Zechariah 11

10. These words must be understood as historic allusion, and not as specific and literal prediction. The sense is not—I will gather My captives out of Egypt and out of Assyria, but—I will do a similar thing to the great achievement of bringing My people out of Egypt under Moses. I will redeem them from a second Egypt, and save them from a second Assyrian Sennacherib. That only Egypt and Assyria, and not Chaldea, are referred to is explained by the fact that the kingdom of the Ten Tribes had disappeared before the Chaldean came into notice; hence Ephraim never knew Chaldea as an enemy. Note also that the prophet does not say they shall return to Judah and Jerusalem; but, to show the enlargement of the Lord’s kingdom, He names “Gilead,” the extensive region on the east of Jordan, and “Lebanon,” on the north, which lay outside the usual boundaries of the tribes of Israel; and, indeed, he says, “place large enough shall not be found for them.” But this has never been fulfilled in the lineal descendants of Abraham, nor can it ever be. Their numbers, all told to-day, would not meet the demands of this prophecy, interpreted however moderately. We must, therefore, find Israel and Ephraim in that new era of Messiah’s kingdom in which there is no distinction of Jew and Greek, but all are one in Christ Jesus.

11. This verse begins with a change of person from the first “I,” as in verses 6-10, to the third “He.” But “He” must be understood of the same Lord God. The “sea” can be no other than the Red Sea, named by way of historic allusion. The Lord passes through it at the head of His people to achieve a like deliverance to that of the exodus from Egypt. 12. Finally, they shall be made gloriously strong in the Lord, and through His strength alone. So shall they walk up and down, traverse the land at their will, or in their duty, without fear. No harm can befall them since they walk with God. Many parallel passages might be cited from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea and Micah, serving to confirm the general interpretation here given, and to show that the prophets harmonize remarkably in these views of the general course of events in the great future of Zion; and also to show that they give the same sense to individual and special phrases. The reader will find in Isa. 11: 11-16 a passage remarkably similar to this in all important respects. It is beyond all question Messianic; so must this be also. H. C.

11: 1, 2 OPEN thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars. Howl, O fir tree, for the cedar is fallen, because the goodly ones are spoiled: howl, O ye oaks of Bashan, 3 for the strong 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. 4, 5 Thus said the LORD my God: Feed the flock of slaughter; whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty; and they that sell them say, Blessed be the LORD, for I am 6 rich: and their own shepherds pity them not. For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the LORD: but, lo, I will deliver the men every one into his neighbour’s hand, and into the hand of his king: and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I 7 will not deliver them. So I fed the flock of slaughter, verily the poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed 8 the flock. And I cut off the three shepherds in one month; for my soul was weary of them, 9 and their soul also loathed me. Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let them which are left eat every one the 10 flesh of another. And I took my staff Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my 11 covenant which I had made with all the peoples. And it was broken in that day: and thus

12 the poor of the flock that gave heed unto me knew that it was the word of the LORD. And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my hire; and if not, forbear. So they weighed 13 for my hire thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter, the goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast 14 them unto the potter, in the house of the LORD. Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. 15 And the LORD said unto me, Take unto thee yet again the instruments of a foolish shepherd. 16 for, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek those that be scattered, nor heal that that is broken; neither shall he feed that which is sound, but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and shall tear their hoofs in 17 pieces. Woe to the worthless shepherd that leaveth the flock! The sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

Chap. 11. This chapter contains a prophecy of a very different cast from the foregoing. The people would not always behave as they ought, and therefore would not always be prosperous. Before their final glorious restoration an event of a most calamitous nature was doomed to take place; the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, which is plainly here foretold and ascribed to its proper cause, punishment for notorious wickedness. The flock, meaning God’s people, were under the guidance of corrupt and unprincipled pastors, who sacrificed them to their lucrative and ambitious views. The prophet, by God’s command, assumes for a while the direction of them, therein becoming a type of Christ, the good Shepherd; but is soon obliged to resign his charge, with mutual dissatisfaction on both sides. He receives thirty pieces of silver as the reward for his services, and casts them, by Divine direction, to the potter. After this the prophet is held forth as the type of a worthless shepherd, or a succession of evil governors, who, heedless of the flock or seeking only to oppress it, at once ruin the flock and bring destruction on themselves. Blayney.

