Zechariah 11:1-7 ▼

1 Open your doors, O Lebanon, That fire may devour your cedars.

2 Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, Because the magnificent trees have been destroyed; Wail, O oaks of Bashan, For the inaccessible forest [on the steep mountainside] has come down.

3 There is a sound of the shepherds’ wail, For their splendor (grazing land) is ruined; There is a sound of the young lions’ roar, For the pride of the Jordan is ruined.

4 Thus says the LORD my God, “Pasture the flock doomed for slaughter,

5 whose buyers slay them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the LORD, for I have become rich!’ And their own shepherds have no pity on them nor protect them [from the wolves].

6 For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land,” declares the LORD; “but behold, I will cause the men to fall, each into the hand of another and into the hands of his [foreign] king. And the enemy will strike the land, and I will not rescue the people from their hand.”

7 So I [Zechariah] pastured the flock doomed for slaughter, truly [as the name implies] the most miserable of sheep. And I took two [shepherd’s] staffs, the one I called Favor (Grace) and the other I called Union (Bonds); so I pastured the flock.