Zechariah 11, Shepherd Rejected

Intro:

Well today we come to what many commentators on this book call one of the most if not the most difficult chapters in all of scripture! I say that simply to set the stage for today. It is important to know that while I am going to do my best to help us make sense of these things this morning and to hold them together with the rest of scripture that, while I am confident in the view that I am going to put forth, that there are many faithful commentators on the Word that would disagree. Thankfully there are no essential doctrines of scripture that stand or fall based on the right and proper reading of this passage.

This is a part of the wonderful perspicuity of the word of God, in the things that are essential it is plain and clear but it is also a book of profound wisdom and incite and as such contains material that will be beyond the reach of even the smartest of human beings apart from the enlightening power of the Spirit. The reality is that there are hard passages in His word that God has put there for a reason and we as a church and as God’s people must avoid the errors that exist on both sides of the road to their interpretation. Some would simply avoid these passages, after all why preach on something that we must admit from the start is less than clear and something that we are fully willing to grant other interpretations to faithful believers with whom we would maintain fellowship despite differences of opinion on the text. Worse yet we could even allow this lack of available clarity to drive us to doubt the whole truth of God’s word as if there are parts of it that are less clear it might draw into doubt the parts that are. However we must also take care as I am attempting to do this morning to be realistic about the state of our understanding in passages like this and not hold to them so fastly that we would doubt the genuineness of the faith of those who might view them differently.

As I said, there are not essential doctrines of God that stand or fall on this text and yet this is a passage of text from the Word of God, a Word that we are told is, in its entirety, precious and valuable to us for doctrine, reproof, and instruction in righteousness, that in this word we find the great and precious truths and promises that enable lives of godliness and holiness and as such we must, with prayer and humility pursue an understanding of all of God’s word not just that passages that we like or find more readily understandable.

So with that said, lets take a moment to pray and then we will dive right into this text.

Pray & Read

It is probably helpful as we start here to note that my primary hermetical method here has been to seek to understand this passage in light of my general position on the post exilic and inner-testamental period and of the primary purpose of the book of Zechariah as a whole. Your understanding of the purpose of the text is going to have a great deal of influence on where you go with hard texts!

Just as a way of quick review, my primary view of the book as a whole is that, in general, its purpose is to direct the people forward to the coming glory of the reign of the messiah. Just as Daniel is given a series of prophecies that lead us through the post exilic and inner-testamental periods so I believe that much of what Zechariah serves to do is to show that God’s promises of a perfect redemption for His people remain and that He is still preparing to fulfill the promise of a Davidic king that will sit and reign over His people for ever. In other words, these prophecies are meant to drive the people’s gaze forward to the coming of the messiah and furthermore that much of what takes place in the return from exile is meant to, in one measure or another, typify the coming and reign of the long promised Messiah.

Our chapter today can be divided up into 4 sections:

1-3 Transitional verses of woe

4-6 The sign-act commanded

7-14 The sign-act enacted

15-15 The Worthless Shepherd

The bulk of this passage is take up by what many commentators call a sign act. This is the first place where you find disagreement over this passage. As a sign act it is believed that Zechariah performs these tasks that God gives him as a way of providing a viable prophecy to the people. This type of thing is relatively common in the prophets and so it is not odd to see a prophet enact some sort of physical action that is then given spiritual meaning. Ezekiel for example was told to take a sword and remove all of his hair and then burn some and scatter some to the wind as a picture of the coming judgement on Jerusalem.

Here we see Zechariah called to take up for a time the role of a shepherd.

English Standard Version Chapter 11

4 Thus said the LORD my God: “Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. 5

Now there are those who say that even more than a sign act that this is more of an allegory or a story that Zechariah is told to recount to the people as an illustration of what is to come. In this view Zechariah was never actually a shepherd He is just told to insert himself into a story and teach that story to the people. Verse 8 lends itself to this as the destruction of his fellow shepherds seems more likely to be a symbolic part of a story rather than an actual action carried out by the prophet.

From another perspective there are those who seek to say that this is an allegorical interpretation of what Zechariah actually did. That for a time Zechariah actually became the leader of the people of Israel.

NOTE: The only real piece of this chapter that find near unanimous agreement is that the flock doomed to slaughter is Israel. Though even then there is disagreement as to when Israel becomes this flock.

Now I am going to take the sign act approach, that this is a command to Zechariah to perform an act that is then imbued with spiritual meaning and significance. As to whether Zechariah actually became a shepherd or not, I might actually lean toward the not but in the end it doesn't matter a great deal because both views hold to a spiritual meaning behind the physical acts.

