Today’s Passage: Zechariah 11
After the bright promises of chapters nine and ten, where a humble King comes riding into Zion and the LORD gathers His scattered flock, chapter eleven turns suddenly dark, and we must not look away from it. Here the prophet is told to act out a sorrowful parable with his own life. He becomes a shepherd over a flock already marked for slaughter, and he carries two shepherd’s staffs, one named Favor and the other Union, the two gifts by which God had held His people together and kept them safe. The flock will not have him. He resigns the task in grief, and then, when he asks for his wages, he is handed thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave, which the LORD tells him to throw to the potter in the house of God. He breaks both staffs, the covenant favor and the brotherhood are undone, and in the shepherd’s place God allows a worthless shepherd to rise who cares nothing for the sheep. It is one of the most piercing chapters in all the prophets, for centuries later that scene of thirty silver coins flung down in the temple would be lived out to the letter in the betrayal of Christ.
As you read, hold this: God’s own people weighed out their true Shepherd at the price of a slave, yet even their rejection fell within the LORD’s foretold purpose.
Context The world of Zechariah 11
Zechariah prophesied to the remnant that had come home from Babylon, a small and weary people rebuilding a modest temple under the shadow of great empires. In the ancient world a king or a leader was often called a shepherd, and the LORD Himself was the true Shepherd of Israel, so to speak of shepherds and flocks was to speak of how a nation is governed and cared for, or ruinously misused. The prophets before Zechariah had thundered against the false shepherds of Israel, the kings and priests who fed themselves and let the sheep be scattered and devoured. Here Zechariah takes up that same theme and presses it to its sharpest point.
This chapter is what the old writers called a sign-act, a living parable that the prophet performs so the people can see the word of God with their own eyes. Zechariah is told to play the part of a good shepherd sent to a doomed flock, and then to play the part of the worthless shepherd who follows. The two staffs he carries, Favor and Union, stand for the covenant kindness of God toward His people and the bond that held the tribes together as one. When those staffs are snapped in two, it is a picture of what happens when a people finally and fully reject the Shepherd God sends to them. The whole scene looks past its own century to a day still far off, when the true Shepherd would come and be sold, and the covenant favor would seem, for a dreadful moment, to be broken.
Zechariah 11:1–3 (BSB)
¹ Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may consume your cedars! ² Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen; the majestic trees are ruined! Wail, O oaks of Bashan, for the dense forest has been cut down! ³ Listen to the wailing of the shepherds, for their glory is in ruins. Listen to the roaring of the young lions, for the thickets of the Jordan are destroyed.
The chapter opens with a great and mournful cry that sweeps across the land from the tall cedars of Lebanon in the north to the thickets along the Jordan. It is a poem of falling greatness. The mighty cedar, the towering cypress, the strong oaks of Bashan, all the proud and lofty things a nation leans on, are pictured toppling in the fire, and even the young lions roar because their lairs are laid waste. This is the sound of judgment coming, and it is aimed especially at the shepherds, the leaders whose glory is now in ruins. Before we ever meet the doomed flock, we hear the wailing of the men who were supposed to guard it. When those set over God’s people care only for their own glory, the day comes when that glory burns like tinder, and the whole land mourns.
Zechariah 11:4–6 (BSB)
⁴ This is what the LORD my God says: “Pasture the flock marked for slaughter, ⁵ whose buyers slaughter them without remorse. Those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the LORD, for I am rich!’ Even their own shepherds have no compassion on them. ⁶ For I will no longer have compassion on the people of the land, declares the LORD, but behold, I will cause each man to fall into the hands of his neighbor and his king, who will devastate the land, and I will not deliver it from their hands.”
Now the LORD gives Zechariah his strange and heavy commission: pasture the flock marked for slaughter. What a thing to be told, to shepherd sheep that are already being fattened for the knife. And look at how they are being treated. Those who buy them cut their throats without a flicker of remorse, and those who sell them count their money and have the gall to say, blessed be the LORD, for I am rich, wrapping their cruelty in the language of piety. Even the sheep’s own shepherds feel nothing for them. This is a picture of a people handed over to leaders and powers that use them and discard them. And the most sobering line is the LORD’s own: I will no longer have compassion on the people of the land. God’s patience, long and deep as it is, is not endless, and when a people persist in refusing Him, He may at last give them over to the very destroyers they preferred to His care.
