Zechariahchapter 11
17 verses · Zechariah · 520 to 518 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
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.
It stands in Weighed out thirty pieces of silver for his wages, verses 12 to 14.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The dark chapter, between two chapters of glory. Fire devours Lebanon's cedars, shepherds wail, young lions roar over the ruined pride of the Jordan. Then Zechariah is made to act it out: 'Feed the flock of slaughter; whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty,' while traders say, Blessed be Jehovah, for I am rich. He takes two staves, Beauty and Bands, and breaks Beauty, annulling the covenant. Then he asks his wage and they weigh out thirty pieces of silver ('the goodly price that I was prized at by them') cast to the potter in the house of Jehovah, which Matthew 27 sees fulfilled in Judas's blood money and the potter's field.
Context
Prophecy · Zechariah · Zechariah overview
The world behind this chapter
Zechariah 11The history
This is the darkest chapter in Zechariah, and it is performed rather than only spoken. The prophet is told to feed "the flock of the slaughter", sheep bought by traders who fatten them for killing and get rich doing it.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
He takes two staves and names them Beauty and Bands. A shepherd carried a rod and a staff; naming them turns them into signs. Beauty stands for the covenant God made with the peoples; Bands stands for the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. He breaks both.
Then the wage. He asks to be paid, and they weigh out thirty pieces of silver. That number is fixed in Israel's law: thirty shekels is the compensation owed to an owner when an ox gores a slave to death. It is the price of a slave, a settled, unremarkable, insulting figure.
God calls it "a goodly price that I was prised at of them," which is bitter sarcasm, and tells him to throw it to the potter in the house of the LORD. The Gospel of Matthew records the thirty pieces of silver paid for Jesus being thrown into the temple and used to buy a potter's field.
The chapter closes with a foolish shepherd raised up in place of the rejected one, a leader who will not care for the lost or feed the healthy, but eats the flock and tears their hooves.
What it meant to them
The first hearers had spent the earlier chapters being promised a coming king. This one says the shepherd God sends will be valued at the going rate for a dead slave, and that rejecting him has consequences: the covering breaks, the brotherhood breaks, and worse leadership follows.
It was a warning aimed inward, at a community that had already learned once what bad shepherds cost them.
Sources cited
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets
- Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (public domain)
Where the chapter sits
Zechariah 11 falls in Two burdens (chapters 9–14). ‘Thy King cometh … riding upon an ass’ (9:9); the thirty pieces of silver (11); ‘they shall look upon me whom they have pierced’ (12:10); ‘one LORD, and his name one’ (14:9).
Thirty pieces of silver. The shepherd betrayed for the price of a slave, fulfilled at the betrayal.
Before it: Fasts and future, chapters 7–8.
The whole shape of Zechariah→The structure of this chapter
People1
Places1
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Open your doors, Lebanon: the shepherds howl
1. (vv. 1-3)
Zechariah 11:1
“Open thy doors, O Lebanon - Lebanon, whose cedars had stood, its glory, for centuries, yet could offer no resistance to him who felled them and were carried off to adorn the palaces of its conquerors (see above at Zep 2:14, and note 2. p. 276), was in Isaiah Isa 14:8; Isa 37:24 and Jeremiah Jer 22:6-7 the emblem of the glory of the Jewish state; and in Ezekiel, of Jerusalem, as the prophet himself explains it Eze 17:3, Eze 17:12; glorious, beauteous, inaccessible, so long as it was defended by God; a ready prey, when abandoned by Him.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Zechariah 11:1
“Forty years before the destruction of the temple, the tract called "Massecheth Joma" states, its doors of their own accord opened, and Rabbi Johanan in alarm said, I know that thy desolation is impending according to Zechariah's prophecy.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Zechariah 11:2
“Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen,.... By which are designed the princes, nobles, and magistrates of the land: so the Targum interprets them of kings and princes; see Nah 2:3, because all the mighty are spoiled; which is an explanation of the figurative expressions in the former clause, and in the following; and designs rich men, as the Targum paraphrases it, who at this time would be spoiled of their wealth and substance.”
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:2
“Howl, O cypress, for the cedar is fallen - Jerusalem or the temple having been likened to Lebanon and its cedars, the prophet carries on the image, speaking of the priests princes and people, under the title of firs, cypresses and oaks, trees inferior, but magnificent. He shows that it is imagery, by ascribing to them the feelings of people. The more glorious and stately, “the cedars,” were destroyed.”