Summary of the Sign

And so we see here that Zechariah in verse 4, we will deal with 1-3 in a moment, but in verse 4 God calls him to become a shepherd of a flock doomed to slaughter. Now this is an unusual thing, while you did slaughter sheep for sacrifices and also for food the description of the flock doomed to slaughter, while it doesn't explicitly mean that each and every sheep here is doomed to die, it does express a picture of a doomed flock, not just a general flock of sheep in a pasture.

We see that this flock is doomed because they are being taken advantage of by those who buy and sell them with the participation of their own shepherds in this deadly game.

We see then that Zechariah says that he becomes a shepherd for this flock, seemingly with the existing shepherds and he takes two staffs and gives the one the name favor and the other the name blessing. Now some might say that shepherds carried two staffs, likened to Psalm 23 and the rod and staff, one for shepherding the sheep and one for driving away the wolves. Now, as best as I can tell there isn't a lot of evidence that this was actually the case but it could have been. At an rate Zechariah has two staffs because they each represent a part of the relationship he has with the flock.

We then see that Zechariah tends to the sheep for a month, this is meant to convey a very short amount of time, and that in that month he destroys the bad shepherds. That word for tends means that he, as a good shepherds, shows genuine concern and care for the flock. He is not taking advantage of them but is rather leading them to pasture and water can keeping them safe from enemies. He cares for them as a shepherd ought too!

However, we see that he becomes impatient with them and that is seemingly because they are upset with his shepherding, perhaps with his removal of the other shepherds, and they come to detest him.

Crazy isn’t it, its not just the bad shepherds that reject the good shepherd its the flock that is being mistreated and abused by the bad shepherds who also reject the good shepherd. Most likely because the good shepherd seeks to lead the sheep where they need to go not necessarily where they want to go.

Zechariah then pronounces judgement on the flock and breaks the first of his two staffs, the staff Favor. We read that this breaking of the staff annulled the covenant that had been made with all the peoples (ESV) you can also read nations. The idea being here that God had been for a time protecting Israel by keeping the nations from assaulting them but rather blessing them. This covenant is annulled and we can expect that this will mean even more danger for the flock!

Then, as the flock doesn't want him as their shepherd he tells them to weight out to him his wages. They weigh out 30 pieces of silver. This was not a small sum as some suggest but symbolically it is the price that was to be paid for the life of a slave if your ox had gored them to death, in other words this is the price of a dead slave. This doesn't speak to a high valuing of the shepherd!

Zechariah is then told by the Lord to cast the sliver to the potter. Now there is some difficulty in determining what is being done here. The word for potter can mean someone that fashions clay but it can also mean someone who fashions metal and within the temple it is believed there would have been a metal smith who would be able to smelt the offerings given so that they could more easily bee stored and used, some say particularly in the paying of tribute to foreign kings.

The more important aspect of this is that it is called a “lordly price.” There is a clearly pejorative attitude toward the 30 pieces of sliver. Though it wasn’t a small amount it is clearly not the value of the good shepherds labor and it highlights the fact that the sheep would rather pay the good shepherd to be gone from them than to submit to his leadership.

This leads to the breaking of the staff Union which we are told results in the annulling of the brotherhood between Israel and Judah.

Now it is important to see what is happening here especially in light of the fact that one of the primary features of the promises of the return from exile was, even here in Zechariah, the reuniting the people of Israel as one people of God. How then can we understand that this is not annulled. Has God’s promise failed and He is reversing course?

I am going to make that case that this has not happened. We will get there but for now it is important to see this act symbolizes something far more than just schism. Because the reuniting of the people as one people of God had featured so heavily this really speaks to a total reversal of God’s blessing in choosing to turn toward His people in salvation. Far more than just a return to animosity between north and south this is a reversal of the promised blessings of the return from exile.

The literal approach to this text has caused some to see this whole picture as a story referring to the days before the exile when Israel and Judah actually divided. It is much better to see this as it actually functions, as a judgement stating that God’s promises of blessing are now to be reversed.

This reversal of blessing is then characterized by Zechariah himself as he figures for the people a foolish shepherd who mistreats the weak in the flock and even devours the strong and fat ones to the point of removing the morsels of flesh found within the hooves. Those who would not submit to the good shepherd are consumed in judgement.

The passage and the oracle then ends with a proclamation of woe and judgement on this worthless shepherd that God is going to raise up in judgement over these people!

