And into the hand of his king:
And they shall smite the land,
And out of their hand I will not deliver them.
What a dreadful condition of the sheep of His pasture, the lost sheep of the house of Israel, God’s flock! Even so it was, strangers ruled over them, and they were their prey, getting rich on them and not guilty. Still worse their own shepherds, the civil and ecclesiastical rulers of the nation, spared them not. God had indeed given them up. Well may we stop and think for a moment of the apostacy of Christendom and its final overthrow and judgment so clearly seen in the book of Revelation. Even now the flock of slaughter is seen and all getting ripe for the day of wrath!
The action of Zechariah by divine command, like the crowning of the high priest in the sixth chapter, is a typical one. Zechariah is a type of the good Shepherd of Israel, the Messiah. The disobedient nation, the flock of slaughter, had taken God’s servants and beat one and killed another and stoned another. When He sent servants more than the first, they did unto them in like manner (Matt. xxi: 35). After this came the last attempt of divine love. God sent His Son as a Shepherd to seek and feed the lost sheep. He was not accepted, but they rejected Him. We will consider this now in the second section.
II. The Shepherd set aside and rejected (verses 7-14).
“So I fed the flock of slaughter, verily the most miserable sheep. And I took to myself two staves; the one I called Beauty, the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock. And I cut off the three shepherds in one month; for my soul became impatient with them, and their soul also abhorred me. And I said, I will not feed you: the dying, let it die; and the cut off, let it be cut off; and the left over, let them devour each the flesh of the other. And I took my staff, Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the peoples. And it was broken in that day, and thus the wretched of the flock who gave heed to me knew that this was the word of Jehovah. And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my wages; and if not, forbear. So they weighed as my wages thirty pieces of silver. And Jehovah said to me, Throw it unto the potter; the goodly price at which I am valued of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and threw them into the house of Jehovah, to the potter, Then I broke my second staff, Bands, that I break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.”
Much has been written on this difficult passage. The very first sentence in the paragraph speaks of divine love. He came, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace, in the likeness of man, as a servant and a gentle shepherd to feed the miserable ones. Looking at the multitudes who followed Him when He had come, He was moved with compassion, for they were distressed and scattered as sheep having no shepherd (Matt. ix: 36). True shepherds indeed they had not. Prophets sent by Jehovah had long before ceased to come, and those who ruled them were miserable leaders of the blind, concerning whom Jehovah spoke through Ezekiel, “Woe unto the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves; should not the shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, ye kill the fatlings, but ye feed not the sheep. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost” (Ezekiel xxxiv: 3-5). But now Jehovah Himself has come to be their Shepherd, “Behold, I Myself, even I, will search for My sheep and find them out” (Ezekiel xxxiv: 11). And when He came and God was manifested in the flesh, He turned indeed to the most miserable of the sheep—the publicans and the outcasts, sinners and harlots, gathered around Him. The Prophet as the type of the good Shepherd has two staves. The one is called Beauty (marginal reading, graciousness). The second one is Bands. The Shepherd carries a staff to protect and guide His flock. In the second Psalm the returning Lord is seen shepherding the nations with a rod of iron, but here the two staves cannot mean instruments for correction, but they are the staves of comfort and love. God’s mercy and favor are clearly indicated in these two staves. The first one, Beauty, which is cut asunder first, and that before the wages of the Shepherd, the thirty pieces of silver, are given, stands no doubt for the gracious offer with which the King, preaching the kingdom, came among His people, to His own. He proclaimed that which prophets had spoken before, God’s mercy and love, long promised, now to be carried out. He Himself had come to redeem His people and deliver them from their mighty enemies as well as from the false leaders. But the offer, the kingdom preaching, is rejected, the staff, Beauty, is cut asunder, the covenant with the peoples (Amim in Hebrew), His own, is now broken. The kingdom is to be taken away and given to another nation. After the breaking of the staff, Beauty, there comes the giving of the wages, the thirty pieces of silver. The Shepherd who broke the staff is treated like a slave.
The second staff in His hands, Bands, speaks of union, binding together, bringing into fellowship. It typifies the priestly side of the good Shepherd who died for the flock. This staff is broken after the thirty pieces were given for Him, and cast into the temple. They cried, Away with Him! we have no King save Caesar! Crucify Him! His blood be upon us and upon our children! The cross bears the superscription, This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, and from the lips of the rejected King and Shepherd there came the prayer for His people, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The doom came not at once upon the nation. Once more the love of the Shepherd is preached to the miserable sheep, and the remission of sins offered in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it ends in rejection too; no bringing together into One followed. The foolish shepherd appears next, and after him the good Shepherd will appear again with His two staves, Beauty and Bands, kingdom and mercy, bringing and binding together. He will then be a Priest upon His throne. This interpretation is the most satisfactory one, and in harmony with the entire scope of Zechariah’s visions and prophecies.
Who are the three shepherds to be cut off in one month by the Shepherd? Are they persons or not? Many answers have been given to these questions, and many theories have been advanced to solve the difficulty. It is not necessary to mention any of them. The three shepherds are not persons, but they stand for the three classes of rulers which governed Israel, and were in that sense shepherds. We read of these shepherds in Jeremiah ii: 8, priests, rulers, and prophets. The Lord likewise mentions them in Matthew xvi: 21, elders, chief priests and scribes. When He came He was indeed weary with them, and denounced their hypocrisies and wickedness. They in turn hated and abhorred Him, and conspired to put Him to death. The Lord Himself cut them off. He pronounced His woes and judgments upon them, but the judgment was not at once carried out. When Jerusalem was taken their rule came to an end and they were cut off.