Zechariah 11:3
“In order to render his prophecy impressive, Zechariah addresses Libanon; as though he was God's herald, he bids it to open its gates, for the whole wood was now given up to the fire. Had he spoken without a figure, his denunciation would not have had so much force: he therefore denounces near ruin on Lebanon and on other places.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Open thy doors, O Lebanon: The chapter opens as a dirge sung over the land itself: Lebanon's doors thrown open to the fire, its cedars devoured, the fir tree howling because the cedar has fallen, the oaks of Bashan crying because the thick forest is cut down. The commentators read the felled timber as a figure for fallen rulers and nations, the glory of Jordan laid waste alongside the shepherds who lose their flocks in the crash. Keil and Pusey trace the same collapse forward into the shepherd oracle that follows, so the taunt song reads as judgment's overture rather than a scene standing on its own.
2. (vv. 4-6)
Zechariah 11:4
“My God - God the father speaks to Christ. Of the slaughter - Appointed to the slaughter. The Jews, during four hundred and fifty years, were a flock of slaughter to the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and afterwards the Romans.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:4
“Jehovah-Messiah is the speaker. It is He who threatens to inflict the punishments (Zec 11:6, 8). The typical breaking of the staff, performed in vision by Zechariah (Zec 11:10), is fulfilled in His breaking the covenant with Judah.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Zechariah 11:5
“In short-sighted selfishness they thought they had gained their object, covetous self-aggrandizement (Lu 16:14), and hypocritically "thanked" God for their wicked gain (compare Lu 18:11). say . . . pity--In Hebrew it is singular: that is, each of those that sell them saith: Not one of their own shepherds pitieth them.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:5
“There was a general decay, nay, a destruction, of religion among them, and it was all one to them; they regarded it not. My people love to have it so, Jer. v. 31 . Though they were oppressed and broken in judgment, yet they willingly walked after the commandment, Hos. v. 11 .”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Feed the flock of the slaughter: The Lord commands the prophet to feed the flock of the slaughter, sheep already marked for the knife by their own possessors, who slay them without guilt and profit by the sale while calling it blessing. Their own shepherds do not pity them, so the Lord announces he will no more pity the land either, delivering everyone into a neighbor's hand and into the hand of his king. Henry and Gill read the doomed flock as Judah under corrupt leadership in the prophet's own day, the withdrawal of divine pity answering the shepherds' own failure of pity first.
B. Two staffs, Beauty and Bands, both broken
1. (vv. 7-8)
Zechariah 11:7
“He does as it were say, Lo, I come to do thy will, O my God! and, since this is thy will, it is mine: I will feed the flock of slaughter. Christ will care for these lost sheep; he will go about among them, teaching and healing even you, O poor of the flock! Christ did not neglect the meanest, nor overlook them for their meanness.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verse
Zechariah 11:7
“The prophetic narrative which follows, differs in its form, in some respects, from the symbolical actions of the prophets and from Zechariah’s own visions. The symbolical actions of the prophets are actions of their own: this involves acts, which it would be impossible to represent, except as a sort of drama. Such are the very central points, the feeding of the flock, which are still intelligent people who understand God’s doings: the cutting off of the three shepherds; the asking for the price; the unworthy price offered; the casting it aside.”
Zechariah 11:7
“Bands - The beauty of grace and glory, the bands of love and peace.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Zechariah 11:8
“Three shepherds also I cut off in one month - Taking this literally, some think the three shepherds mean the three Maccabees, Judas, Jonathan, and Simon; others, the three wicked high priests, Jason, Alcimus, and Menelaus; others, the three last princes of the Asmonean race, Alexander, Hyrcanus, and Antigonus. Perhaps three orders may be intended: 1. The priesthood. 2. The dictatorship, including the Scribes, Pharisees, etc. 3. The magistracy, the great sanhedrin, and the smaller councils. These were all annihilated by the Roman conquest.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:8
“Probably alluding to the last period of the siege of Jerusalem, when all authority within the city was at an end [HENDERSON]. loathed them--literally, "was straitened" as to them; instead of being enlarged towards them in love (2Co 6:11, 12). The same Hebrew as in Nu 21:4, Margin. No room was left by them for the grace of God, as His favors were rejected [CALVIN].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
the other I called Bands: The prophet himself becomes the shepherd of the doomed flock, taking two staves he names Beauty and Bands, the first standing for the covenant's grace and the second for the brotherhood binding the nation together. Three shepherds are cut off in a single month, an event the bench reads variously of failed priestly, prophetic, and royal offices, or of a swift purge of rival leaders, with the positions named and none settled. The mutual loathing that follows, the prophet's soul weary of the flock and the flock's soul abhorring him, marks the covenant already fraying before either staff is broken.
