixed compound; must never be shortened to bare dab.
• Generic household/nature/ancestor spirits (dab, unmarked) — NOT a term used anywhere in this glossary/registry, but the omnipresent cultural backdrop against which every dab-containing compound above is heard.

Fencing rule: both compounds above are permanently fixed and may never be abbreviated to the bare root dab in any generated content, since the bare root defaults to the broad animistic category of household/ancestor/nature spirits generally propitiated in Hmong traditional religion — a category Zechariah’s text is often directly polemicizing against (13:2, cutting off idols; 3:1-2, Satan rebuked), not describing neutrally.

2.3 The hwjchim (power) root neighborhood

• hwjchim mandatorily qualified Vajtswv hwjchim when referring to divine power (4:6) — REUSED exactly from Romans, Critical risk, unchanged.
• huab tais (king) — deliberately built on a different root, not hwjchim, even though “royal power/might” would be a natural collocation; the Zechariah glossary correctly avoids compounding these.
• tus uas txo nws tus kheej (lowly/humble, 9:9) — deliberately constructed without the hwjchim root (see registry entry #34’s rationale) to avoid bleeding shamanic-power connotations into a term meant to convey the King’s self-lowering.

Fencing rule: no humility-vocabulary, no royal-title vocabulary, and no civil/delegated-authority vocabulary (a category present in Romans ch.13 but not independently re-attested in Zechariah) may be built on the hwjchim root without the mandatory “Vajtswv” qualifier if divine power is intended, and must avoid the root altogether if humility or non-divine authority is intended. Zech 4:6’s explicit “not by might [koach], nor by power [chayil], but by my Spirit” is the doctrine’s own internal fence — the Hmong rendering must preserve this contrastive structure exactly, since Zechariah itself is teaching the very disambiguation this fence exists to enforce.

2.4 The kevcai (custom/rite) root neighborhood

Romans flagged Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) (the Law) and kev cai raus dej (baptism) as sharing the kevcai root with kev cai dab qhuas (religion/ancestral spirit-worship customs). Zechariah does not introduce a new kevcai-rooted term, but does introduce fasting (kev yoo mov, ch.7) and Feast of Tabernacles (Kev Nyob Tsev Pheeb Suab, ch.14) — both ritual-calendar items that, while not sharing the kevcai morpheme directly, occupy the same functional neighborhood (prescribed communal religious observance) and could be assimilated to ancestral ritual-calendar thinking if not anchored.

Fencing rule: kev yoo mov and Kev Nyob Tsev Pheeb Suab should each carry a brief anchoring note that these are covenant-community observances commanded/reordered by YHWH with a stated ethical or typological purpose (7:5-10’s critique of empty ritual motive; 14:16’s universal pilgrimage to worship the King), not neutral calendar customs — this guards against both (a) syncretistic assimilation to Hmong festival customs and (b) a hollow ritualism reading that 7:5-10 itself explicitly warns against.

2.5 The ncaj ncees (righteous) / forensic-accounting neighborhood

Romans fixed tus ncaj ncees / raug suav tias ncaj ncees as a mandatory forensic pair (justification). Zechariah reuses tus ncaj ncees for the King’s own righteous character (9:9) and independently builds kev txiav txim ncaj ncees (true justice, 7:9) on the same root.

Fencing rule: 9:9’s tus ncaj ncees describing the King is NOT a justification-by-faith context and does not require the raug suav tias reckoning-qualifier (that qualifier is specific to Romans’ imputation doctrine); however, curriculum content must not blur this by implying the King’s righteousness is itself the reader’s imputed righteousness without a clarifying doctrinal bridge. kev txiav txim ncaj ncees (7:9, social/legal justice) must be kept contextually distinct from both of the above — it describes ethical conduct in courts, not forensic salvation status. Three distinct uses of one root within one small book require an explicit teaching note distinguishing (a) the King’s personal righteous character, (b) forensic imputed righteousness (a Romans-doctrine import, relevant only by cross-reference), and (c) social/judicial fairness.

