Zechariah 10: God’s Work of Rebuilding

 1 Pray to God for rain—it’s time for the spring rain—
    to God, the rainmaker,
Spring thunderstorm maker,
    maker of grain and barley.
2-3
“Store-bought gods babble gibberish.
    Religious experts spout rubbish.
They pontificate hot air.
    Their prescriptions are nothing but smoke.
And so the people wander like lost sheep,
    poor lost sheep without a shepherd.
I’m furious with the so-called shepherds.
    They’re worse than billy goats, and I’ll treat them like goats.”

Zechariah says that the Lord is against the "religious experts" of his time.  No wonder the prophets were persecuted. He says that we should pray to God for rain, water and we may infer, that we should pray for basic things that keep us alive, while religious experts will be punished.
In Zechariah's time, there was no Israel as the northern kingdom, yet he says:

6-12
“I’ll put muscle in the people of Judah;
    I’ll save the people of Joseph.
I know their pain and will make them good as new.
    They’ll get a fresh start, as if nothing had ever happened.
And why? Because I am their very own God,
    I’ll do what needs to be done for them.
The people of Ephraim will be famous,
    their lives brimming with joy.
Their children will get in on it, too—
    oh, let them feel blessed by God!
I’ll whistle and they’ll all come running.
    I’ve set them free—oh, how they’ll flourish!
Even though I scattered them to the far corners of earth,
    they’ll remember me in the faraway places.
They’ll keep the story alive in their children,
    and they will come back.
I’ll bring them back from the Egyptian west
    and round them up from the Assyrian east.
I’ll bring them back to sweet Gilead,
    back to leafy Lebanon.
Every square foot of land
    will be marked by homecoming.
They’ll sail through troubled seas, brush aside brash ocean waves.
    Roaring rivers will turn to a trickle.
Gaudy Assyria will be stripped bare,
    bully Egypt exposed as a fraud.
But my people—oh, I’ll make them strong, God-strong!
    and they’ll live my way.” God says so!

Zechariah doesn't write saying that people from Judah are better than people from Israel. The Lord reveals him a great future for Israel/Ephraim. Part of them were in Egypt, other part in Assyria but the Lord will gather them again as his people in the promised land. I can't understand well how this will happen or happened because it is too difficult to identify people from Ephraim today. The point is that the Lord makes Jews and Samaritans live in harmony.