Zechariah 11

¹ Open your gateways, Lebanon, and let the fire burn down your cedars.

² (Wail, cypress, for felled is the cedar, the mighty ones have been brought low!) Wail, oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest has been felled!

³ The wailing of the shepherds is heard; their glorious pastures have been ruined. The roaring of the young lions is heard; the thickets of the Jordan have been laid waste.

⁴ This is how Yahweh spoke to me, ‘Pasture the sheep bred for slaughter,

⁵ whose buyers kill them and go unpunished, whose sellers say of them, “Blessed be Yahweh; now I am rich!” and their shepherds handle[*a] them without kindness.

⁶ (For no longer am I going to show kindness to the inhabitants of the world – it is Yahweh who speaks. But instead I mean to hand over every man to the next, and to his king. They shall devastate the world and I will not deliver them from their hands.)’

⁷ Then I began to pasture these sheep bred for slaughter for the sheepdealers. I took two staves: one I called Goodwill, the other Union. And so I began to pasture the sheep.

⁸ I dismissed the three shepherds in one month.[*b] But I began to dislike the sheep, and they equally detested me.

⁹ I then said, ‘I am going to pasture you no longer; let those that wish to die, die; let those that wish to perish, perish; and let those that are left devour each other’s flesh!’ .

¹⁰ I then took my staff, Goodwill, and broke it in half, to break the covenant Yahweh had made with all the peoples.[*c]

¹¹ When it was broken, that day the dealers, who were watching me, realised that this had been a word of Yahweh.

¹² I then said to them, ‘If you think it right, give me my wages; if not, never mind’. And they weighed out my wages: thirty shekels of silver.[*d]

¹³ But Yahweh told me, ‘Throw it into the treasury, this princely sum at which they have valued me’. Taking the thirty shekels of silver, I threw them into the Temple of Yahweh, into the treasury.

¹⁴ I then broke my second staff, Union, in half, to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.[*e]

¹⁵ Next, Yahweh said to me, ‘Now take the gear of an incompetent shepherd.

¹⁶ For I am now going to raise an incompetent shepherd in this country. He will not bother about the lost; he will not look for the stray; he will not heal the wounded; he will not support the weary; but he will only eat the flesh of the fat beasts and tear off their hoofs.

¹⁷ ‘Trouble is coming to the worthless shepherd who deserts the flock! May the sword strike his arm and his right eye! May his arm wither entirely, may his eye be totally blinded!’