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3. Missing Vocabulary (Comprehension Gaps, No Direct Collision)

The following items have no native Hmong lexical or cultural equivalent. These are comprehension gaps, not doctrinal collisions — Hmong traditional religion offers no competing concept to invert, but without an illustrative note the image will simply fail to land, and a failed image can itself produce secondary doctrinal drift (e.g., missing the humility-signal of the donkey allows royal-triumphalist misreading).

Item	Chapter	Gap Type	Recommended Handling
Donkey/colt as royal mount (caij ib tug neeg luav)	9:9	No native Hmong pack/riding-donkey tradition	First-occurrence illustrative note: donkey (peaceable, common) vs. war-horse (martial, imperial) in the ancient Near East; the King’s choice of mount is itself a humility-signal, structurally reinforcing doctrine 1’s “lowly yet righteous” paradox.
Anointing with oil (“sons of oil,” 4:14)	4	No native Hmong anointing-installation rite	Explanatory gloss connecting oil-anointing to consecration-for-office, paired typologically with ch.6’s King-Priest crowning.
Ephah measure / measuring basket personified as Wickedness	5:5-11	Ancient dry-measure unit unfamiliar; personification device also unfamiliar	Gloss the ephah as a grain-measuring container (comprehensible via Hmong rice-measuring practice) before introducing the personification; avoid implying the basket is itself a spirit-being.
Olive trees / olive oil supply (ch.4’s lampstand vision; ch.14’s Mount of Olives)	4, 14	Olives are botanically absent from highland Southeast Asia	REUSED Romans-package handling: tsob ntoo txiv aliv, with the Romans-established mandatory illustrative note (local fruit-tree analogy) extended to this package per the Romans baseline’s own instruction for grafted_olive_tree.
Cornerstone / tent peg structural imagery (10:4)	10	Tent-peg construction technique not part of settled Hmong architecture (though historically relevant to earlier nomadic/highland dwelling forms)	Brief illustrative note on structural load-bearing function; must be kept lexically separate from the unrelated stumbling_block imagery already fixed in the Romans TM (see §2.5 fencing pattern; opposite rhetorical valence).
Thirty pieces of silver as an insulting wage (11:12-13)	11	Ancient shekel-weight currency unfamiliar; the number’s typological significance (Matt 26:15) is easily lost if rounded	Preserve the exact numeral and the “thrown into the temple/potter” narrative detail intact; do not substitute a modern currency equivalent, which would sever the typological link.
Feast of Tabernacles/Booths (14:16-19)	14	No direct Hmong ritual-calendar equivalent, though a partial positive bridge exists via Hmong harvest-gathering customs	Illustrative note only, with an explicit caution against syncretistic equation with any specific existing Hmong festival (per registry entry #58); the theological point (universal pilgrimage-worship of the King by all surviving nations) must remain primary.
”Canaanite”/merchant double meaning (14:21)	14	Wordplay untranslatable; ambiguity itself is the difficulty	Footnote both senses; the sacred-space/commerce point survives under either reading, so the ambiguity may be preserved rather than forcibly resolved.
Metallurgical refining of silver/gold (13:9)	13	Smelting process not a common Hmong craft-referent (though not wholly unknown via trade goods)	Brief process-gloss (heating ore to separate impurity from pure metal) sufficient; no collision.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Following the register and citation conventions fixed in the Romans baseline (12_ai_translation_requirements.md §5, §7), this package applies the same discipline: proper nouns and already-settled Hmong-Bible-tradition names are transliterated; technical titles and metaphor-bearing phrases are paraphrased with a fixed, non-varying descriptive rendering.

