Chapter Eleven

1–3. God’s judgment, revealed in the devastation of the land. 4–14. A symbolic depiction of the activity of the good Shepherd and the ingratitude of the sheep. 15–17. The negligence and selfish greed of the worthless shepherd and the severe punishment foretold for him.

Zechariah 11:1. Open your gates, Lebanon, that fire may consume your cedars. Zechariah 11:2. Wail, fir tree, because the cedar has fallen, because the mighty ones are laid waste; wail, oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest has been brought down. Zechariah 11:3. A sound of wailing of the shepherds, because their pasture is destroyed; a sound of the roaring of young lions, because the majesty of the Jordan is laid waste. God’s judgment upon the chosen people is depicted under the form of devastation of the land, destruction of its most important products. The devastation of the land is a sign of the final destruction of the kingdom. This judgment upon Israel was carried out by the Romans. Such is the understanding of St. Cyril: the prophet “foretells the future unbelief in Him (in Christ) of the sons of Israel... and that on account of this the very temple should be burned and, of course, Jerusalem... This was accomplished by the hand of the Romans, led once by Vespasian and Titus” (p. 148; Keil, p. 616; Rougemont, p. 226; Urguhardt, Die erfüllten Weissagungen... 1903, pp. 169–170).

Zechariah 11:4. Thus says the Lord my God: Tend the sheep marked for slaughter, Zechariah 11:5. whose buyers kill them with impunity, and those who sell them say, “Blessed be the Lord, I have become rich!” and their own shepherds show them no pity. The chosen people, punished by God for their sins and disobedience, are likened to a flock of sheep marked for slaughter. No one feels any compassion for them; each thinks only of extracting as much profit as possible from them. Those who buy kill the sheep whenever they wish, without fear of any accountability; the sellers rejoice at their gain, while the shepherds are completely indifferent to the fate of their sheep (Jerome, p. 132; Cyril, pp. 153–155).

Zechariah 11:6. For I will not spare the inhabitants of this land any longer, says the Lord; but I will deliver each person into the hand of his neighbor and into the hand of his king, and they shall strike the land, and I will not deliver them from their hand. However, the Lord does not entirely abandon His care for the sinful and transgressful people. For the sake of preserving them from complete destruction, He pours out His wrath upon those inhabitants of the land who are so cruel toward Israel, suffering the calamities of bondage. According to St. Cyril, here the Lord “threatens destruction both to the flock and... since though they had the opportunity to turn to the guidance of the chief Shepherd of all, I mean Christ, and to be under His dominion, yet ignorantly they preferred to surrender to those who slew and sold them” (pp. 155–156).

Zechariah 11:7. And I tended the sheep marked for slaughter, truly the most wretched sheep. And I took for myself two staffs; the one I called Favor, and the other I called Unity, and with them I tended the sheep. Next, the prophet symbolically depicts the activity of the good Shepherd, who henceforth takes upon Himself the task of caring for the flock; by the course of the speech, this Shepherd is God Himself (or the divine Person, i.e., the Messiah—Keil, p. 617). The wretched sheep marked for slaughter He tends by means of two staffs: one He names Favor (or Grace, according to some versions), the other Unity. According to Laur’s expression, the symbolic names of the staffs given by the good Shepherd were to represent as it were the motto of His pastoral ministry (P. Elred Laur, Die Prophetennamen des Alten Testamentes, Freiburg I, 1903, p. 115). The ancient interpreters and Luther instead of chobhelim—“unity”—in verse 7 read chabhalim—“griefs, sorrows” (Luther, p. 222; Marti, p. 441).

