Zechariah 11:9 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Then; after that time of his patient and vigilant feeding the flock, and after his cutting off the three unfaithful shepherds, and after the ill resentment he met with for it; when he deserved love and thanks for it, he is repaid with disdain and hatred by the people, as well as by the shepherds; when he saw all this, then, &c. Thus they rejected Christ, the true Shepherd. I will not feed you; next he rejecteth them, he will no more take care of them, or provide for them. That that dieth, let it die; that which is ready to die, and will not be cured, but hath rejected the Shepherd's love and skill, let it die; it is like that. If ye believe not, ye shall die in your sins. That that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; either the same repeated, to confirm and affect them more, or else it intends to leave them naked and unguarded to their enemy, to cut them off by the sword or famine, &c. Let the rest eat every one the flesh of another; either live to be besieged till hunger and famine make the living eat the dead, or cruelly kill that they may eat, as threatened, Deuteronomy 28:52-58; or else by seditions and bloody intestine quarrels destroy each other: all which happened to them in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans.