Zechariah 11 KJV
The Two Shepherds
Zechariah Chapter 11: The Two Shepherds
The valuation of the rejected shepherd's wages at exactly thirty pieces of silver matches the legal compensation fixed for a fatally gored slave in Exodus 21:32, framing the transaction as a deliberate insult that equates divine leadership with chattel.
1pen thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.
2 Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen; because the mighty are spoiled: howl, O ye oaks of Bashan; for the forest of the vintage is come down.
3 There is 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 Thus saith the LORD my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter;
5 Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty: and they that sell them say, Blessed be the LORD; for I am rich: and their own shepherds pity them not.
6 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 neighbourโs hand, and into the hand of his king: and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver them.
7 And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O 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 the flock.
8 Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and their soul also abhorred me.
9 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 the rest eat every one the flesh of another.
10 And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.
11 And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the LORD.
12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.
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.
14 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 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 the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.
17 Woe to the idol 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.
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Did You Know?
The valuation of the rejected shepherd's wages at exactly thirty pieces of silver matches the legal compensation fixed for a fatally gored slave in Exodus 21:32, framing the transaction as a deliberate insult that equates divine leadership with chattel.
The two staves named Beauty (No'am) and Bands (Chobelim) function as covenantal symbols whose sequential destruction enacts both the revocation of God's favor and the dissolution of fraternal ties between Judah and the northern tribes, echoing the language of broken covenants in Leviticus 26.
The command to cast the silver 'unto the potter' supplies the precise detail later conflated with Jeremiah 18-19 and 32 in Matthew 27:9-10, illustrating how Second Temple exegetes grouped Zechariah's oracle with Jeremianic potter-field traditions under a single prophetic heading.
By assuming the role of shepherd only to be dismissed for a 'foolish' successor who devours the flock, the chapter inverts the restorative shepherd imagery of Ezekiel 34 and anticipates the Johannine contrast between the hireling and the good shepherd in John 10.
The entire sequence of sign-acts belongs to the post-exilic 'burden' oracles (Zechariah 9-14) and dramatizes the failure of Persian-period leadership to restore either cultic favor or tribal cohesion, thereby projecting the schism of the divided monarchy into an eschatological horizon.