Item	Decision	Rationale
Zechariah (book/prophet name)	Transliterate: Xakhaliya (to be fixed at first curriculum module; not yet formalized in this glossary and flagged here for TM-revision review)	Follows existing Hmong Bible transliteration convention for prophetic-book names (cf. Loos for Romans in the baseline); [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED: confirm existing Hmong Bible tradition spelling for Xakhaliya before permanent adoption].
Zion (Tsiyyon)	Transliterate: Xi-oo	Already standard in existing Hmong Bible tradition; low risk, no paraphrase needed.
Jerusalem (Yerushalayim)	Transliterate: Yeluxalees	Already standard; consistent with Romans-adjacent Hmong Bible usage.
David (Beit David)	Transliterate: Daviv, compound Tsev Neeg Daviv	Established transliteration; “Tsev Neeg” (household/lineage) paraphrase-compound preferred over a bare transliteration of “beit” to preserve the lineage sense.
YHWH (Tetragrammaton)	Do not transliterate. Render tus TSWV (full-caps convention)	Directly inherits the Romans baseline’s forbidden-substitution rule against transliterated divine names (e.g., “Yehauvas,” a sectarian NWT-pattern); this is now the single most load-bearing transliteration avoidance decision in the entire package given Zechariah’s high frequency of the divine name and its Christological weight at 12:10.
The Branch (Tsemach)	Paraphrase, not transliteration: tus Ceg Ntoo with mandatory title-marking	A transliterated loanword would be doctrinally opaque and would forfeit the intentional botanical-messianic wordplay (branch/sprout imagery echoing Isa 11:1, Jer 23:5) that a paraphrase can at least partially preserve; must carry a fixed teaching note regardless.
Anointed Ones / “sons of oil”	Paraphrase: ob tug uas raug pleev roj tsa cia	No transliteration candidate exists; descriptive paraphrase is the only viable strategy for this idiom.
Hadad-rimmon (12:11, place-name in the mourning simile)	Transliterate as a place-name, with a footnote that this is a byword for intense national mourning (parallel to a known Canaanite mourning-rite location), not a name requiring independent theological weight	Minor proper noun; transliteration preserves textual fidelity without inflating comprehension burden.
Shinar (5:11)	Transliterate	Established place-name; no theological load requiring paraphrase.
Ephah, shekel, cubit and other ancient units	Paraphrase with gloss, not bare transliteration	Transliterating an ancient unit name without explanation produces zero comprehension; a functional paraphrase (e.g., “grain-measuring basket”) at least anchors the image, supplemented by a footnote giving the technical term for readers who want it (per the Romans baseline’s Lus Kilis (Greek): ... citation convention, extended here as Lus Henplais (Hebrew): ...).

New citation convention proposed for TM-revision review: extend the Romans baseline’s Greek technical-term citation format (Lus Kilis (Greek): [transliteration] — Hmong: [TM rendering]) with a parallel Hebrew form: Lus Henplais (Hebrew): [transliteration] — Hmong: [TM rendering], for use whenever a lesson needs to reference the underlying Hebrew term (e.g., explaining the daqar/pierced distinction, or the nosha/passive-voice nuance at 9:9). This is logged here per §9 of the Romans baseline’s escalation rules as a new convention requiring formal adoption before permanent use.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision specificity × consequence of error), following the Critical/High/Medium/Low tier logic already fixed in the Romans baseline and applied consistently in this package’s registry.

