“Therefore you shepherds, hear the word of Yahweh. Thus says the Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the sheep. Nor will the shepherds feed themselves any more, and I will deliver my sheep from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them. For thus says the Lord Yahweh, I myself, even I, will search for my sheep and will seek them out.”
In these remarkable word God lays out His plan for His people. First He will call the shepherds to account (‘require my sheep at their hand') and remove them from being shepherds to His sheep, so that they cannot any more profit from the sheep. They will no longer be able to ‘eat' them. Then He Himself will search for them and seek them out.
That He sought them out and brought them back to Palestine and Jerusalem we know from later history. But the calling to account and removal from under the shepherds did not fully take place then or later. Zechariah could still prophesy of the false shepherds over the sheep (chapter 11), and of His good shepherd who was coming (Ezekiel 13:7).
It was only when One came Who could proclaim Himself as the good shepherd (John 10:11; John 10:14), Who came to seek and save the lost (Luke 15:3-6; Luke 19:10), that these leaders were totally replaced and the sheep were put under new shepherds. Thus this total change awaited the coming of the prince of the house of David (Ezekiel 34:23). The so-called ‘church age' is in mind here with a vengeance, when the new Israel will come under the new shepherds under the Great Shepherd.