_Scenes of overthrow and slaughter.--The Shepherd with the two
staves, Beauty and Bands.--He is rejected.--The thirty pieces of
silver.--The foolish shepherd and his punishment._
The eleventh chapter presents a very dark scene. So far we have seen
that the prophet saw in visions and heard from the Lord nothing but
blessings and mercies for Israel, restoration both national and
spiritual, overthrow of all their enemies, destruction of the world
powers, establishment of the theocracy and world conquest; but now
the scene changes completely. That which precedes all these blessed
events, the events for which indeed the earth and groaning creation
is waiting, is now unfolded in all the terrible details, Israel's
apostacy and dreadful punishment on account of the rejection of the
Shepherd, and instead of Him there is given a foolish shepherd.
We will briefly review the entire chapter before taking up the study
of it in details. The first three verses contain a sublime
description of the visitation which was to come upon the land of
Israel. In the fourth verse the nation is seen as a flock of
slaughter, and the buyers who slaughter them are not guilty, and
their sellers are getting rich by it. The inhabitants of the land are
not spared; all is waste and there is no deliverance. In the seventh
verse the reason of all this judgment is seen. The Prophet does a
symbolic act. As a shepherd he represents the good Shepherd of
Israel, the Messiah. He comes to save them from the terrible
calamity, but he is rejected. The shepherd has two staves, Beauty and
Bands. He breaks one first and asks his price, and they offer him the
price of a slave, thirty pieces of silver, which he at the word of
Jehovah casts from himself. The second staff is broken. Instead of
the staves the Prophet takes the instruments of a foolish shepherd,
undoubtedly weapons of destruction. They perish, they stray, they are
wounded, they suffer and are devoured. At last the foolish shepherd
is punished. This is a birdseye view of the chapter. We will consider
the details under three divisions: The judgment upon the land and the
slaughter of the flock; the cause of it. The Shepherd rejected and
set aside. And in the third place the foolish shepherd.
_I. The judgment upon the land, the temple, and the slaughter of the
flock (verses 1-6)._
Open thy doors, Lebanon;
Let the fire devour thy cedars.
Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen;
Because the lofty ones are spoiled.
Howl, oaks of Bashan,
For the high forest is come down.
A voice of the howling of the shepherds:
For their glory is spoiled.
A voice of the roaring of young lions,
For the pride of Jordan is spoiled.
What an awful picture these three verses present to us, and how
sublime the language! Everything is swept away by a mighty
conflagration. It starts among the lofty cedars of Lebanon; the fir
tree is its prey, and the oaks of Bashan as well as the high forest
come down, and it ends at the Jordan. In the midst of it is heard the
howling of the shepherds and the roaring of the young lions. We have
in these three verses a description of the terrible and complete
judgment which was to fall and which has fallen upon the land of
Israel on account of their disobedience and wickedness. The
destruction of the temple by fire is of course included in this scene
of burning and devastation. Jewish interpretation sees especially in
these verses the prophecy of the destruction of the temple in
Jerusalem. The following is a quotation from the Talmudical tract
Yoma. "Our Rabbis have learnt from tradition that forty years before
the destruction of the temple the lot never used to fall to the right
hand but to the left. The lamp of the evening light would not burn,
and the doors of the temple used to open of their own accord, until
Rabbi Yochanan, the son of Zakkai, rebuked them. He said to it, O
Temple, Temple, why art thou terrifying thyself? I know well that thy
end is to be destroyed, for already Zechariah, the son of Iddo, hath
prophesied, _Open thy doors, O Lebanon, and let a fire consume thy
cedars!"_ As the time of Jerusalem's overthrow and the devastation of
the land drew nearer, after the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ
and His apostles, strange signs in heaven and earth were seen in
Jerusalem and throughout the land. They were signs of warning of the
coming doom, and must have had a special significance for the remnant
of Jewish-Christians who still were in the doomed city. Josephus
mentions a series of these signs: "A comet which had the appearance
of a huge sword hang over the city for a whole year. While the people
were assembled at the feast of unleavened bread, at the sixth hour of
the night, a sudden bright light shone about the temple. On
Pentecost, when the priests entered by night into the temple they
said that they heard many voices proclaim, Let us depart hence. A
certain Jew, the son of Ananus, began suddenly to cry in the temple:
'A voice from the East and a voice from the West! A voice from the
four winds! A voice against Jerusalem and against the Temple! A voice
against the bridegrooms and the brides! A voice against the whole
people!' Day and night in the narrow streets he repeated this cry in
a loud voice. He was severely beaten. He uttered neither shriek nor
pain nor prayer for mercy, but raising his sad and broken voice he
cried at every blow of the scourge, 'Woe, woe to Jerusalem!' For four
years the son of Ananus paid no attention to anyone, and never spake
excepting the same words, Woe to Jerusalem! He neither cursed anyone
who struck him nor thanked anyone who gave him food, but continued to
cry, 'Woe, woe to the city and to the temple!'" (Milman's History of
the Jews, Vol. II.) The above event spoken of in the tract Yoma,
which the pious Rabbi Yochanan thought to be in fulfillment of
Zechariah xi:1, is also mentioned by Josephus. He says, "The eastern
gate of the inner temple, which was of brass and very heavy, and had
been with difficulty shut by twenty men, was seen to open by itself
about the sixth hour of the night."
