Zechariah 11

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Zechariah 11

1 Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.

2 Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen; because the mighty are spoiled: howl, O ye oaks of Bashan; for the forest of the vintage is come down.

3 There is a voice of the howling of the shepherds; for their glory is spoiled: a voice of the roaring of young lions; for the pride of Jordan is spoiled.

4 Thus saith the Lord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter;

5 Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty: and they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord; for I am rich: and their own shepherds pity them not.

6 For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord: but, lo, I will deliver the men every one into his neighbour's hand, and into the hand of his king: and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver them.

7 And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.

8 Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and their soul also abhorred me.

9 Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another.

10 And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.

11 And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord.

12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

13 And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

14 Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

15 And the Lord said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd.

16 For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.

17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

Notes

Cross Reference

Commentary

Rashi

Verse 1

<html>Open your doors, O Lebanon Jonathan renders: O peoples, open your gates.</html>

Verse 2

<html>Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen [The cedar,] which is bigger than the cypress, [has fallen]. Howl, O rulers, for the kings of the nations have fallen. Wail, O oaks of the Bashan Kesnes or chesnes in Old French, chenes in Modern French. for… has gone down For it has been broken. Similar to [this expression] is (Isa. 32:19), “And He shall hail down the breaking of the forest.” the fortified forest The fortified forest, the strong walled cities.</html>

Verse 3

<html>the shepherds The kings. for their glory אַדַּרְתָּם the roar of the young lions The princes shall weep. for the pride of the Jordan has been spoiled The pride of the Jordan, which is the place of the young lions and the old lions. Our Sages (Yoma 39b) explained “Open your doors, O Lebanon,” as the prophet prophesying about the destruction of the Second Temple; that forty years prior to the destruction, the doors of the Temple proper would open by themselves. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai rebuked them. He said, “Temple, how long will you terrify yourself? I know that you will eventually be destroyed. Zechariah the son of Iddo has already prophesied concerning you: ‘Open your doors, O Lebanon, etc.’”</html>

Verse 4

<html>Tend the flock of slaughter Prepare shepherds for them; i.e., prophesy concerning their leaders who are destined to lead them from now on. the flock of slaughter Israel, whose shepherds slew them and devoured them.</html>

Verse 5

<html>and not be guilty The kings of the nations among whom I will exile them; this one sells them, and the buyer slays them, without feeling (lit., “and he does not put to his heart”) that there should be guilt in the matter. The seller boasts: Blessed be the Lord Who delivered them into my hand, and behold! I am wealthy. for I have become wealthy And behold! I am wealthy.</html>

Verse 7

<html>And I tended the flock of slaughter All these are the words of the Holy One, blessed be He, to the prophet: And I tended them in the early days. indeed, the poor of the flock Indeed, they were the poor of the flock when I began to tend them. and I took for Myself two staffs At the end of a period of time, I divided them into two kingdoms because of their iniquity. one I called Pleasantness Jeroboam promised to lead them gently. and one I called Destoyers Rehoboam told [his kingdom] that he would flog them with scorpions (I Kings 12:11). [Zechariah] calls their rulers staffs because it is customary to lead flocks with staffs.</html>

Verse 8

<html>I cut off the three shepherds in one month They corrupted their ways until I rejected them, and I slew all three shepherds in one month. Jehu slew the entire house of Ahab, and the house of Ahaziah the king of Judah, and his brothers, and all the seed of the kingdom of David; and Athaliah slew the rest, save Joash, who hid (II Kings 10, 11). I could not tolerate them “My soul was short with them” I rejected them. And every expression of shortness of soul denotes a distressful or disgusting matter, that a person’s thoughts cannot tolerate. His heart and his reigns are too short to contain it, as Elihu said (Job 32:18), “The spirit of my innards constrains me.” moreover, they were too much for Me Their memory was too big for My innards, and it filled My spirit and constrained My reins. The word בָּחֲלָה was explained by our Sages in tractate Niddah (47a) as an expression of largeness. The Sages depicted the development of a woman with a metaphor: פַּגָּה, unripe figs; בֹּחַל, larger figs, and צֶמֶל, completely ripe figs. She is compared to unripe figs when she is still a child; she is compared to larger figs in the days of her youth, when she is already bigger. They brought this verse as proof of their words.</html>

Verse 9

<html>And I said, “I will not tend you…” I said in those days, “I will cast them from before Me,” and they shall be free and subject to spoil.</html>

Verse 10

<html>And I took My [first] staff, [called] Pleasantness I broke the power of the kings of Israel in the days of Jehoahaz the son of Jehu - to the extent that the king of Aram destroyed them and made them like dust to trample (II Kings 13:7) - and in the days of Hoshea the son of Elah, when I delivered them into the hands of Sennacherib and he exiled them (ibid. 17:6). to nullify My covenant that I [had] formed with all the peoples To show them that because they betrayed Me, I nullified My covenant that I formed with all the peoples concerning them, that the [peoples] not harm them. For, on that condition I gave them the Torah, that if they keep it, they will be free from the kingdoms; that no nation or tongue shall rule over them. And do not be surprised if Scripture speaks of their salvation from the hands of the enemy as forming a covenant with the enemy, for we find a similar verse (Hosea 2:20): “And I will make a covenant for them on that day with the beasts of the field, etc.”</html>