If the Book of Zechariah be divided into two portions, the first six chapters being the first division, and the remaining eight the second, then this eleventh will be a digression from the current strain of promised blessings in the second portion, very analogous to the fifth chapter in the first part. As the fifth was interposed for the purpose of moral warning to the careless, apprising them that the judgments of God awaited the guilty, so here this eleventh chapter is interposed for the same purpose. There can be no doubt that it predicts judgments on the covenant people at some period of their history then future. The manner of presenting this truth is very peculiar, essentially that of symbolic vision—a case quite unique in the respect that, in vision only, and not in actuality, and as personating, not himself, but others, the prophet is required to perform the functions of a shepherd to the Lord’s people, considered as His flock. On this theory of interpreting the chapter the best modern commentators are united. Despite of the unique peculiarities of the case, it is generally agreed that the chapter predicts the overthrow of the Jewish state and the ruin of their city and temple, effected by the Romans about A.D. 70, in consequence of their national corruption and of their blind and mad rejection of their Messiah. The prophet, acting the part of a good shepherd (verses 4-14), personates the Messiah Himself. Acting the part of the foolish shepherd (verses 15-17), he personates the scribes and Pharisees of the Saviour’s day. The first three verses, wrought up in high poetic imagery, predict the fall of the nation before the Roman arms; while the remaining part of the chapter gives the antecedent moral causes of that fall. Whereas those morally blinded and hardened Jews had said in the madness of their wrath against the spotless Redeemer, “His blood be on us and on our children,” on them and on their children His blood did come, and their blood flowed like rivers of water! The Saviour Himself had said, “Behold your house is left unto you desolate.”

1. Lebanon and her lofty cedars represent Jerusalem; her doors the gates of the city.

3. Here the figures turn from inanimate nature to animate. The ornament and glory of the shepherds are their rich pastures—now laid waste. (Cf. Jer. 25:36: “A voice of the cry of the shepherds, and an howling of the principal of the flock; for the Lord hath spoiled their pasture.”) “The pride of Jordan,” in which the young lion made his lair, were the dense thickets along his banks. This phrase was already in use by Jeremiah, whom Zechariah follows remarkably in his terms and phrases. (See Jer. 12:5, where the “swelling of Jordan” is the same original phrase here rendered “pride of Jordan.” So also Jer. 49 : 19 ; 50 : 44, in all cases said of the thick undergrowths along the Jordan, where the lions had their homes.) The sentiment is here the same as above. All classes of people are in distress, for their choicest treasures are wasted ; what they most love and value is in ruins. A poetic imagination seizes on the ruin of individual classes, and by a few striking details gives a vivid conception of the universal desolation.

4. “The flock of the slaughter” means the flock doomed to slaughter for their sins—the Jewish people, now ripe for the fearful retributive judgments of the Almighty.

5. The persons of the drama in this verse are : 1. The flock, who are the Jews during the period A.D. 30-70, conceived of as the flock of the Lord’s pastures. 2. Their buyers (“possessors”) and their sellers, the Romans. 3. Their own shepherds, the priests, scribes and Pharisees, who should have taught them the knowledge of God, but who had no care or pity for their deplorable moral condition. That “they who sell them bless the Lord for their gains,” corresponds to the clause, “they are not punished” (“offend not”). They think they are doing God service, and thank Him for the personal selfish good they get as if all were morally right. H. C.

6. For I will no more pity. This verse assigns the reason for calling the people “the flock of the slaughter.” Nor can words more aptly describe the calamities which befell the Jews, in the war which ended in the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans ; when the people, having first by their intestine broils destroyed one another, as is set forth at large by Josephus, at length fell into the hands of him whose predecessor they had owned for their sovereign, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19 : 15), at the same time that they disclaimed their Messiah ; and who completely desolated the land for their rebellion against Him. Blayney.

