Zechariah 11:6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land I will no more spare them than their shepherds do. The inhabitants of the land are to be distinguished from the poor of the flock in the next verse. By the former are meant those who in their respective stations were as wicked as the rulers, chief priests, and others, termed their shepherds, Zechariah 11:5; by the latter, those who were oppressed and were piously disposed. But I will deliver the men every one into his neighbour's hand “This verse assigns the reason for calling the people, the flock of slaughter. Nor can words more aptly describe the calamities which befell the Jews in the war which ended in the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans; when the people, having first, by their intestine broils, destroyed one another, as is set forth at large by Josephus, at length fell into the hand of him whom they had owned for their sovereign, (‘we have no king but Cesar,' John 19:15,) and who completely desolated the land for their rebellion against him.” Blayney.