2. (vv. 9-11)
Zechariah 11:9
“Then - After that time of his patient feeding the flock, and cutting off the unfaithful shepherds. Cut off - By the sword or famine. The flesh - Either live to be besieged, 'till hunger makes the living eat the dead, or by seditions and bloody intestine quarrels, destroy each other.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Zechariah 11:10
“Even beauty - Which was the beauty and glory of them, the covenant of God, with all the blessings of it. That I might break - Declare it null. Christ calls it his covenant, for he was the mediator of it.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:10
“The Jewish church was now stripped of all its glory; its crown was profaned and cast to the ground, and all its honour laid in the dust; for God departed from it, and would no more own it for his. When Christ told them plainly that the kingdom of God should be taken from them, and given to another people, then be broke the staff of Beauty, Matt. xxi.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Zechariah 11:11
“And so the poor of the flock that waited upon Me knew - The rest were blinded; those who listened to God’s word, observed His prophet, waited on Him and observed His words, knew from the fulfillment of the beginning, that the whole was God’s word. Every darkening cloud around the devoted city was an earnest, that the storm, which should destroy it, was gathering upon it. So our Lord warned, “When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is near.”
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:11
“Note, Christ is waited on by the poor of the flock; he chose them to be with him, to be his pupils, to be his witnesses; the poor received him and his gospel, when those that had great possessions turned their backs upon him. And those that wait upon Christ, that sit at his feet, to hear and receive his words, shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, John vii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
I will not feed you: The shepherd resigns his charge outright, I will not feed you, let the dying die and the perishing perish, and let the rest devour one another, a sentence the commentators read as covenant care formally withdrawn rather than merely neglected. The staff called Beauty is cut in two, breaking the covenant the Lord had made with all the peoples, and the poor of the flock who watched him do it recognized the word of the Lord in the very breaking. Barnes and Pusey take the shattered staff as beauty forfeited, the outward favor Judah had known among the nations withdrawn along with the shepherd's protection.
C. Weighed out thirty pieces of silver for his wages
1. (vv. 12-13)
Zechariah 11:12
“And I said unto them, If ye think good,.... Not to the poor of the flock that waited on him, and knew the word of the Lord, and valued it; but to the other Jews that despised Christ and his Gospel: give me my price; or, "give my price" (i); what I am valued at by you, to Judas the betrayer: or the price due unto him for feeding the flock, such as faith in him, love to him, reverence and worship of him. So the Targum paraphrases it, "do my will".”
3 more voices on this verse
Zechariah 11:12
“He speaks as their "servant," which He was to them in order to fulfil the Father's will (Php 2:7). if not, forbear--They withheld that which He sought as His only reward, their love; yet He will not force them, but leave His cause with God (Isa 49:4, 5). Compare the type Jacob cheated of his wages by Laban, but leaving his cause in the hands of God (Ge 31:41, 42).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Zechariah 11:12
“Weighed - Which was the manner of paying money in those days. Thirty pieces - Which amounts to thirty-seven shillings and six- pence, the value of the life of a slave, Exod. xxi, 32. This was fulfilled when they paid Judas Iscariot so much to betray Christ.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Zechariah 11:12
“Thirty pieces of silver was the very sum for which Christ was sold to the chief priests; the money, when Judas would not keep it, and the chief priests would not take it back was laid out in the purchase of the potter's field. Even that sudden resolve of the chief priests was according to an ancient prophecy and the more ancient counsel and foreknowledge of God.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Zechariah 11:12
- Quoted inMatthew 27:9“Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on Him by the people of Israel,”
'thirty pieces of silver', potter's-field fulfillment (attributed to Jeremiah; contested, each view at full strength)
Zechariah 11:13
“Cast them to the potter - Or rather, cast them into the house of the Lord for the potter; all which the Jewish rulers acted over. Then - So soon as I saw what value they put upon me. I cut asunder - Christ did it really, the prophet did it in the type.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:13
“Hence Mt 27:9, in English Version, and in the oldest authorities, quotes Zechariah's words as Jeremiah's, the latter being the original author from whom Zechariah derived the groundwork of the prophecy. Compare the parallel case of Mr 1:2, 3 in the oldest manuscripts (though not in English Version), quoting Malachi's words as those of "Isaiah," the original source of the prophecy.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
If ye think good, give me my price: The prophet asks his wages of the flock he has served, and they weigh out thirty pieces of silver, the price set for a gored slave in the law (Exodus 21:32), which the bench reads as a studied insult rather than fair wages. The Lord instructs the money cast to the potter, a goodly price at which he was valued, and the prophet obeys in the house of the Lord itself, the insult delivered where the nation worships. Matthew 26:15 and 27:3-9 draw the sum and the potter's field into the betrayal of Christ, the citation attributed to Jeremy though the wording is chiefly Zechariah's, a crux the commentators address directly rather than pass over.
