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.