Once more Jerusalem is to be compassed about by armies and then there
will be signs in earth and in the heavens. Earthquakes will shake the
city, mountains will sink down and valleys will be exalted, the sun
will be darkened and the moon turned into blood, fire and smoke will
arise. The climax of it all will be the manifestation of the Lord who
will overthrow Israel's enemies.
Other interpreters among the Jews declare that this prophecy speaks
of the destruction of the temple.
The correct interpretation is that it includes all the devastation of
the land, the burning of the temple, the slaughter of the flock, the
spoiling of the shepherds, the Jewish leaders and the complete
overthrow of the land and of the people. How awful the fulfillment of
the prophecy has been! The Lord's voice full of tears cried, long
after Zechariah's mournful vision, "If thou hadst known, at least in
this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are
hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee that thine
enemies shall cast a trench about thee and compass thee round, and
keep thee in on every side. And shall lay thee even with the ground,
and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one
stone upon another." The measure was full. After terrible wars
amongst themselves, the fire advanced in the direction from Lebanon,
in the form of the Roman army full of vengeance, spreading ruin and
misery wherever they went, till after a long and dreadful siege
Jerusalem fell, the temple was burnt, and over a million human beings
were slain. Not one stone was left upon another. Up to now this
judgment has been the most appalling, the tribulation then, the
greatest; but there is another tribulation coming of which the former
destruction of Jerusalem is but a faint type, and that tribulation
which is even now so close at hand will find a climax in the day of
wrath, the day of vengeance of our God. The next three verses speak
of the flock of slaughter and the last attempt divine love made to
save the doomed nation. Zechariah is commanded to feed them.
Thus saith Jehovah my God;
Feed the flock of slaughter;
Their possessors slay them and are not guilty:
And they that sell them say,
Blessed be Jehovah, for I am getting rich;
Their own shepherds pity them not.
I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith Jehovah;
I will deliver the men every one into his neighbor's hands,
And into the hand of his king:
And they shall smite the land,
And out of their hand I will not deliver them.
What a dreadful condition of the sheep of His pasture, the lost sheep
of the house of Israel, God's flock! Even so it was, strangers ruled
over them, and they were their prey, getting rich on them and not
guilty. Still worse their own shepherds, the civil and ecclesiastical
rulers of the nation, spared them not. God had indeed given them up.
Well may we stop and think for a moment of the apostacy of
Christendom and its final overthrow and judgment so clearly seen in
the book of Revelation. Even now the flock of slaughter is seen and
all getting ripe for the day of wrath!
The action of Zechariah by divine command, like the crowning of the
high priest in the sixth chapter, is a typical one. Zechariah is a
type of the good Shepherd of Israel, the Messiah. The disobedient
nation, the flock of slaughter, had taken God's servants and beat one
and killed another and stoned another. When He sent servants more
than the first, they did unto them in like manner (Matt. xxi: 35).
After this came the last attempt of divine love. God sent His Son as
a Shepherd to seek and feed the lost sheep. He was not accepted, but
they rejected Him. We will consider this now in the second section.
_II. The Shepherd set aside and rejected (verses 7-14)._
"So I fed the flock of slaughter, verily the most miserable sheep.
And I took to myself two staves; the one I called Beauty, the other I
called Bands; and I fed the flock. And I cut off the three shepherds
in one month; for my soul became impatient with them, and their soul
also abhorred me. And I said, I will not feed you: the dying, let it
die; and the cut off, let it be cut off; and the left over, let them
devour each the flesh of the other. And I took my staff, Beauty, and
cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with
all the peoples. And it was broken in that day, and thus the wretched
of the flock who gave heed to me knew that this was the word of
Jehovah. And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my wages;
and if not, forbear. So they weighed as my wages thirty pieces of
silver. And Jehovah said to me, Throw it unto the potter; the goodly
price at which I am valued of them. And I took the thirty pieces of
silver, and threw them into the house of Jehovah, to the potter, Then
I broke my second staff, Bands, that I break the brotherhood between
Judah and Israel."
Much has been written on this difficult passage. The very first
sentence in the paragraph speaks of divine love. He came, the mighty
God, the everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace, in the likeness of
man, as a servant and a gentle shepherd to feed the miserable ones.
