Zechariah 11
Notes
Transcript
Shepherd failure
Shepherd failure
I almost included the first 3 verses into last week because we’re stil in a very peoetic style here but this whole chapter stays focused on the failure and judgment of the shepherds so the chapter split makes enough sense to leave it seperate for our study. However it certainly could have been the conclusion of the works of God in chapter 10 but it stays in the same subject for the rest of chapter 11.
Open your doors, O Lebanon,
that the fire may devour your cedars!
Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen,
for the glorious trees are ruined!
Wail, oaks of Bashan,
for the thick forest has been felled!
The sound of the wail of the shepherds,
for their glory is ruined!
The sound of the roar of the lions,
for the thicket of the Jordan is ruined!
Zechariah uses metaphor in this whole chapter so while we should always be open to the idea of a non metaphorically explanation I don’t think that’s what we’ve gotten here. Yes he could have been prophetically expressing the emptying out of lands all around but I don’t think he’s being literal in the poem and metaphorical in the rest of the chapter about the shepherds.
Cedars in many places in the bible represent either kings or nations. They were world renowed trees to build with especially from Lebanon. It seems to mean here the nations or empires that have stood against God. I think the request to “Open your doors” is more like one of those tauns we’ve talked about in previous books. Like saying you might as well give up now, don’t make it harder on yourself.
The shepherds (leaders not pastors) will wail here, even the lions will wail they’re hunting ground will be gone. Again I think that’s metaphorical lions like Babylon in Jeremiah 50:44 ““Behold, like a lion coming up from the thicket of the Jordan against a perennial pasture, I will suddenly make them run away from her, and I will appoint over her whomever I choose. For who is like me? Who will summon me? What shepherd can stand before me?”
Now we get three sections about shepherds - Leaders. We also start getting into some eschatological weeds here but we’re gonna have to wade if we want to make it to the other side here.
Thus said the Lord my God: “Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter.
Zechariah is to become the shepherd of a doomed flock. Psalm 100:3 “Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” Now though doomed it never says 100% to be slaughtered or destroyed. Like always a remnant will remain even when it’s not stated it’s implied from the whole of scripture.
Those who buy them slaughter them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, I have become rich,’ and their own shepherds have no pity on them.
This picture of depravity in the way former kings, nations, and people have treated the Israelites is on display here. You can take what’s not yours, slaughter it, profit from it and say wow thank God that made me some money too, and not even the true shepherds of those flocks will be upset. They weren’t just slaughterin and selling the excess, they were killing off the stock that the should have been holding back to breed. That’s a simultaneous indictment on the ones that illegitimately took the flock and the quality of the shepherds as well as that had been over these people past present and future to these verses.
For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, declares the Lord. Behold, I will cause each of them to fall into the hand of his neighbor, and each into the hand of his king, and they shall crush the land, and I will deliver none from their hand.”
Some point to the Romans as the fulfilment here but I think we’re still talking big picture end of the age stuff. But there also always seem to be multiple fulfilments of prophecy and the Romans may well have been a precursor to picture what that would look like.
So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders. And I took two staffs, one I named Favor, the other I named Union. And I tended the sheep.
Zechariah did become that shepherd mention back in vs 4. Then we see this metaphor start as the staffs one Favor and the other Union. A staff guides, cares and rescues… a rod has power and discipline.
What is Favor? Here this word also gets translated as gracious beauty and pleasantness. The icon verse for this word would be Ps 90.17
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!
It’s what God does for us.
The second staff is named Union. This word is rooted in the idea of tieing or twisting something together to bind it. Tie it up so that it stays together. Pledge is another word used from this root.
In one month I destroyed the three shepherds. But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me.
This verse has everyone confounded so if something jumps out to you let’s hear it. There is plenty of speculation about whether the month is a month, a short period of time, a symbolic period of time, 30 years, etc… are the 3 shepherds the last 3 kings of Israel, the Assyria/Babylon/Persian empires, the Pharisees, Saducees, and Essenes? the Dragon/Beast/Woman of revelation? We don’t know and I’m gonna be upfront as always about. But I think we can generally say some short time the triumveret of bad shepherds are destroyed.
So I said, “I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die. What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. And let those who are left devour the flesh of one another.” And I took my staff Favor, and I broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples.
God then rejects those who have rejected him and this is symbolized though Zechariah’s actions here. This shouldn’t be taken as the breaking of the covenant of God with Abraham, Moses, or David but with the people as a protection from the other nations.
So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep traders, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord.
in other words it was obvious to the other nations that the sheep brought the troubles they’re having on their own heads.
Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver.
Give me my last paycheck… it happens to be 30 pieces of silver, which is the lowly price of a slave… i.e. literally he got slave wages.
Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter.
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