Zechariah 11:8. And I destroyed three shepherds in one month; and My soul was grieved with them, as their soul was also grieved with Me. Zechariah 11:9. Then I said: I will not tend you; let the dying die, let the perishing perish, and let those that remain eat one another’s flesh. The activity of the good Shepherd during the period symbolically denoted as one month manifests itself chiefly in the destruction of three shepherds—obviously those who oppressed the sheep, treated them unjustly and cruelly. According to a very widespread interpretation from the time of the Fathers, by the three shepherds one should understand the Hebrew kings (or generally representatives of secular power), the priests, and the prophets. Thus with St. Ephrem (p. 249) and the blessed Theodoret (p. 110). Jerome cites this interpretation but follows another, understanding by the three shepherds Moses, Aaron, and Miriam: “of these, Miriam died in the first month, called Nisan, in the wilderness of Sin; and in the same place and the same month by reason of the waters of contention, Moses and Aaron were condemned not to enter the land of promise (Num 20:10-13). And it came to pass that of those three leaders one was struck by actual death, the other two condemned to death by the judgment of divine decree” (p. 136). According to St. Cyril, these are “priests, judges and those learned in the writings of the law”—“scribes” or “lawyers” (pp. 159–160). In later times, interpreters are more inclined to understand here three harsh monarchies under which the Jews successively were in subjection (Keil, p. 620; Haupt, p. 280; ZAThW 1881, pp. 27, 71; Marti, p. 439). But the sheep also do not remain unpunished; when the three harsh shepherds are removed, they do not show proper trust and obedience toward their Shepherd, and He finds Himself compelled to cease His care for the flock, leaving it to the mercy of fate, to destruction from external calamities and internal discord.

Zechariah 11:10. And I took My staff Favor and broke it, to annul the covenant that I had made with all peoples. As a sign of this, He breaks the staff named “Favor” or “Grace,” and the covenant that He had made with all peoples is dissolved on that very day (Zech 11:11). This covenant was beneficial for the flock protected by the Shepherd, because it largely prevented the evil that the pagan nations might have caused to the chosen people (Keil, p. 622).

Zechariah 11:11. And it was annulled on that day, and thus the poor of the sheep, those that waited for Me, understood that it was the word of the Lord. This action of the good Shepherd is rightly understood only by part of the sheep, the humble and obedient ones, who thereafter came to understand the truth of the divine commission of the good Shepherd and surrendered themselves entirely to Him, which saved them from the destruction that befell the disobedient sheep.

Zechariah 11:12. And I said to them: If it seems good to you, give me my wages; and if not, keep them. And they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver. To these the Shepherd employs a final means of bringing them to understanding and clarifying their true relationship to Him. The Shepherd asks the sheep to declare how much they value His activity—whether they find it worthy of reward or not; and He receives in reward for His care of the flock thirty pieces of silver—the price of a slave (Exod 21:32), which clearly were not meant to reward the Shepherd for His labors, but to inflict upon Him a grave insult.