Looking at the multitudes who followed Him when He had come, He was
moved with compassion, for they were distressed and scattered as
sheep having no shepherd (Matt. ix: 36). True shepherds indeed they
had not. Prophets sent by Jehovah had long before ceased to come, and
those who ruled them were miserable leaders of the blind, concerning
whom Jehovah spoke through Ezekiel, "Woe unto the shepherds of Israel
that do feed themselves; should not the shepherds feed the sheep? You
eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, ye kill the
fatlings, but ye feed not the sheep. The diseased have ye not
strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither
have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again
that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was
lost" (Ezekiel xxxiv: 3-5). But now Jehovah Himself has come to be
their Shepherd, "Behold, I Myself, even I, will search for My sheep
and find them out" (Ezekiel xxxiv: 11). And when He came and God was
manifested in the flesh, He turned indeed to the most miserable of
the sheep--the publicans and the outcasts, sinners and harlots,
gathered around Him. The Prophet as the type of the good Shepherd has
two staves. The one is called Beauty (marginal reading,
graciousness). The second one is Bands. The Shepherd carries a staff
to protect and guide His flock. In the second Psalm the returning
Lord is seen shepherding the nations with a rod of iron, but here the
two staves cannot mean instruments for correction, but they are the
staves of comfort and love. God's mercy and favor are clearly
indicated in these two staves. The first one, Beauty, which is cut
asunder first, and that before the wages of the Shepherd, the thirty
pieces of silver, are given, stands no doubt for the gracious offer
with which the King, preaching the kingdom, came among His people, to
His own. He proclaimed that which prophets had spoken before, God's
mercy and love, long promised, now to be carried out. He Himself had
come to redeem His people and deliver them from their mighty enemies
as well as from the false leaders. But the offer, the kingdom
preaching, is rejected, the staff, Beauty, is cut asunder, the
covenant with the peoples (Amim in Hebrew), His own, is now broken.
The kingdom is to be taken away and given to another nation. After
the breaking of the staff, Beauty, there comes the giving of the
wages, the thirty pieces of silver. The Shepherd who broke the staff
is treated like a slave.
The second staff in His hands, Bands, speaks of union, binding
together, bringing into fellowship. It typifies the priestly side of
the good Shepherd who died for the flock. This staff is broken after
the thirty pieces were given for Him, and cast into the temple. They
cried, Away with Him! we have no King save Caesar! Crucify Him! His
blood be upon us and upon our children! The cross bears the
superscription, This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, and
from the lips of the rejected King and Shepherd there came the prayer
for His people, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
The doom came not at once upon the nation. Once more the love of the
Shepherd is preached to the miserable sheep, and the remission of
sins offered in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it ends in
rejection too; no bringing together into One followed. The foolish
shepherd appears next, and after him the good Shepherd will appear
again with His two staves, Beauty and Bands, kingdom and mercy,
bringing and binding together. He will then be a Priest upon His
throne. This interpretation is the most satisfactory one, and in
harmony with the entire scope of Zechariah's visions and prophecies.
Who are the three shepherds to be cut off in one month by the
Shepherd? Are they persons or not? Many answers have been given to
these questions, and many theories have been advanced to solve the
difficulty. It is not necessary to mention any of them. The three
shepherds are not persons, but they stand for the three classes of
rulers which governed Israel, and were in that sense shepherds. We
read of these shepherds in Jeremiah ii: 8, priests, rulers, and
prophets. The Lord likewise mentions them in Matthew xvi: 21, elders,
chief priests and scribes. When He came He was indeed weary with
them, and denounced their hypocrisies and wickedness. They in turn
hated and abhorred Him, and conspired to put Him to death. The Lord
Himself cut them off. He pronounced His woes and judgments upon them,
but the judgment was not at once carried out. When Jerusalem was
taken their rule came to an end and they were cut off.
But there are mentioned the wretched of the flock that gave heed unto
the Shepherd, and they knew that it was the word of Jehovah. These
wretched ones are the faithful ones who followed the Shepherd, the
small remnant. (Compare with chapter xiii: 7.) The others who
rejected the King and the Shepherd were indeed not fed, but were
dying and cut off.
