The author does not pursue further the history of the good shepherd, but proceeds to desoribe in similar terms an evil successor. Whether he has in view Jason, the immediate successor of Onias, or Menelaus who succeeded Jason, cannot be determined; probably the latter is meant. Zechariah 11:15, which is somewhat tersely worded, means Take again the gear i.e. the staves symbolical of the aimsof a shepherd, but this time, of a foolish, i.e. a morally bad one. The curse on the bad shepherd is perhaps suggested by 1 Samuel 2:31. (See 2 Maccabees 13.) It is thought by some scholars that the fragment Zechariah 11:15-17 is continued in Zechariah 13:7-9, but more probably the latter is an independent composition of the same period. Its position in the third collection of prophecies supports this hypothesis.
Zechariah 11:12-14. A Collection of Prophecies Composed throughout in Prose in the Apocalyptic Style. The writers adopt a past standpoint from which they describe, as if they were still future, events already past at the moment of writing, as well as their anticipations for the actual future. They are thus able to show the connexion between the recent distress and the peace and prosperity which they anticipate in the near future. Zechariah 12-14 is often described as eschatological, allowably so if eschatology be understood merely as the ideas concerning the end of an existing political situation and the coming of another. But the conditions which the writers expect in the future are not essentially different from those which already exist. What they describe is not a material heaven, but a peaceful, and, consequently, glorified earth. Those passages which seem to imply the passing away or radical alteration of the physical universe are seen on a closer examination to be merely metaphorical. The language of the apocalyptists is largely derived from the older Scriptures, and is intelligible only to those who read those Scriptures sympathetically. How far some of the paragraphs in Zechariah 12-14 are homogeneous cannot be determined. The repetitions may be due to a combination of fragments of different authorship. In sense, however, Zechariah 12, Zechariah 13:1-6 may be regarded as forming one continuous passage.