Now this is what happens in the sign act but what are we to make of it all? What do these things mean.

Possibilities:

Now there are those who try, as I mentioned, to apply these things to the time before the exile. The descriptions certainly would fit that time period and it would serve as a warning to these people now to not return to the errors of their fathers which is something they were continually in danger of doing.

However, as we have noted, the primary purpose of the book as we are understanding it is not, primarily, just to motivate the people to obedience but rather to guide their eyes and hopes forward to the Messiah. As we will see the warnings and admonitions still stand even if these things picture a future event.

There are those also who try and make this fit directly into the Persian period. They claim that this is a picture of a now defunct Zerubbable falling out of favor with God and Zechariah having to step in and take the mantle of leadership for himself but then being rejected by the people. These folks typically see Jesus as referring to this Zechariah when He talks about Zechariah being killed as the last of the prophets. However, the problem is that there just isn't any historical evidence to support this view and we made the case at the beginning of the book that our current Zechariah is not who Jesus was talking about when he mentions the blood of the prophets shed by Israel.

And so weather these things actually transpired in some sense in the Persian period I would like to suggest that we can take these events and carry them forward and tie them to Christ. In fact as we have been working through them a bit already I have tried to avoid even suggesting any connections because I think that you all will likely have seen some of them (despite the obvious one with the 30 pieces of sliver of course) and I wanted to give you the opportunity to try and pick them out as we reviewed what happened.

And so now lets take these things and see how it is that they picture the life and ministry of the Messiah, Jesus Christ the Lord!

Jesus

We start with the 1st 3 verses. These verses form a transition from chapter 10 and the blessings that we saw outlined there and this chapter that we will see shows what you might call the negative outcome associated with the coming Messiah. This chapter declares that many of the Jews were going to miss what was going to take place when Jesus came and in so doing were going to find themselves on the outside of the covenant looking in and experience instead the judgement of God.

We see in these first three verses a movement from north to south with wailing and mourning following. The trees here could literally stand for trees but they could also be the leaders in the land as trees often represent political leaders in this type of prophecy. But we see in verse 3 that the result of this destruction descending from the north is that the glory of the wicked shepherds is ruined the lush and blessed land is destroyed.

Now in short I think a case can be made that this ultimately figured the entrance of Rome into the land leading up to the destruction of AD 70. You might remember Jake talking briefly about how the bodies of the dead floated down the Jordan river from the Sea of Galilee warning all those below that destruction was coming.

I will admit that this is the hardest to solidify connection we have this morning but I believe in light of what we will see in the following verses it makes sense to see this as referencing Romes destructive descent into the land.

The Flock

Next we come to the center part of the chapter and the meat of this picture and we see that the flock that is the people of Israel are being abused by their leaders who are gaining wealth, power, and prosperity as a result of their allegiance to those who are purchasing the flock. Indeed these people even see their blessing as coming from the Lord.

English Standard Version Chapter 11

5 Those who buy them slaughter them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the LORD, I have become rich,’

It is not hard to see the people of Israel in the days of Christ as this flock. Their leaders had so wed themselves to the Romans that they would cry out at Jesus’ trial “We have no king but Cesar.” Jesus talks of the people an their leaders in Matthew 9 a text we saw last week as well.

Matthew 9:36 ESV

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Now as we read here we need to understand that verse 6 is really a summary of the end of the story. When we pick up in verse 7 we see then described by this picture of Zechariah as a shepherd the reason for the judgement language of verse 6. This is why verse 6 is so abrupt and the lesson of the shepherd needed. We moved from bad leaders, wicked shepherds and the mistreatment of the people in verses 4&5 to the very destruction of the flock in verse 6 as God declares:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

6 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.”

Why? Well we read:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

7 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. 8 In one month I destroyed the three shepherds. But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me.

Christ came and for a time He shepherded the flock. He sought to teach them the ways of the Kingdom and to bring them back to following their God. He drove out demons, opened the eyes of the blind and specifically relevant here is that he shut the mouths of those who publically sought to oppose his ministry among the people. This is the meaning of the destroying of the three shepherds.

Three may be significant in that it could represent the corrupt offices of prophet, priest, and king. All of these offices by the time of Christ were utterly corrupted and leading the people astray.

Jesus declared in Matthew 23:15

Matthew 23:15 ESV

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Now we will deal with the staffs in a moment.