The wages of the good Shepherd, thirty pieces of silver, and these
thrown into the house of Jehovah to the potter is to be considered
next. Thirty pieces of silver was the price of a slave who had been
killed. If the ox gore a manservant or a maidservant, the owner shall
give unto their master thirty shekels of silver (Exodus xxi: 32). Oh,
what unfathomable love! The Lord from heaven became like a slave. The
love He looked for He found not. It was refused to Him, and instead
He was insulted, mocked, and treated like a miserable slave. There
was one of the twelve who was called Judas Iscariot. He went to the
chief priests and said, What are you willing to give me, and I will
deliver Him unto you? And they weighed unto him thirty pieces of
silver (Matt. xxvi: 14). The money at the command of Jehovah is
thrown away by the prophet with indignation, into the house of
Jehovah, to the potter. Perhaps the prophet never knew the real
significance of his act, but we know it from the New Testament. Then
Judas which betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned, repented
himself and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief
priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent
blood. But they said, What is this to us? See thou to it. And he cast
down the pieces of silver into the sanctuary, and departed and hanged
himself And the chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, It
is not lawful to put them into the treasury since it is the price of
blood. And they took counsel and bought with them the potters' field
to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called the field of
blood unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by
Jeremiah, the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of
silver, the price of Him that was priced, whom certain of the
children of Israel did price, and they gave them for the potters'
field, as the Lord appointed me (Matt. xxvii: 3-9). How striking the
fulfillment. However, here is a difficulty. In Matthew it is stated
that Jeremiah spoke the prophecy, and Zechariah's name is not
mentioned at all. How can this be explained?
The prophecy certainly as it was fulfilled was not given by Jeremiah
at all, but through Zechariah. There can be doubt that his name
should appear here instead of Jeremiah, but that Jeremiah's name is
quoted must have a meaning. Rotherham in his translation of the New
Testament makes a foot note in which he says, "Zech. xi: 12, 13:
Perhaps as included in a scroll headed by Jeremiah." But this is not
satisfactory. The question would be if there is anything in Jeremiah
which could have a connection with the typical action of Zechariah.
There is a similar action in Jeremiah, which, as a whole, speaks of
the same event which Zech. xi: 13 has, and which is seen in
fulfillment in Matt. xxvii. Read in Jeremiah the eighteenth and
nineteenth chapters. The word "_Topheth_" in Jeremiah means an
unclean place, a burial ground. It seems as if Jeremiah's name
appears here so as to call attention to the fact that the prophet
spoke of the event likewise, and that Zech. xi. and Jer. xviii. and
xix. must be compared and read together.
_III. The foolish shepherd (verses 15-17)._
And Jehovah said to me, Take unto thee again the instruments of a
foolish shepherd. For, behold, I raise up a shepherd in the land; the
perishing he will not visit, the scattered ones he will not seek for,
the wounded he will not heal, the strong he will not feed, but he
shall eat the flesh of the fat, and their hoofs he will break off.
Woe to the worthless shepherd that leaveth the flock! The sword upon
his arm and upon his right eye. His arm shall be utterly withered and
his right eye completely blinded.
The prophet now impersonates another shepherd, one who is foolish and
wicked, and in his hands he does no longer hold the staves of Beauty
and Bands, but the instruments of the foolish shepherd to wound and
to hurt are in his possession. This foolish shepherd is the opposite
from the good shepherd. He came to heal, to seek, to save, and to
feed, but the foolish shepherd scatters, does not heal, nor does he
feed the flock; but he eats the flesh of the fat. The description of
this false shepherd is like the description of the shepherds in Ezek.
xxxiv., as quoted before. Ezekiel's prophecy concerning the gathering
of the flock is future still, but before He gathers the lost and
scattered sheep of Israel and brings them back to their land and
gives them the one Shepherd and David His servant, there will be
false shepherds. The true One rejected, the nation becomes the prey
of the foolish shepherds. Poor, blinded Israel! How many wicked
shepherds they have had, and how often the prey of wicked leaders.
False Messiahs appeared among them again and again to find strong and
numerous following. Still the foolish shepherd, the last one, the
very embodiment of Satan himself; the accuser, has not yet come.
Forerunners there have been many. Herod was one of them, but not that
man of sin, the son of perdition who will appear and be worshiped as
God, right before the King of kings and the true Shepherd of His
flock appears to slay that wicked one with the breath of His mouth
and by the brightness of His coming (2 Thess. ii.). The Lord said, I
am come in My Father's name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall
come in his own name, him ye will receive (John v: 43). That one who
comes in his own name has not yet come, and when at last he is here,
it will be for Israel the time of greatest trouble and tribulation
for all them that inhabit the earth. The third section of our chapter
finds its complete fulfillment in the Antichrist, the false Messiah,
the beast, the little horn, the leader of the enemy, the false prince
of Israel; thus the foolish shepherd is called throughout the
prophetic word. The dreadful punishment will be executed upon the
foolish shepherd in the day of the Lord's coming with His saints for
the salvation of His people Israel.
The eleventh chapter in Zechariah is the darkest in Israel's history.
The night began with their apostasy and rejection of the Lord of
Glory, their own brother, their loving Shepherd, the Lord Jesus
Christ. It ends in darkness greater still under the regime of the
foolish shepherd. But the morning cometh after that dark night, and
Israel's sun will never set again.