And I took my staff, [even] Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.
Ver. 10. And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder] In token that he had cast off his office of shepherd, he breaks his staff, the ensign and instrument of his office; and this in token that he had broke
his covenant which he had made with all the people] i.e. with all the tribes of Israel, which were as so many different peoples, over whom God had reigned (but now rejected), and in whom he delighted more than in all the nations of the world besides. The saints are called all things, Colossians 1:20, because they are of more worth than a world of wicked men, Hebrews 11:38. And the Jews have a saying, that those 70 souls that went with Jacob into Egypt were as much as all the 70 nations in the world. What great account God once made of them above others, see Isa 43:3-4 Deuteronomy 33:29. But now, behold, they are discarded and discovenanted:
I have broken my covenant,] and in Zechariah 11:11 it was broken in that day that is, in the day that they put themselves out of my precincts, I put them out of my protection. That peace that I had granted to my people, that they should be no more molested by any strange nation (which was verified from the time of the Maccabees till a little before the coming of Christ), shall now be forfeited. The glory is departed, the Beauty broken in pieces, the golden head of the picture, religion, defaced, and good order banished; all things out of order both in Church and State (for so they were at the time when Christ "came to his own, and his own received him not": he found them in Dothan, that is, in defection, as Joseph found his brethren); therefore he now disowns and disavows them as much as once he did when they had made a golden calf. "Thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves," saith God to Moses, Exodus 32:7, upon whom he now fathereth them, as if he had never been in covenant with them. Danaeus upon this text concludeth that the Jews are now strangers from the covenant of God; and that this is hereby confirmed, for that they are without baptism, the seal of the covenant.