God’s Word for You

Zechariah 11:7-11 Favor and Union

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, August 24, 2022

7 So I shepherded the flock to be slaughtered, but especially the poor and weak of the flock.

Here the prophet steps back for Christ to speak through his pen. It is as if we are sitting with Jesus on the Mount of Olives in the shade of the little trees there as he is explaining everything to us in plain words, for Zechariah speaks with beautifully plain and clear language. The flock to be slaughtered included all of the opponents of Christ, “but especially” the rest of the Jews, the poor and weak, the afflicted, of the flock.

Some readers may wish to skip the next paragraph, which is about Hebrew grammar.

Grammatically, the word lacēn, which I have translated “but especially,” usually means “therefore.” In this case, an idiom seems to be employed which shows what logically follows the previous statement (that the flock to be slaughtered is in the shepherd’s care), and develops that thought rather than drawing a conclusion from it (BDB 3d ). This is something like the Lord’s statement to Cain when he said “lacēn (‘very well’) if anyone kills Cain…,” etc. (Genesis 4:15) or Job’s “‘Surely’ I spoke of things I did not understand” (Job 42:3).

And I took two staffs, one I named Favor, the other I named Union. And I tended the sheep.

The two staffs are symbols of God’s blessing to Judah in particular. Favor was God’s gracious covenant with his people, a covenant which we are about to see was soon to be revoked and ended. Union was the brotherhood between Judah and Israel (verse 14), but Israel was now gone and Judah would be going to an even worse end than the northern tribes had known, for the persecution and exile of the Jews surely continues even today. Where is there a nation in the world that does not have in its population an anti-Semitic hatred or mistrust of the Jews? Countries like to think that they are modern, advanced, liberal in the best sense of the word (that is, a socially tolerant and having welcoming attitude toward strangers and outsiders, the oppressed, poor and weak of the world’s flocks), but history, ancient and recent, puts the reality of the continuing exile of the Jews on display. Shakespeare’s Shylock understood the unending circle: “If a Jew wrong a Christian (it is) revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew… Why, revenge” (The Merchant of Venice III,1).

Christ ends this thought with his own divine truth: “I tended the sheep.” There is no scene in the Four Gospels that does not support this. Jesus taught and fed the people of Israel. Even as a boy, he amazed the priests of Jerusalem with his questions and insights (Luke 2:46-47). Carrying the cross on his bleeding back, he turned to teach the women one last lesson: “If men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31).

8 In a month I removed three shepherds.

Here Christ shows that he ended the unfit leadership of the Jews. “A month” (Hebrew, “one month”), is a short time. And Jesus’ ministry, by any accounting, was brief: just three years and a few months. The ‘three shepherds” represent the three types of ordained leaders over God’s Old Testament church. These were the priests, the prophets, and the other rulers (the judges and the council of the Sanhedrin) who were raised up briefly by God in certain emergencies. Besides these, others were at work in Jesus’ time, including the scribes, and certain sects like the Pharisees and Sadducees. They plagued the people because the devil and his goblin band always seek to ruin what is good and right in the garden of the Lord. There are no longer any priests serving Jews anywhere in the world, nor are there prophets. What amounts to a Sanhedrin today is only an echo of the former council, and none of its judgments have the blessing of God anymore.

I became impatient with the flock, and they hated me. 9 Then I said, “I will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die. Let what is going to be destroyed be destroyed. And let the women who are left devour each other’s flesh.”

God’s patience is long; too long, it would seem, for some people (2 Peter 3:3-4). But when he has been thoroughly rejected, as the Jews of Jerusalem rejected Jesus, he says: “I won’t be their shepherd. You can go off and whatever will happen can happen. Let the dying die, etc.” And the end of verse 9 is especially shocking. I have translated as literally as I could even though most public translations do not bring out the feminine gender present in the final phrase (four of the five Hebrew words have special feminine endings). The last ones to die in a war are usually the women who are left as widows with no one to support them or help them. They would try to stay alive by whatever means they could, but it would be a terrible, lingering, obscene death.

10 And I took Favor (my staff) and I broke it, ending the covenant that I had made with all the nations. 11 So it ended on that day, and the poor and weak of the flock, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the LORD.

In the time of Jesus, the Old Testament covenant would come to an end. His special grace and favor would end. The Jews wanted to rely on themselves for their salvation, and the Lord’s response was to break off his special protection. What will come of this, relying on yourself? “The one who sows to please his sinful flesh will reap destruction from that flesh” (Galatians 6:8), or as Luther says, “To trust in the sinful flesh is to trust your own assassin” (LW 16:112).

But the covenant is broken only with respect to the Jews. “The poor and weak of the flock who were watching me” still knew the Word of the Lord. Those, the poor Jews who were being devoured by their leaders, rulers and shepherds in the days of Jesus, and who put their trust in Jesus, did not remain Jews according to their faith, as if they went on waiting for the Messiah to come. They knew that Christ and the Messiah are the same, one and the same. From the moment that they put their faith in him they were no longer Jews, but Christians, as we see throughout the Gospels, long before the word was even coined in Antioch (Acts 11:26). They were hated by their former fellow-Jews, seen as traitors, and for many other reasons, malice and envy, being hated and hating (Titus 3:3), and even for the simplest reason of all, “I hate him, for he is a Christian… Cursed be my tribe, if I forgive him!” (Merchant of Venice, I:3). But God has had mercy on that poor and weak little flock, grafting Gentiles into it by the millions and yet one by one, grafted in like a wild olive shoot in among the others, so that we all now share in Christ (Romans 11:17). “Although you have been forsaken and hated, I will make you the everlasting pride and the joy of all generations” (Isaiah 60:15). Thank God with your whole heart and life that you were brought into his family, no matter what your heritage, whether Abraham himself is your blood ancestor, or whether for all you know you are the last living descendant of the line of Cain, or Goliath, or Pontius Pilate. Leave that heritage behind you, and be thrilled that Christ has called you and offered you forgiveness, life, and salvation. As our Catechism teaches: “For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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