Zechariah 11:1-13 ▼

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

2 Wail, cypress tree, for the cedar has fallen, because the stately ones are destroyed. Wail, you oaks of Bashan, for the strong forest has come down.

3 A voice of the wailing of the shepherds! For their glory is destroyed—a voice of the roaring of young lions! For the pride of the Jordan is ruined.

4 Yahweh my God says: “Feed the flock of slaughter.

5 Their buyers slaughter them and go unpunished. Those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be Yahweh, for I am rich;’ and their own shepherds don’t pity them.

6 For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land,” says Yahweh; “but, behold, I will deliver every one of the men into his neighbor’s hand and into the hand of his king. They will strike the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver them.”

7 So I fed the flock to be slaughtered, especially the oppressed of the flock. I took for myself two staffs. The one I called “Favor” and the other I called “Union”, and I fed the flock.

8 I cut off the three shepherds in one month; for my soul was weary of them, and their soul also loathed me.

9 Then I said, “I will not feed you. That which dies, let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let those who are left eat each other’s flesh.”

10 I took my staff Favor and cut it apart, that I might break my covenant that I had made with all the peoples.

11 It was broken in that day; and thus the poor of the flock that listened to me knew that it was Yahweh’s word.

12 I said to them, “If you think it best, give me my wages; and if not, keep them.” So they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver.

13 Yahweh said to me, “Throw it to the potter—the handsome price that I was valued at by them!” I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in Yahweh’s house.