Zechariah 11:13

And the Lord said unto me,.... The Prophet Zechariah, in a visionary way representing the sanhedrim of the Jews, the chief priests, scribes, and elders: Cast it unto the potter; for the purchase of

And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

The Lord, God the Father, with detestation of so vile an affront and undervalue of his Son, said unto me; to Zechariah, in this theatre personating Christ sometimes. Cast it unto the potter; as being so little it would hardly purchase any thing but what was cheapest among them, a little earthenware. A goodly price that I was prized at of them: in an irony God upbraids the shepherds of his people, who prized the great Shepherd no higher. I took; Zechariah, who in this part now emblematically doth what Judas will with horror do when he hath sold innocent blood and betrayed it. Cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord; or rather, east them into the house of the Lord for the potter, all which the Jewish rulers act over in their prosecuting Christ unto death.

Zechariah 11:13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty [pieces] of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.Ver. 13. Cast it unto the potter] q.d. Do they deal with me as with some sordid swineherd? Do they award me less than carters’ wages? Throw it away, let the potter take it; and let us see how many tiles he can afford us for it, to repair the roof of the temple. Their undervaluing and despising of me in this sort is not only injurious, but contumelious; it is to turn my glory into shame; to spit in my face; or to use me as homely as Rachel did her father’ s gods, which she laid among the litter, and sat upon. A goodly price that I was valued at of them] So he calleth it by an irony, or a holy jeer. Poor Joseph was sold for less; for twenty pieces of silver, Genesis 37:28 "They sold the just one for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes," Amos 2:6. The Hebrews tell us, that of those twenty shekels every one of the ten brethren had two to buy shoes for his feet. The Jews that bought Christ for thirty pieces of silver (this goodly price) of the traitor that sold him, were themselves afterwards (by a just hand of God upon them) bought and sold thirty of them for a penny by the Romans, ad illudendum, saith mine author, for a scorn to their nation. God loves to retaliate, and to set the scales even; men’ s cruelty in the one, and their reward in the other. If we be at any time underrated by the world (as we are sure to be; for the world knows us not, 1 John 3:2), what so great matter is it, since Christ himself was no more set by? We must be content to pass to heaven (as he did) as concealed men. It must suffice us that our precious faith shall be found to praise, honour, and glory, at that great fair day, 1 Peter 1:7, when all fardles shall be opened, and our best wares exposed to public view. And cast them to the potter] "I gave them for the potter’ s field, as the Lord appointed me," saith the evangelist, Matthew 27:10, expounding the prophet, and applying the words to Christ, who is hereby also proved to be God. So true is that observation of divines, that the Old Testament is both explained and fulfilled in the New, by a happy harmony. In the house of the Lord] That thereby he might the more sharply prick the priests; whose care it ought to have been that God should be better prized by the people, and his service better observed.

(13) This verse proves, if proof be needed, that the prophet, in his action, represents the Lord. Potter.—The price was so contemptible that it is flung to the meanest of craftsmen. It seems probable that “to the potter with it!” was a proverbial expression, used of throwing away anything that was utterly worthless. The LXX., by the change of one letter, read for “potter,” the “treasury.” A goodly price . . . of them.—Better, O, the magnificence of the price that I was apprised at of them! That is to say, “What a price!” ironically. The prophet—in imagination, no doubt—goes into the Temple, and there before God and Israel, in the place where the covenant had been so often ratified by sacrifice, he meets “a potter” (the article is indefinite), and there flings to him the “goodly price,” and so pronounces the divorce between God and the congregation of Israel. The prophet, in his symbolical act, represented God (Ezekiel 34:5), but at the same time he might well (or must) have represented God’s vice-gerent, “my servant David,” or, in other words, the Messiah. (See Notes on Zechariah 3:8; Zechariah 6:12-13.) Thus, though this prophecy received, no doubt, numerous fulfilments in the oft-recurring ingratitude of Israel, yet we can well, with St. Matthew, see its most remarkable and complete fulfilment in Him who was in every sense “the Good Shepherd,” and in whose rejection the ingratitude of the chosen nation culminated. The citation in the New Testament is a free paraphrase of the original, made, probably, from memory, and agrees in all the main points with the original. The introduction of the word “field” (Matthew 27:10) was made, probably inadvertently, by an unconscious act of a mind which wished to find an excellent parallel between the prophecy and its fulfilment; but the price, thirty pieces of silver, does not seem to have been a mere coincidence. May not the “chief priests” have viciously proposed to Judas this price of a slave (the same that Hosea paid for the adulterous woman, half in money, and half in kind, Zechariah 2:1-2)? and may not the wretched Judas have maliciously accepted this very sum from the same motives which the prophet supposes to have actuated the people to whom he prophesies? Such a fulfilment would be a fulfilment indeed; while a mere chance coincidence between the sum mentioned in one case and that mentioned in another, apart from any agreement in the latter with the spirit of the former, would, in our estimation, amount to no fulfilment at all.

