Old Testament · Zechariah

Zechariah 11

The Doomed Flock

1Open your doors, O Lebanon, that fire may devour among your cedars.
2Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, because the majestic ones are ruined! Wail, O oaks of Bashan, for the inaccessible forest has come down.
3A sound of the wailing of the shepherds, for their glory is ruined! A sound of the roaring of young lions, for the pride of the Jordan is ruined!

4Thus said the LORD my God: Shepherd the flock of slaughter, 5whose buyers slay them and are not held guilty, and their sellers say: Blessed be the LORD, for I have become rich; and their shepherds have no pity on them.

6For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land, declares the LORD; but behold, I am delivering the man^a, each man^b into the hand of his neighbor, and into the hand of his king; and they shall crush the land, and I will not deliver out of their hand.

7And I shepherded the flock of slaughter, even the poor of the flock. And I took for myself two staffs; the one I called Graciousness, and the other I called Bonds; and I shepherded the flock. 8And I cut off the three shepherds in one month; and my soul^c grew short with them, and their soul also loathed me. 9And I said: I will not shepherd you. The one dying, let her die; and the one to be cut off, let her be cut off; and the ones remaining, let them devour, each woman^d the flesh^e of her neighbor.

Thirty Pieces of Silver

(Matthew 27:3–10)

10And I took my staff Graciousness, and cut it down, to break my covenant^f which I had cut with all the peoples. 11And it was broken in that day; and the poor of the flock who were watching me knew thus that it was the word of the LORD.

12And I said to them: If it be good in your eyes, give my wages; and if not, forbear. And they weighed out my wages, thirty pieces of silver.

13And the LORD said to me: Cast it to the potter, the splendid price at which I was valued by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them, in the house of the LORD, to the potter.

14And I cut down my second staff, Bonds, to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

15And the LORD said to me: Take to yourself again the instruments of a foolish shepherd. 16For behold, I am raising up a shepherd in the land, who will not attend to the ones cut off, will not seek the young, and the broken he will not heal; the one standing he will not sustain; but the flesh of the fat he will eat, and their hoofs he will tear off.

17Woe to the worthless shepherd who forsakes the flock! A sword be upon his arm, and upon his right eye; his arm shall utterly wither, and his right eye shall utterly be darkened.