We see though here that this shepherding only lasts for a brief time, 1 month. After this brief time we read:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me. 9

impatient there can also mean weary, we see Jesus toward the end of His ministry reflect this sentiment just a few verses later in Matthew 23:37-38

Matthew 23:37–38 ESV

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.

While there were those who followed the vast majority of the people of Israel would wind up crying along with their leaders “Crucify Him, Crucify Him” “We have no king but Cesar”

They rejected their good shepherd exactly for the reason I mentioned earlier. Their wicked leaders, though they mistreated them and sold them into the hands of those who would destroy them, never the less, would not restrain their evil and wickedness and would let them do as they please. Want to divorce your wife, we have a law for that, want to neglect care for your father and mother, we got you covered.

We can see this today, the primary draw of wicked men to wicked rulers is not that life is so much better under wicked leaders, just look at the state of our country right now! Those who would promote the agenda of death and insanity and socialism would take everything you have if they could and prosperity is jeopardized so clearly by their policies and yet the majority of sheep follow them because it is these wicked leaders that will allow them to live out their fantasies and illusions!

The Good shepherd on the other hand knows exactly what the sheep need and as David says in Psalm 23 will lead them to green pasture, and still waters and safely through the valley of the shadow of death where they have no need to fear evil and yet they don't want to follow the Good Shepherd because the prefer the illusion that they get to shepherd their own life.

It is then declared, as a result of the rejection of the Shepherd:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

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.”

An apt picture of what took place in AD 70 which we see in Matthew 23 and 24 was a direct result of the Jews rejection of Christ as their Shepherd! (They even literally resorted to cannibalism)

We read:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

10 And I took my staff Favor, and I broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples. 11 So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep traders, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the LORD.

The covenant here is not the covenant with Israel but rather the covenant with the nations who allowed Israel to exist for a time in relative peace and prosperity. The Pax Romana, the Roman peace that Jake talked about in Revelation would come to an end and the nations would once again be at war with one another and a casualty of that would be the people of Israel.

We then see the 30 pieces of silver. We saw that at its heart this represents the pitiful valued, the “Lordly price” that the people had put on the work and ministry of Christ. He opened the eyes of the blind, caused the mute to speak and the lame to walk and proclaimed freedom to captives and yet they valued his life at a literal 30 pieces of sliver, the value of the life of a dead slave!

This prophecy then becomes literally fulfilled when Judas throws the money back to the priests and they use the money to purchase the potters field. There are some interesting connections between Zechariah and Jeremiah here and in the way the gospel writers make this connection but the core of this message is the lack of value that the people would place on the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ as they rejected Him.

We finally read about the second staff:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

14 Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

This is a difficult one but I think we can get ourselves headed in a good direction here. Central to the promise of restoration had been the joining of the people back into one people of God. We see this prophesied to take place as a result of Jesus’ Messianic reign when we read that the gospel will reach, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then the ends of the earth. Ultimately the animosity that had existed between the Jewish factions was resolved in Christ as the gospel made its way through out all of Israel on its way to the nations.

However, as we mentioned earlier, for those who would not be joined to Christ, the promise of restoration that was given would not be realized as they rejected their messiah and so the staff representing this promised restoration, this staff that I would say represents the covenant with ethnic Israel is broken and put away as the new covenant had come.

We see this judgement quite literally coming true in AD70 as many Jews died due to warning factions amongst themselves and not just at the hands of the Romans.

The Bad Shepherd

We aren't going to spend much time on the last verses from 15-17. We see that in the place of Christ their rejected Shepherd God raises up a bad shepherd as a means of judgement. We see this shepherd taking the equipment of a shepherd but it is foolish equipment. I believe this directly parallels the two staffs and shows the counterfeit nature of this wicked shepherd.

Wicked rulers are raised up by God as a judgement on wicked people.

There is at least a reminder here that God doesn't just sit idly by and let wicked people destroy themselves, He takes an active role in their judgement and destruction and one of those roles is the raising up of wicked rulers and that is what happens here to Israel in the wake of their rejection of the Messiah.

However, we see that God also judges the wickedness of that ruler He has raised up! God will just all wickedness in every place!

Closing:

Summary, this is the flip side of the blessing that has been promised and a warning that many in Israel will reject that blessing when it comes!

The religious leaders and rulers should have seen this when Christ came and yet in their wickedness they were blind to this or else willfully ignorant of it!

The Gospel! Do Not DETEST the shepherd! Do not resist His leadership! Do not seek out worthless leaders who will let you do what ever you want.