7. “So then I fed the flock doomed to slaughter because of the poor of the flock”—i.e., out of My pity for the poor ones of the flock—a pertinent and beautiful statement of the labor and love of their own Messiah, who was so often “moved with compassion when He saw the people as sheep having no shepherd.” For the proud and self-righteous and for those who were rich toward this world, but not rich toward God, He manifested no specially tender pity ; but for the masses who had no shepherd, and especially for the poor, His heart was tenderly touched. In the line of pure benevolence He rose indefinitely high above all other religious teachers of every age in this : “He preached the Gospel to the poor.”

These “staves” were the usual well-known shepherd’s crook, the only special instrument used by the shepherd ; useful to him both in the management of the flock and in repelling its enemies. They represent here those providential agencies by which the Lord aided the pastoral work of the Messiah over His people, as appears from their significant names. The one He called Grace (not so properly “Beauty”), but grace in the sense of that Divine favor which restrained hostile heathen nations from assaulting the people of the Lord while they faithfully served Him. The other, “Bands,” was a crook of cords, significant of those providential agencies which held the people together in peace. With these aids He acted the part of a shepherd to the flock.

8. Here we must suppose that the prophet takes the number three from precisely those three established orders upon whom the pastoral responsibility of caring under God for the covenant people devolved—priests, prophet and civil magistrates. (See Jer. 2 : 8, 26 ; 18 : 18.) Those who represented these classes during our Lord’s public ministry must be specially intended here, probably the priests ; the scribes in the place of the ancient prophets ; and the civil magistrates. The Lord Jesus rejected them from their places of trust, not instantaneously, but very summarily, as “one month” shows. It was the labor of His public life. The history of our Lord’s public ministry, in its relation to the scribes, doctors of the law, and Pharisees, shows that He and they had not the least common sympathy. He loathed them, as the Hebrew word implies ; He lost all confidence in their moral integrity and even honesty ; and, on the other hand, their soul rebelled against Him because of the purity of His character and the fidelity and pungency of His rebukes of their sin.

9. The Messiah abandons the flock, the Jewish people, to the sweep of terrible judgments. “I will be your shepherd no longer.” A threefold judgment shall be your extermination—pestilence ; the sword from without ; the sword from within—the two last looking toward (1) the Roman arms ; (2) those horrible conflicts of hostile parties which made the very strength of the nation its essential weakness and ruin. Let the pestilence sweep away whom it will ; let the Roman sword drink the blood of the victims so doomed by the will of the Most High ; let every man’s teeth be sharpened to devour his neighbor’s flesh. The reality set forth in this prophetic language was fearfully terrific. They had said, “His blood be on us and on our children!” The Lord responded, “So let it be!” Here is the prediction. History verifies it to the letter.

10. The first crook, now broken, represented the sundering of the covenant which God is supposed to have made with foreign nations (the sense of “all the people”), to restrain them from harming His chosen. This covenant lay in the Divine mind—His purpose to restrain heathen nations from making war on His people. See the same sense in Hos. 2:18: “In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field,” etc.

11. The staff once broken, the Roman arms came down upon the land. “Then the poor of the flock,” Christ’s disciples, having been apprised by Him (Matt. 24:15-21), knew that the hour of judgment for the land had come, and fled for safety to the mountains of Pella, on the east of Jordan. History records the remarkable fact that not one Christian Jew fell in that awful carnage. All who had faith in their Divine Lord gave heed to His warnings. The Lord by His special providence gave them ample time to make good their escape before the city was invested by the Roman legions. They fled to Pella in the mountains east of the Jordan, and were all safe. H. C.

12,13. This whole transaction, performed by Zechariah in a vision, was designed to be an exact representation of the several circumstances that attended the betraying of the Messiah by Judas; the price put upon Him by the chief priests, to whom, as the governors of the temple, the money was returned; and the use to which the money was applied. (See Matt. 27:6, 10.) The Jews themselves have expounded this prophecy of the Messiah. W. Lowth.