Verse 11

<html>knew this The righteous among them who kept My statute understood. that it was the word of the Lord This decree the Holy One, blessed be He, already spoke to us through Moses (Deut. 28: 36): “The Lord shall drive you and your king.”</html>

Verse 12

<html>And I said to the remaining kings of Judah. “If it pleases you, give [Me] My hire…” Fulfill My commandments, and that will be My payment for all the good that I have given you; as they give hire to a shepherd, I will return and tend you. and if not, forbear And I, too, will not do good for you. We find that the Holy One, blessed be He, said similarly to Ezekiel (3:27): “He that hears, let him hear, and he that forbears, let him forbear.” And they weighed out My hire, thirty pieces of silver Jonathan paraphrases: And they performed My will with a few men. There were a few good men among them, such as the craftsmen and the sentries, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Ezekiel. But I do not know how to explain the expression here of thirty pieces of silver exactly, except that כֶּסֶף is an expression of desire. Our Sages, too, explained it this way in Chullin (92a). They brought proof from (Prov. 7:20), “The bundle of the desirable ones He took in His hand.” The thirty they explained in the following manner: There are forty-five righteous men in every generation. They brought proof from (Hosea 3:2), “a חֹמֶר of barley and a לֶתֶךְ of barley” - fifteen righteous in Babylon and thirty in Eretz Israel. It is said: “And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and I cast them into the house of the Lord in Eretz Israel.” The number thirty is explained by the Midrash Aggadah (Cf. Gen. Rabbah 49:3, Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 88a), that our father Abraham was promised that no generation would have fewer than thirty righteous in men, the number of (Gen. 15:8): “So shall your seed be.” The word יִהְיֶה has the numerical value of thirty.</html>

Verse 13

<html>And the Lord said to me: Cast it to the keeper of the treasury like הָאוֹצֵר, the keeper of the treasury. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to the prophet: Write, and leave over these and their righteousness to be preserved for the end of the seventy years of the Babylonian exile. The Temple shall be built by them. Now what is the treasury? [Cf. below] the stronghold of glory My Temple, the stronghold of My glory. of which I stripped them of which I stripped them so that they should no longer have glory. The expression יָקַרְתִּי means the removal of glory; the “mem” in מֵעֲלֵיהֶם proves it. It is like (Ps. 52:7), “and He shall uproot you from the land of the living”; and like (Isa. 10:33), “lops off the branches.” My explanation is similar to Jonathan’s translation. I have seen many variant versions of the explanation of this prophecy, but I cannot reconcile those with the text.</html>

Verse 14

<html>And I cut off My second staff I exiled Zedekiah. the destroyers The wicked of his generation, for he was righteous, but his generation was wicked. to nullify the brotherhood that the Judahites and the Benjamites were joined in brorherhood, and that they adhered to the abominations of the kings of Israel.</html>

Verse 15

<html>Take for yourself, etc. This is what He said to him above: Tend the flock of slaughter (verse 4). This is a sign that I am destined to deliver the generation of the destruction of this Second Temple into the hands of Esau.</html>

Verse 16

<html>Those that are cut off The shepherd will not remember to seek the lost ones. the foolish ones he shall not seek Jonathan renders: Those that wandered off he shall not seek. The word הַנַּעַר means the foolish ones that do not know to enter the fold. the one that can stand The one that has a little strength to stand on its feet and requires help, [the one that needs] to be led slowly. Menahem (Machbereth p. 148) explained: and the swollen one, as in (Num. 5:22), “to cause the belly to swell.” he shall not bear Jonathan renders. he shall not bear. It is the custom of the shepherd to carry the lambs in his bosom. And the flesh of the fat one he shall eat He will finish the money of the wealthy. and their hoofs he shall break until they are finished. Daniel (7:7) stated a figure similar to this: “It devoured and broke in pieces, and the residue it trampled with its foot.”</html>

Verse 17

<html>Ho There is reason to cry out concerning this. worthless shepherd a shepherd of nought. אֶלִיל, is an expression of אַל, naught; he is not a shepherd. [There is also] (in Job 13:4) “worthless physicians.” רֹעִי The “yud” is superfluous; it is instead of a “he,” as “who abandons the flock”; (Deut. 33:16) who dwells (שׁכְנִי) in the bramble”; and (Micha 7:14) “who dwells alone.” who abandons the flock Who leaves them free for anyone who comes to beat, to slay, and to spoil. A sword is on his arm and his right eye And that shepherd carries a slaughtering knife in his hand to slaughter the fat and the healthy, upon which he cast his right eye to know who are the wealthy, to spoil and finish their property. his arm shall wither In the future (as in Ezek. 25:14), “I will wreak My vengeance, etc.” The commentators, however, interpreted this as a reference to Zedekiah, an allusion to (II Kings 25:7), “and they blinded Zedekiah’s eyes.” But it is impossible to reconcile “Behold! I am setting up a shepherd in the land” as referring to Zedekiah, for seventy years had already passed after him.</html>

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Table of Contents

Zechariah 11

Zechariah 11

Notes

Cross Reference

Commentary

Rashi

Verse 1

Verse 2

Verse 3

Verse 4

Verse 5

Verse 7

Verse 8

Verse 9

Verse 10

Verse 11

Verse 12

Verse 13

Verse 14

Verse 15

Verse 16

Verse 17