Zechariah 11:7 (BSB)
⁷ So I pastured the flock marked for slaughter, especially the afflicted of the flock. Then I took for myself two staffs, calling one Favor and the other Union, and I pastured the flock.
Zechariah obeys, and here we glimpse the tenderness of the true Shepherd shining through even this dark parable. He does not despise the doomed flock; he pastures them, and he gives special care to the afflicted of the flock, the poor and the weak and the trampled ones. And he takes up two staffs with names full of meaning: no'am, pronounced NO-am. Strong's H5278, pleasantness, beauty, favor, delightfulness. This is the same lovely word that rises in the prayer of Psalm ninety, “may the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us,” and in the psalmist’s longing to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD in His house. When Zechariah names his first staff Favor, he is naming the sweetest thing a people can possess, the gracious delight of God resting over their lives like light. To live under that staff is to live under the smile of heaven. That is what makes its breaking, later in the chapter, so grievous. The flock does not merely lose a leader; they cast away the very favor of God that was their shelter and their glory, and they do it with their eyes open. , the good pleasure and kindness of God resting on His people, and Union, the bond that knit the tribes together as one family. As long as those two staffs are held over the flock, there is grace and there is fellowship. This is what the good Shepherd offers, the favor of God and the fellowship of His people, and it is exactly what a hardened flock is about to throw away.
Zechariah 11:8–9 (BSB)
⁸ And in one month I dismissed three shepherds. My soul grew impatient with the flock, and their souls also detested me. ⁹ Then I said, “I will no longer shepherd you. Let the dying die, and the perishing perish; and let those who remain devour one another’s flesh.”
Swiftly the good Shepherd clears away three false shepherds in a single month, sweeping out the hirelings who had preyed on the sheep. And then comes the heartbreak of the parable, and it runs both ways. The Shepherd grows weary of a flock that will not be led, and the flock, for their part, come to detest the very one who cares for them. There is a terrible mutuality in it. When a people set themselves against the shepherd God sends, a breach opens that grieves both sides. At last the Shepherd withdraws His hand, and His words are among the most solemn in the book: I will no longer shepherd you. To be left to ourselves, to be handed over to the ruin we insisted on, is the most frightening judgment of all. It is not that God grows cruel; it is that He finally lets a stubborn flock have the shepherdless world they chose.
Zechariah 11:10–11 (BSB)
¹⁰ Next I took my staff called Favor and cut it in two, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations. ¹¹ It was revoked on that day, and so the afflicted of the flock who were watching me knew that it was the word of the LORD.
Then the first staff is snapped in two. Favor is broken, and with it a protecting covenant that had held back the surrounding nations is revoked, so that the restraining hand is lifted and the wolves may come. Yet notice who understands what is happening: the afflicted of the flock who were watching. The poor and attentive sheep, the very ones the Shepherd had tended with special care, recognize in this breaking the genuine word of the LORD. It is often so. The comfortable and the proud see only politics and misfortune, but the humble and the watching discern the hand of God moving even through sorrow. When favor seems to break, the faithful do not curse the sky; they bow, and they know that God is speaking.
Zechariah 11:12–13 (BSB)
¹² Then I told them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” So they weighed out my wages, thirty pieces of silver. ¹³ And the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—this magnificent price at which they valued me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD.