2. (v. 14)
Zechariah 11:14
“That I might break the brotherhood - I cannot, says Newcome, explain this passage, without supposing that the kingdom of Israel subsisted when the prophet wrote it; and that either the wars between Judah and Israel are referred to, (see 2Ki 16:5), or the captivity of the ten tribes, when the brotherly connection between these kingdoms ceased.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:14
“The breaking of the bond of union between Judah and Israel's ten tribes under Rehoboam is here the image used to represent the fratricidal discord of factions which raged within Jerusalem on the eve of its fall, while the Romans were thundering at its gates without.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
brotherhood between Judah and Israel: The second staff, Bands, is cut asunder to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel, undoing in a gesture the very unity the name proclaimed. Gill and Wesley read the act as sealing the division between the two kingdoms at the level of symbol, the political rupture of Rehoboam's day given its final prophetic verdict here. The two staves broken in sequence, grace withdrawn and then brotherhood severed, present one shepherd's resignation as a two-part covenant collapse.
D. The worthless shepherd who abandons the flockvv. 15-17
instruments of a foolish shepherd: The prophet is told to take up next the instruments of a foolish shepherd, a leader who will not visit the cut off, seek the young, heal the broken, or feed the standing, but will eat the fat and tear the very claws from the flock. The oracle turns to woe against this idol shepherd who abandons the flock outright, his arm withered and his right eye darkened, the two members that should wield the staff and watch the sheep struck useless. Henry and Barnes read the foolish shepherd as the counterpart the true shepherd of the chapter's opening exposes, the judgment on bad leadership left as history's own verdict rather than the notes naming a single figure.
Zechariah 11:16
“This implies, they shall be paid in kind. Such a shepherd in the worst type shall "tear" them for a limited time. those . . . cut off--"those perishing" [Septuagint], that is, those sick unto death, as if already cut off. the young--The Hebrew is always used of human youths, who are really referred to under the image of the young of the flock.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3 more voices on this verse
Zechariah 11:16
“Their shepherds take no care of the young ones, that need their care and are well worthy of it, as Christ does, Isa. xl. They do not heal that which was broken, which was worried and torn, but let it die of its bruises, when a little thing, in time, would have saved it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Zechariah 11:16
“For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land,.... Not in the land of Judea, but in the Roman empire; and so not Herod, nor King Agrippa, as Kimchi; nor Antiochus Epiphanes, as others; nor those wicked priests and princes, who governed after the times of Zechariah; nor the Scribes and Pharisees in Christ's times, though they are often called fools by him, and were truly foolish shepherds; nor even Titus Vespasian, who destroyed the city and temple; nor Bar Cozba, who set up for the Messiah, and was a false one; or any other of that sort.”
Zechariah 11:16
“I will raise up a shepherd in the land - Some wicked king; and Newcome supposes Hoshea may be meant. See 2Ki 17:1, 2Ki 17:2, and to such an abominable sovereign the prophecy may well apply.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Zechariah 11:17
“His arm shall wither and be dried up, so that he who would not help his friends when it was required shall not know how to help himself; his right eye shall be utterly darkened, that he shall not discern the danger that his flock is in, nor know which way to look for relief. This was fulfilled when Christ said to the Pharisees, I have come that those who see may be made blind, John ix.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Zechariah 11:17
“Woe to the idol shepherd,.... Or, "the shepherd of nothing" (w); that is, no true shepherd, that is good for nothing, for an idol is nothing in the world, 1Co 8:4 and who is an idol himself, sits in the temple of God, and is worshipped as if he was God.”
This page carries no textual note on Zechariah 11. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.