Zechariah 11:13. And the Lord said to me: Cast it to the potter, that noble price at which I was valued by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them into the house of the Lord, to the potter. By God’s command, the prophet, symbolizing the action of the good Shepherd, must cast this insulting reward into the temple treasury, and he casts the thirty pieces of silver into the house of the Lord to the potter. The reading of “el hajjozer” in Zech 11:13 is disputed. Many read instead of hajjozer—potter—haozar—treasury (Gessenius, Siegfried and Slade, Hebräisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, 1893, Leipzig; Nowack, p. 372; Marti, p. 440). The shift of aleph to yodh is usual in biblical-Aramaic; it is not inconceivable even for a book of post-exilic origin (H. Strack, Grammatik des Biblisch-aramäischen, Leipzig, 1901, p. 13; ZAThW 1881, p. 28, note. The Synodal version translates the first “el hajjozer” of this verse as “into the temple treasury,” the second as “to the potter”). In explanation of the expression “to the potter” or “for the potter,” Rougemont reasons thus: “The Field of Blood or Akeldama, on the southern side of the valley of... Hinnom, represents the only place in Jerusalem and its environs where soil for the potter’s workshop can be found. Thus in this city there could be only one potter... Hinnom was the “sink of the whole city, into which all the filth flowed,” according to the Talmud, which calls it the mouth of hell. Thus the potter, in the eyes of the people, took upon himself a certain share of the defilement of the place in which he dwelt; and to cast something to the potter meant to express the most decisive contempt for him” (p. 230). According to Haupt, the potter is mentioned because he constantly deals with clay, with dirt, so that “to cast to the potter” may denote nothing else but to cast into a dirty, unclean place (p. 262). Some German commentators compare the expression used in the prophet Zechariah zum Töpfer with German expressions: zum Henker or zum Schinber (Reinke, p. 144; Keil, p. 624). The juxtaposition of the expressions “into the house of the Lord” and “to the potter” and the understanding of the latter in the indicated sense leads Haupt to the conclusion that the first of these expressions represents a parallel with that place of Scripture where the temple is called a house of trade and a den of robbers (p. 283). In the LXX hajjozer is translated as χωνευτηριον, Slavonic ‘hornilo’ (see W. H. Lower, The Hebrew Student’s Commentary on Zechariah, Hebrew and LXX, London, 1882, p. 103). The blessed Theodoret, interpreting the text of the LXX, considers the words εις το χωνευτηριον an explanation of εις τον οικον Κυριου, reasoning thus: “The Lord commands the prophet, as it were with fire, to test whether this reward is worthy of His benefits; and the prophet said that he cast the pieces of silver into the temple of God, which he rightly called a furnace, because those coming there for repentance, as in some furnace, are renewed, having cast off the poison of sin and been deemed worthy of God’s mercy” (p. 112). And the blessed Jerome understands by jozer that potter “who is the Creator and Fashioner of all things” (p. 140). The use in the Bible of the verb jazaur also in application to God’s creative activity (an example of which we see in Zech 12:1; see Gesenius, p. 10, 13) to some extent justifies such understanding in this place as well. The Fathers and teachers of the Church unanimously see the fulfillment of the prophecy Zech 11:11-13 in the assignment of precisely thirty pieces of silver to Judas for his betrayal, as related by the evangelist Matthew in Matt 27:5, though he mentions the name of Jeremiah rather than Zechariah (Ephrem, p. 251; Cyril, p. 165; Theodoret, 3rd vol., p. ???; Jerome, pp. 139–140).

Zechariah 11:14. And I broke My second staff, called “Unity,” to annul the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. After that there was no longer any possibility of remaining a shepherd of such disobedient and ungrateful sheep, and the good Shepherd breaks His second staff, severing the brotherhood between the two halves of the chosen people, between Judah and Israel, delivering them to the mercy of internal discord and factional strife (Keil, p. 625). Thus the care of the good Shepherd for the ungrateful sheep comes to an end. St. Cyril interprets the meaning of the staffs with symbolic names in application to the preaching of the Gospel and the law of Moses: “not knowing the staff of the good, that is, the preaching of the Gospel, and moreover dishonoring thereby the second staff, which is called the law of Moses, the Jews did not come to faith, did not come to know through the law and the prophets the One foretold” (p. 168).

Zechariah 11:15. And the Lord said to me: Yet again, take for yourself the implements of a foolish shepherd. Zechariah 11:16. For behold, I will raise up in this land a shepherd who does not care for the perishing, does not seek the lost, and does not heal the sick; but he eats the flesh of the fat ones and tears off their hooves. But the flock cannot remain entirely without a shepherd; having rejected the good Shepherd, it again falls under the power and guidance of a foolish and cruel shepherd. The prophet, according to God’s command, must take on the implements of one of the foolish shepherds. These implements denote, of course, the unwise management and neglect of the flock on the part of the shepherd. “The breaking of the hooves, according to Keil, points to the use in food of the fat taken from the hooves” (Marti, p. 442). St. Cyril and the blessed Jerome, by the unwise, selfish, and cruel shepherd, understand the Antichrist (Cyril, p. 169; Jerome, p. 142; cf. Luther, p. 329). Modern commentators understand by the evil shepherd the Roman Empire, to whose harsh power the Jews fell around the time of the coming of the Savior and from which, by their rejection of Him, they suffered final destruction (Keil, p. 631; Haupt, p. 284).

Zechariah 11:17. Woe to the worthless shepherd, abandoning the flock! May the sword strike his arm and his right eye! Let his arm be utterly dried up, and his right eye be utterly dimmed. Retribution awaits the worthless shepherd who cares nothing for the flock. The most necessary members—his arm and right eye—are struck: his arm loses the ability to act, and his eye to see—because they did not serve the interests of the flock. * * * Schweis