Here we come to the very heart of the chapter, and we should read it slowly, for it is one of the most astonishing prophecies in all of Scripture. The Shepherd asks the flock to name His worth: give me my wages, He says, if it seems right to you. And they weigh out thirty pieces of silver. Now that number is not accidental, for in the law of Moses thirty shekels of silver was the price set for a slave gored by an ox, the going rate for the cheapest of lives. This is what God’s own flock reckon their Shepherd to be worth, the price of a slave. Hear the bitter irony in the LORD’s own words, this magnificent price at which they valued Me, spoken over so paltry a sum. And He commands that the money be thrown to the yatsar, pronounced yah-TSAR. Strong's H3335, to form, fashion, shape, as a potter shapes clay. It is a word rich with meaning across the Scriptures, for it is the very word used when the LORD formed man from the dust of the ground, and when the prophets picture God as the potter and His people as the clay in His hand. So when the LORD tells Zechariah to throw the silver to the potter in His house, there is more here than a passing detail. The despised price of the Shepherd is cast down before the great Potter who alone shapes the destinies of men, and nothing in the whole sorry transaction escapes His forming hand. When those thirty coins were one day flung into the temple and spent on a potter’s field, it only proved again that the Potter had foreseen it all. What men meant for betrayal, the God who fashions all things had already woven into His saving purpose. in the house of the LORD, flung down in the very temple. It is impossible for a Christian to read this and not tremble, for centuries later Judas would sell the Lord of glory for exactly thirty pieces of silver, and when remorse overtook him he would hurl the coins into the temple, and the chief priests would use them to buy the potter’s field. Every detail Zechariah acted out in parable came true to the letter in the betrayal of Christ. God’s people valued their true Shepherd at the price of a slave and cast Him aside, and yet even that rejection, even those thirty coins, fell within the sure and foretold purpose of God.
Zechariah 11:14 (BSB)
¹⁴ Then I cut in two my second staff called Union, breaking the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
Now the second staff is broken as well. Union is snapped, and the bond of brotherhood that had held the family of God together is undone. If the breaking of Favor pictured the loss of God’s gracious protection, the breaking of Union pictures a people torn apart from one another, splintered and divided once the Shepherd is refused. It is a sober law of the spiritual life that when a people cast off their common Shepherd, they soon lose their common bond, for it is love of Him that had kept them one. Reject the Shepherd, and the flock does not remain a flock for long; it fractures into scattered and quarreling parts.
Zechariah 11:15–17 (BSB)
¹⁵ And the LORD said to me: “Take up once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd. ¹⁶ For behold, I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will neither care for the lost, nor seek the young, nor heal the broken, nor sustain the healthy, but he will devour the flesh of the choice sheep and tear off their hooves. ¹⁷ Woe to the worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock! May a sword strike his arm and his right eye! May his arm be completely withered and his right eye utterly blinded!”
The parable closes with a dreadful consequence. Having refused the good Shepherd, the flock is given a worthless one, a foolish shepherd raised up in the land who is everything the true Shepherd was not. He will not care for the lost, nor seek the straying young, nor heal the broken, nor feed the healthy; instead he will feast on the sheep themselves and tear them apart for his own gain. This is what a people receive when they scorn the Shepherd of God’s own choosing: they do not become free of shepherds, they fall under a cruel one. Yet the chapter does not leave that tyrant unanswered. The LORD pronounces a woe upon the worthless shepherd who deserts the flock, and calls down a sword upon the arm that should have protected and the eye that should have watched. God sees the shepherds who devour His sheep, and He will not let their evil stand forever. The judgment that seemed to fall on the flock will at last fall on the false shepherd himself, and the God who was valued at thirty pieces of silver will have the last word over every hand that harmed His own.
Study notes Going deeper
The wonder of this chapter is not only that it was fulfilled, but that its fulfillment was foreseen and folded into the very plan of God. The flock weighed out thirty pieces of silver in contempt, and in the fullness of time that contempt became the price of our redemption, for the rejected Shepherd was the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Peter would later stand before the crowd and say plainly that the handing over of Christ was no accident but the settled counsel of God, even as it was the true guilt of those who did it.
"He was delivered up by God’s set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross." Acts 2:23 (BSB)
Hold those two truths together and let them steady you. Men valued the Shepherd at the price of a slave and cast Him away, and their sin was real and grievous. And yet not one coin of it fell outside the purpose of God, who was working through the betrayal itself to save a world of straying sheep. The same Lord who was sold for thirty pieces of silver is the Shepherd who lays down His life for the flock and takes it up again, and He reigns now over every hand that ever wronged Him. Learn the Word, marvel at a rejection turned into redemption, and give thanks.