Verse 13. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter] Jehovah calls the price of his prophet his own price; and commands that it should not be accepted, but given to a potter, to foreshadow the transaction related Matthew 27:7. "Earthen vessels were used in the temple; and we may suppose that some Levites were employed within the sacred precincts to furnish them. To these, the humblest of his ministers in the temple, God commands that the degrading price should be cast." This is the substance of the notes on these two verses, given by Abp. Newcome. We may look at it in another light, Give me my price! הבו שכרי habu sichri, bring my price, or give him my price; that is, Give the money to Judas which you have agreed to give him; for he can neither betray me nor you crucify me, but my own permission. But if not, forbear; take time to consider this bloody business, and in time forbear. For though I permit you to do it, yet remember that the permission does not necessitate you to do it; and the salvation of the world may be effected without this treachery and murder. See my notes on this place, See Clarke on Matthew 27:9, where I have examined the evidence for the reading of "Zechariah the prophet," instead of "Jeremiah."

13. Cast it] “as a thing vile and rejected, as torn flesh was to be cast to dogs (Exodus 22:31), or a corpse was cast unburied (Isaiah 14:19), or the dead body of Absalom was cast into the pit (2 Samuel 18:17), or the dust of the idol-altars into the brook Kidron by Josiah (2 Kings 23:12), or the idols to the moles and the bats (Isaiah 2:20), or Judah and Israel from the face of God into a strange land (2 Kings 13:23); Coniah and his seed, a vessel in which is no pleasure, into a land which they knew not (Jeremiah 22:28), or the rebels against God said, let us cast away their cords from us (Psalms 2:3), or wickedness was cast into the Ephah (Zechariah 5:8); once it is added, for loathing (Ezekiel 16:5).” Pusey. a goodly price] or, the goodly price, R. V. This is, of course, ironical. to the potter in the house of the Lord] to the potter; because his business was to make the most worthless of vessels, the last and least “to honour” of those found “in a great house” (2 Timothy 2:20), and thus the unworthiness of the “price” was shewn, as being only deserving of such a destiny. In the house of the Lord: both because He it was who, whether in the person of His servants or of His Son, was the real subject of the insulting valuation, and also because a formal and national character was given to the transaction, by its thus taking place before Jehovah and in His House. This explanation, which seems to be the simplest and most satisfactory, of this confessedly difficult passage, does not necessarily involve the supposition that the potter was in the house of the Lord, when the pieces of silver were cast contemptuously down there. It is enough if, in the vision or symbolical action of Zechariah, they were in some way clearly declared to be for him. Like the earlier prophecy of the King (Zechariah 9:9), this prophecy of the Shepherd is remarkable for its literal fulfilment. The “thirty pieces of silver” were literally the “goodly price” paid for Him, “whom they of the children of Israel did value. “The potter” was literally the recipient of it, as the purchase-money of his exhausted field for an unclean purpose (Matthew 27:5-10).

And the Lord said unto me, Cast it - As a thing vile and rejected, as torn flesh was to be cast to dogs Exodus 22:31, or a corpse was cast unburied Isaiah 14:19; Isaiah 34:3; Jeremiah 14:16; Jeremiah

Withdrawal of the good shepherd, 9-14.9, 10. As a result of the flock’s ingratitude, the shepherd decided to discontinue the shepherding care.