Zechariah 11
The bad shepherd
Invasion
1Open the door, Lebanon.Welcome the fire.
Watch it consume your cedar forests.
2Listen to the cypress weep
As majestic cedars burn to ash.
Oaks of Bashan wail in the distance
As their thick forests burn, as well.
3Can you hear the shepherds crying
As their pastures are destroyed?
And in jungles by the Jordan,
Can you hear the lions roar
As their thickets disappear?
Good shepherd, bad shepherd
4Here’s the message the LORD God gave me:“Be a good shepherd [1] and take care of the flock headed to slaughter.
5People who buy these sheep are going to kill them, and they won’t feel bad about it. Owners who sell the sheep are going to celebrate and say, ‘Thank the good LORD! Hallelujah, now I’m finally rich!’ Those other shepherds [2] don’t feel bad for the sheep, either.
6Well, that’s exactly how I felt about the people of this nation. I wasn’t sorry for them anymore. I decided to give them away to neighboring countries and kings. Those foreigners were coming to take the people away, and I wouldn’t stop them.”
Shepherd of the Doomed
7So, that’s what happened. I, Zechariah, became Shepherd of the Doomed, of a flock headed to slaughter. I made two walking sticks. I called the first staff Peace and the other Harmony. Then I started working as a shepherd.8I fired three shepherds during the first month. They hated me and they got on my nerves.
9I eventually told the company, “I’ve had it. I quit. If the sheep die, they die. If you butcher them, they’re butchered. And if any survive the dying and the butchering, as far as I care, they eat each other to death. Bon appetit.” 10I picked up my Peace staff and snapped it in two, cancelling the agreement I had made with everyone. [3]
11So, the contract was now good for nothing. Sheep buyers saw what I did and understood that I was delivering a message from the LORD.
12I told them, “If you want to pay me what you owe me, I’ll take it now. If you don’t want to pay, fine.” So, they shekeled [4] me 30 pieces of silver. How pitifully noble of them.
13The LORD said, “Shuck it back. Toss it to the potter.” So, I threw that miserly noble salary to the Temple potter. [5] 14After that, I snapped my second staff in two. So much for Harmony. This single staff had symbolized the unity of Israel and Judah—two kingdoms united. No more.
Zechariah as a bad shepherd
15Then the LORD said, “Let’s try this again. Once more I want you to act like a shepherd. But this time, as a rotten shepherd. 16For I’m going to give these people the wretched shepherd they deserve. He doesn’t care if his sheep wander away and get lost or die. He doesn’t care if they are sick or healthy, well-fed or starving. He’s going to eat those fat sheep clear down to their hooves.17You’re a good-for-nothing shepherd.
You do nothing for the sheep.
May a sword cripple your right arm
And blind your right eye, as well.
Footnotes
God may have been asking Zechariah to do more than speak the message but act it out. Other prophets did this as a way of delivering a message in a dramatic and visual way. Jeremiah wore a yoke around his neck to convey captivity and slavery by invaders (Jeremiah 27:2). Ezekiel wasn’t allowed to weep for his dead wife, to convey a message about invaders conquering Judah and killing the people (Ezekiel 24:16).
The shepherds seem to represent unidentified political leaders. They could refer to leaders who caused Israel and, later, Judah to get defeated and its citizens deported by Assyrians first in 722 BC and Babylonians later in 586 BC. But the shepherds might refer to ones in Zechariah’s day, perhaps for delaying construction of the Jerusalem Temple or the rebuilding of the damaged city walls.
The broken staff may symbolize the broken agreement between the Israelites (Jews) and God. Since the time of Abraham, father of the Jewish people, and of Moses, the lawgiver, God promised to protect and prosper the nation. In return, the people would obey God’s laws. The Israelites constantly broke God’s laws, instead. Eventually, God declared the contract broken and worthless.
The writer phrased it that way, using “shekel” (šāqal) as a verb. It’s a bit like someone today saying, “He bucked me with 30 dollars.” Or she euroed me. It’s not clear if this was 30 silver shekels. Thirty silver shekels weighed roughly 12 ounces, or 340 grams. That’s about a 12-ounce can of cola or a 12-ounce can of tomato soup. It was the cost of a slave at one time (Exodus 21:32). Shekels came in slightly different weights. It’s unclear how much these shekels weighed. There was a heavy shekel that weighed about 11.5 grams or .4 ounces. This was sometimes called the King’s Shekel or the Royal Shekel. Some scholars say this was also the weight used in the Israelite worship center and later in the Jerusalem Temple. The lighter shekel weighed about 9.5 grams or .33 ounces. Some scholars say this was probably the shekel accepted at the worship center.
The Temple potter may have made molds to hold melted silver and gold, as a form of Temple currency. This is just a guess about how to interpret the perplexing term translated as “potter” in some ancient versions and “treasury” in others. Either way, the location is the “house of the LORD,” which is the Jerusalem Temple. What a potter is doing at the Temple and why God told Zechariah to throw it to him is up for grabs. Matthew said this prophecy was a foreshadowing of Judas throwing into the Temple his reward of 30 silver coins for helping Jewish leaders arrest Jesus (Matthew 27:9-10). Temple workers used Judas’ money to buy a field from a potter. They turned the field into a cemetery. Zechariah didn’t seem to be writing about a Messiah, but Matthew seemed to be using a common interpretation method of his time. It allowed for a lot of flexibility when it came to applying the Jewish Bible to life.
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