CRITICAL NOTES.
Zechariah 11:4.] The cause of the ruin. Feed] The prophet to act the part of a good shepherd. Flock] Jewish nation.
Zechariah 11:5. Possessors] Lit buyers, who think they can sell or slay for their own advantage.
Zechariah 11:6. I] Divine pity would not be shown to them; they would be left to civil discord and foreign rule. King] Roman emperor (John 19:15).
THE FLOCK OF SLAUGHTER.—Zechariah 11:4-6
The prophet here performs in vision the acts enjoined, and becomes a representative of the Messiah, who feeds those willing to be fed, and punishes those who reject him. But by obstinate wickedness, instead of becoming “the sheep of his pasture,” they become “the flock of slaughter,” doomed to destruction.
I. The shepherds of the flock were worthless. Not merely negligent, but very wicked.
1. They had no compassion. “Their own shepherds pity them not.” Sad when ministers have no benevolent feeling for their flocks—when rulers in every department under their control are devoid of conscience.
2. They were avaricious. They bought and sold, to make gain of the flock. They sought only to gratify self and covetous desires. “All other love is extinguished by self love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy sink under it” [Epicurus].
3. They were cruel. “Whose possessors slay them.” In ruthless cruelty “they ate the fat, and clothed themselves with the wool, and killed them that were fed.” “Yea, they are greedy dogs, which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter.”
4. They are hypocritical. They say, “Blessed be the Lord.” They are cruel and oppressive, yet profess to be religious! They succeed in ways which God abhors and reprobates, and then thank God for their riches! Sin is most daring when committed and defended under the pretence of piety, and claiming the approval of God in success. Sanctimonious hypocrisy is often displayed in covetousness and self-aggrandizement. “Hypocrites do the devil’s drudgery in Christ’s livery,” says one.
II. The flock itself is given up to destruction.
1. Divine pity was withdrawn. God had often displayed compassionate forbearance towards them, but now he “will no more pity the inhabitants of the land.”
2. Evil discord rent them asunder. The zealots and factious Jews expelled and slew one another in the siege of Jerusalem. “I will deliver the men, every one into his neighbour’s hand.”
3. The land was smitten by the foe. “They shall smite the land.” The people generally and individually were delivered into the hands of the Roman emperor. With indignant voice they rejected their own lawful ruler, and cried, “We have no king but Cœsar!” They were dispossessed of their trust, and their precious inheritance was given to others. Those who should have been protectors became oppressors. Without friends or helpers, they were destroyed as a nation, “and live only to perpetuate the memory of their past history, and teach more vividly its great lessons of sin and retribution.” “Out of their hand I will not deliver them.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
1. The wrerched flock. Forsaken and flayed by the shepherds, counted all day for the slaughter.
2. The tender compassion of Jehovah. “Feed them,” foster and preserve them with affectionate care. “O the goodness of God to a nation so shamelessly, so lawlessly wicked. He himself, the Shepherd of Israel, neglected no good office in seeking and feeding them; was careful to raise up shepherds for them (Micah 5:5), till at length he sent the Man, Christ Jesus, the Chief Shepherd, who came to look up the lost sheep of the house of Israel, whom (to move compassion and affection) he here calleth the sheep of slaughter, until the time prefixed for their total dispersion, by reason of ingratitude” [Trapp].
1. Wickedness declared to be innocent. “They slay them, and hold themselves not guilty.” They thought there was no wrong in it, and would not be called to account for it. “All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the Lord” (Jeremiah 1:6-7).
2. Wickedness claiming God as its associate. “Blessed be the Lord.” Can anything be more offensive to God than to thank him for the gains of oppression and fraud! “To what point does not art reach? Some learn even to weep with grace” [Ovid].
3. Wickedness justified by success. “I am rich.” I have succeeded in business, prospered in family and estate, therefore I must be right. God has blessed me, I may thank him! “Success consecrates the foulest crimes [Seneca]. Thus while “through covetousness they with feigned words made merchandise of men,” they at the same time sought to impose upon the omniscient God, and to put him off with words and forms, in which there was no heart and no moral or spiritual obedience. There could not be a juster description of the leading features in the character of the Pharisees. These were avarice and hypocrisy: their hypocrisy being, as is the wont of religious dissemblers, accompanied with a large amount of ostentation and parade. Mark the manner in which our Lord speaks of them (Matthew 23:14; Matthew 23:23-25).
Zechariah 11:6. No more pity.
1. God’s pity is very great. Had been displayed in wonderful ways to his people, and is to us.
2. But this pity is limited. “No more.” Forbearance will reach its limit, and heavy woes will fall upon those who despise it. Observe the evils threatened—(a) Deadly feuds; (b) Foreign yoke; (c) Dispossession of land; and (d) Helpless misery. “They shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver them.”
“Mercy to him that shows it is the rule” [Cowper].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 11
Zechariah 11:5. Rich. It is success that colours all in life; success makes fools admired, makes villains honest [Thomson]. Let them call it mischief: when it is past and prospered, it will be virtue [Ben Jonson].
Zechariah 11:6. Deliver. Such was the fury of contending factions, that all parts of the city and the very temple itself were filled with slaughter. In their mutual frenzy, they burned the very granaries of corn which should have sustained them, and destroyed the magazines of arms which should have defended them. And such was the pressure of the famine, that parents and children, husbands and wives, tore the food from each other’s mouths, scanty and bad as it was, and, as a subsequent verse hints, fed on the very bodies of the dead, envying them the mean while the cessation of their sufferings [Wardlaw].