1. Zech 12:10, the divine first-person “pierced” clause (tus TSWV + raug xuas nkaug + compound Spirit-of-grace phrase). Triple-locked Critical risk in a single verse; the entire Piercing doctrine’s Christological force depends on all three elements holding simultaneously. Highest-risk point in the book.
2. The four-way ruach neighborhood fence (Holy Spirit / human soul / four winds / unclean spirit). Not a single-verse risk but a book-wide structural risk: any inconsistency across chapters 4, 6, 12, 13 in Vaj-prefix or qualifier discipline destabilizes the Sanctification-and-Spirit doctrine inherited from Romans as well as this book’s own Piercing and Sovereign-Plan doctrines simultaneously.
3. Zech 4:6, “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” The hwjchim/Vajtswv hwjchim Critical-tier qualifier must survive intact in the very verse that is teaching the qualifier’s necessity; a smoothed or paraphrased rendering that loses the contrastive syntax would silently erase the doctrine the verse exists to state.
4. tus Tuam Povthawj (High Priest, ch.3, 6). Unlike Romans’ leitourgos, this term cannot be avoided, and its collision risk with the Hmong shamanic office (txiv neeb) is high and specific (ritual garments, mediatorial cleansing, sacred office) — yet mandatory in structurally central passages (Joshua’s cleansing, the King-Priest crowning).
5. kev khib siab rau Xi-oo (God’s zeal, 1:14, 8:2). Bare khib siab is a moral vice in ordinary Hmong; without the full mandatory qualifying clause at every occurrence, God’s zeal for Zion reads as capricious jealousy rather than covenant-protective ardor — structurally identical in kind to the Romans wrath_of_god risk but with an even more negatively-loaded base term (jealousy vs. anger).
6. huab tais (King) unanchored from lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv. Risk of collapsing the universal, spiritual Messianic reign (9:10, 14:9) into a nationalistic/political-restoration narrative, especially given the term’s association with historical Hmong clan-kingship narratives.
7. tag nrho cov Yixalayees yuav dim-adjacent risk, extended to all Israel-type future-of-Israel material touched by Zechariah’s remnant/restoration language (ch.8, 13). Though Zechariah’s own vocabulary (cov seem) is Low risk in isolation, curriculum content connecting Zechariah’s restoration promises to Romans 11’s “all Israel will be saved” must inherit that entry’s High-risk anchoring requirement (11:29’s irrevocable calling) to avoid supersessionist flattening.
8. tus Ceg Ntoo (the Branch) without fixed title-marking. Risk of being heard as incidental scenery; the entire typological weight of doctrine 1’s King-Priest convergence (ch.3, 6) depends on hearers recognizing this as a proper Messianic title, not a botanical detail.
9. The passive/Niphal nuance of tau txais kev cawm dim at 9:9. If flattened to an active “he saves/wins peace,” the theological point that the King himself is vindicated by the Father (paralleling Phil 2:8-9) is lost, weakening doctrine 1’s humility-yet-kingship paradox.
10. Dawb Huv rau tus TSWV (Holy to the LORD, 14:20-21) misread as protective ritual inscription. Risk of assimilation to amulet/talisman logic (a marked object warding off harm) rather than the intended declaration that all mundane life is consecrated to God — a subtler version of the sanctification-as-ritual-cleansing risk already flagged in the Romans baseline.
11. cov cev Vajtswv Lus dag (false prophet, 13:2-6) without contrast-teaching against txiv neeb. Risk that hearers either over-apply the condemnation to any spirit-claiming figure or under-apply it by failing to see Zechariah’s own polemical target (false claims to speak for YHWH specifically).
12. Thirty pieces of silver (11:12-13) rounded or generalized. Lower doctrinal centrality than items above but a specific, avoidable risk to the book’s clearest direct typological link to the Passion narrative (Matt 26:15, 27:9-10); numeral precision must be a non-negotiable production rule.

Escalation note: consistent with the Romans baseline’s routing rule, items 1–6 above touch Critical-tier doctrines (Piercing, Visions/Sovereign Plan, God’s Zeal for Zion) and must be routed to mandatory human theologian review with no automated-review bypass; items 7–12 touch High-tier doctrinal material (Coming Messianic King typology, Restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple) and likewise require human theologian review, not merely native-speaker review, per the same escalation logic already fixed for the Romans package.

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6. Governing Note

This gap analysis identifies no instance in which a Romans-baseline Critical or High-risk TM entry has been altered; all reuse in this document is exact and unmodified. All newly surfaced Zechariah-specific risks (the four-way ruach fence, the priestly-office collision, the zeal/jealousy collision, the passive-voice nuance at 9:9, and the triple-locked 12:10 clause) are logged here as candidate findings pending formal TM-revision review before the Zechariah package may itself become a citable baseline for future curricula, consistent with the versioning discipline established in assets/translation_memory.json’s governing note.