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Zechariah, Prophet of God's remembrance, part 29

We come next to prophecies regarding the doom of both Israel and Judah. Both nations rejected the good Shepherd, that is, the Messiah. Israel rejected Him in His preincarnation, while Judah rejected him more directly after His incarnation. The results were disastrous.

Zechariah 11:1-3 begins,

¹ Open your doors, O Lebanon, that a fire may feed on your cedars. ² Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, because the glorious trees have been destroyed; wail, O oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest has come down. ³ There is a sound of the shepherds wail, for their glory is ruined; there is a sound of the young lions’ roar, for the pride of the Jordan is ruined.

Trees were symbolic of men. Cedars, cypress, and oaks, as well as the young lions, were rulers, or mighty men. This, then, prophesies the destruction and ruin upon the people, even as a great forest fire. The result of this divine judgment is written first, the cause of it later.

Keep in mind that Israel had already been destroyed two centuries earlier, and Judah had only recently been released from exile. Zechariah prophesied to the remnant that had returned. Hence, this word prophesied of a later destruction that was yet to come. As we will see, the cause of this judgment was their rejection of the Messiah. Therefore, the fulfillment of this divine judgment was at the hands of the Roman armies that destroyed Jerusalem and Judea from 66-73 A.D.

The Doomed Flock

Zechariah 11:4-6 says,

⁴ Thus says the Lord my God, “Pasture the flock doomed to slaughter. ⁵ Those who buy them slay them and go unpunished [lo ashawm, “not guilty”], and each of those who sell them says, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich!’ And their own shepherds have no pity on them. ⁶ For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land,” declares the Lord; “but behold, I will cause the men to fall, each into another’s power and into the power of his king; and they will strike the land, and I will not deliver them from their power.”

When the Roman armies took Jerusalem, 1.1 million Jews were killed, and another 97,000 were sold as slaves. (See Josephus, The Jewish War, Book 6, Chapter 9.) This was “the flock doomed to slaughter.”

Jesus’ parable in Matthew 22:2-7 comments on this, telling us how the people of Judah rejected the King’s invitation to the feast. The fact that He was speaking of Judah and Jerusalem is seen in verse 6,

⁶ and the rest seized His slaves and mistreated them and killed them.

The King’s “slaves” were the prophets that were rejected, abused, and even killed in earlier years. So Matthew 23:34 says,

³⁴ Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.

Because of this rejection, the verdict in Matthew 22:7 says,

⁷ But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire.

From a spiritual standpoint, it was God Himself who “sent his armies” to destroy Jerusalem. From an earthly perspective, those armies were the Roman armies which destroyed the city in 70 A.D. Because God had conscripted the Roman armies to execute judgment on His behalf, they were not held accountable. The NASB translates Zechariah 11:4 to say that they would “go unpunished,” but the Hebrew text actually pronounces them “not guilty.” The Roman armies would have been guilty only if they refused to carry out the King’s orders.

In Zechariah 11:5, God puts words into the mouths of the Romans, who say, “Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich!” This is quite typical of those who do not really know God or understand His judgments. Such people tend to think that if they become rich it is because God has blessed them. Many (even today) equate riches with divine favor. But which of the prophets were rich? Which ones had an easy life? Most of them paid a heavy price for their obedience.

The Two Staffs

Zechariah 11:7 says,

⁷ So I [the prophet] pastured the flock doomed to slaughter, hence the afflicted of the flock. And I took for myself two staffs: the one I called Favor and the other I called Union; so I pastured the flock.

The prophet was required to act as a type of Christ, the good Shepherd, using two staffs. Perhaps these should be viewed as a rod and a staff, as in Psalm 23:4. The staff was used to help the sheep, the rod, or club, was used for defense. Zechariah named these No’am and Khawbal, “beauty or pleasantness” and “bind or pledge.”

We are not told how long the prophet shepherded the flock. We only know that this represented God’s care for His covenant nation during their national history. The focus is not upon the years of His protection but upon the end of it.

Zechariah 11:8 continues,

⁸ Then I annihilated [kahad, “hide, conceal, cut off, kick”] the three shepherds in one month, for my soul was impatient with them, and their soul also was weary of me.

This implies that the prophet shepherded a flock with the aid of three incompetent shepherds. All three were fired “in one month.” Perhaps the lesson shows us that, as hired hands, they had no genuine concern or love for the sheep. Jesus said in John 10:11-13,

¹¹ I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. ¹² He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. ¹³ He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.

So Zechariah (like Jesus) became “impatient” with these hired hands, and they, in turn, got tired of his scoldings. The prophet then quit. Zechariah 11:9 says,

⁹ Then I said, “I will not pasture you. What is to die, let it die, and what is to be annihilated [kahad, “cut off, exiled”], let it be annihilated [kahad]; and let those who are left eat one another’s flesh.”

In the natural, a shepherd can hardly blame the sheep for the incompetence of hired hands. But this was to illustrate the fact that when national leaders, civil and religious, failed to feed the sheep with the word of God, the sheep themselves were scattered and destroyed. This is what happened in the time of Christ, when the leaders rejected Him and the people followed their false shepherds to destruction and exile.