The great Shepherd, about to close His services, proposes in the business settlement that they, the Jews, should give Him the wages due. It is not implied by the original words that He fixed the price Himself. “Give Me My price,” should rather read, “Give Me My hire or reward.” He manifestly left it with them to fix the price. He only said, “Give Me what wages you please, and let Me go.” They weighed out thirty pieces of silver, the very price for which Judas betrayed Him, and the usual price for a slave. (See Ex. 21:32.) Maimonides, one of the most reliable ancient Jewish authors, speaks of this as the price of a slave’s services, but contemptible for a free man’s. The meagreness of it indicates how low they estimated His services. Precisely this is the intended showing of the transaction. “A goodly price,” etc., is ironical, and shows how keenly the insult was felt. It has, moreover, a prophetic outlook toward the very deed of Judas. The Lord said, “Cast it to the potter.” He did so. This, too, was one of the points of remarkable coincidence between this symbolic prophecy and one of the prominent scenes in the betrayal of his Lord by Judas. It should be noted that Matthew, having stated that Judas, filled with remorse, returned the price of blood (27:3-10), says that the chief priests “bought therewith the potter’s field to bury strangers in,” which thenceforth bore the name of “the field of blood,” and that “then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the potter’s field as the Lord appointed Me.” These words are not found in the Book of Jeremiah, but the general sense and nearly the same words occur in this passage of Zechariah. How came it to pass that Matthew named Jeremiah instead of Zechariah? It should be considered that Zechariah’s words, “the potter,” etc., connect his prophecy closely with Jeremiah (chaps. 18, 19). “The potter” of Jeremiah worked down in the valley of the son of Hinnom, as the expressions “go down” and “went down” (Jer. 18:2, 3) render probable, and as the passage (19:2) proves, for here the “east gate” is (in Heb.) “the entrance to the potter’s gate.” There Jeremiah was to denounce upon the people most solemn threatenings from the Lord, and then break a potter’s vessel before them. The place, already made abominable; the breaking of the vessel, significant of a doom for which there can be no remedy; and the fearful solemnity of the message—all conspired to make the associations connected with this potter’s house specially solemn and portentous. These things need to be understood in order to get the full sense of this passage in Zechariah. It may be supposed that Matthew had before his mind the full account of Jeremiah as well as the more brief one of Zechariah, and quoting from memory, assigned to the former what is found as to its precise words most nearly in the latter. H. C.

In the quotations of all kinds from the Old Testament in the New Testament we find a continual variation from the letter of the older Scriptures. To this variation three causes may have contributed: First, all the New Testa-

ment writers quoted from the Septuagint; correcting it, indeed, more or less by the Hebrew, especially when it was needful for their purpose; occasionally deserting it altogether; still abiding by it to so large an extent as to show that it was the primary source whence their quotations were drawn. Secondly, the New Testament writers must have frequently quoted from memory. Thirdly, combined with this, there was an alteration of conscious or unconscious design. Sometimes the object of this was to obtain increased force (Rom. 14:11; cf. Isa. 45:23, etc.). Sometimes an Old Testament passage is abridged, and in the abridgment so adjusted, by a little alteration, as to present an aspect of completeness, and yet omit what is foreign to the immediate purpose (Acts 1:20; 1 Cor. 1:31). At other times a passage is enlarged by the incorporation of a passage from another source: thus in Luke 4:18, 19, although the contents are professedly those read by our Lord from Isa. 61, we have the words “to set at liberty them that are bruised,” introduced from Isa. 58:6 (LXX.): similarly in Rom. 11:8; De. 29:4 is combined with Isa. 29:10. In some cases still greater liberty of alteration is assumed (Rom. 10:11; cf. Isa. 28:16; 49:23, etc.). In some places, again, the actual words of the original are taken up, but employed with a new meaning (Heb. 10:37; cf. Hab. 2:3). Almost more remarkable than any alteration in the quotation itself is the circumstance that in Matt. 27:9 Jeremiah should be named as the author of this prophecy really delivered by Zechariah: the reason being that the prophecy is based upon that in Jer. 18, 19, and that with-

out a reference to this original source the most essential features of the fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy would be misunderstood. Dic. B.