Zechariah 11:12-17
Notes
Transcript
Quick review
Quick review
Last lesson we ended on verse 11 so we could dive in deeper for the remainder of the chapter, and I think because I was exhausted and only half prepared. So let’s do some quick catching up since we also had a week off in between
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. In one month I destroyed the three shepherds. But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me. 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. So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep traders, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord.
These peoples (the world) knew that the word of the Lord had been spoken. It was truth and they recognized it.
Now we get the frustrated shepherd who cries out in vs 12
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.
Now, thirty pieces of silver is not just a random number. Who get’s paid 30 pieces of silver?
Cost of a slave if your ox kills them accidentally… Exo 21:32
If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.
But these slave wages paint a bigger picture that we see the book of Matthew reflect on. So in verse 12 the shepherd portrayed by Zechariah asks for his wages, he’s quitting. He’s saying listen I was your shepherd, I quit, you can hand me my last paycheck or not. He gets literal slave wages as the response. This relationship is so broken. On one hand, the shepherd is fed up, on the other the people are fed up with the shepherd. The leadership and the people of Israel are all doing it wrong. Now lets look at the literal rehashing of this parable from Zechariah play out in the reality of the first century with Judas and the leaders of Israel who reject the good shepherd.
Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.
Spoiler alert, Judas does betray Christ...
Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”
A short asside here about Jeremiah as the prophet who said this. Lots of scholars think this misattribution in Matthew is not a mistake on the Bible’s part but ours. The OT was broken into 3 sections, The law, the writtings, and the Prophets. Jeremiah was the first book of the prophets and so sometimes the whole section of prophets is referred to as Jeremiah because all the minor prophets were in the Jeremiah scroll.
Another possibility is that in the original it was correct but when scribes copied things they were using a short version of Jeremiah or Zecheraiah in Greek and that’s only one letter different iota or zeta.
Another is that Matthew is mixing the themes of Jeremiah and Zechariah together a lot and here attributes the main theme to the bigger writter who did also use the potter to represent the Lord.
So whether 30 pieces of silver is equivelant to $300 or $30,000 of todays money it was much more a symbolic number that I think everyone knew was symbolic. Not that Judas didn’t care about the money he certainly did...
The good shepherd when he finally came, the bad shepherds contrived to have him killed and we get back to paying another bad shepherd 30 pieces of silver.
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.
So the money gets thrown back to God by being tossed into His house - much like we see Judas do.
The next consequence for the people is seen here
Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
The brotherhood between the northern and southern kingdoms is now completely severed. The restoration won’t be seen until the next age with a remade world of good.
Then the Lord said to me, “Take once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd.
Now he puts on the role of a shepherd who is foolish - what is a fool?
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Fools are those who reject God. My dad used to get upset at me for calling my best friend ‘foo’ because of the admonishment there in Matthew. Now I didn’t think I was calling my friend an evil sinner who rejects God, we were just dorks that were making fun of how other people talked by saying it to each other ironically… I’m not sure at what point it was no longer ironic and just how we addressed each other. If I called him now he might very well still answer ‘sup foo‘ because it’s now our norm.
In any case the point is that they were serious about this word for a fool. Israel would see what putting fools in charge would do.
For behold, I am raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for those being destroyed, or seek the young or heal the maimed or nourish the healthy, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.
This is pretty clear here that israel is going to get what they deserve. When they reject the good shepherd they will get a foolish one.
They don’t care for those being destroyed - some terrible thing is happening to some group of people within Judea and the leaders do not care.
They don’t seek out the young lost and wayward to bring them back in and ensure they are fed and doing well.
The injuried aren’t cared for and the healthy aren’t either!
The shepherd instead of caring for and feeding the sheep feeds on them. Tearing off the hooves is not a metaphor for glue or something else… it’s literally pointless and that’s the point. There is no reason for such evil and mistreatment of the animal.
Their staff of favor and unity will be broken. The protection they had will be gone. In fact we do know that within 40 years of the rejection of the good shepherd their foolish leaders cause more and more strife and impoverishment of their own people with their own greed and desires for personal gain that rebellion starts and Rome swiftly and brutally destroys the people and the temple.
“Woe to my worthless shepherd,
who deserts the flock!
May the sword strike his arm
and his right eye!
Let his arm be wholly withered,
his right eye utterly blinded!”
This last little poem exemplifies the anti-shepherd and what they will earn for themselves. Some have even attributed these attributes to the anti-christ as markers to identify him. I don’t know if that will turn out to be true. But woe to the worthless shepherd...
