Then I cut asunder mine other staff, [even] Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
Ver. 14. Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands] Or, binders; the bond of unity, say some; by sending a spirit of perversities among them, such as that was which made way for the ruin of Egypt, Isaiah 19:14; Isaiah 19:16,17. But see for the sense hereof what is noted. See Trapp on " Zec 11:7 " God seems to say that he will now no more govern this people in mildness and clemency; nor yet exercise his shepherdly severity in saving corrections and visitations, as formerly he had done; but utterly reject and disject them.
That I might break the brotherhood] Germanitatem, saith the Vulgate. Mala quaedam olitores Germanitatis vocant, semper cohaerentia, semper gemella, nunquam singula in foetu. Such were Judah and Israel till the ten tribes revolted from the house of David. After which, many of the better affected Israelites went over to Rehoboam; besides those of the ten tribes that returned with them out of Babylon, twelve thousand at least, as may be gathered out of Ezra 2:64 1 Chronicles 9:3. And in Jerusalem dwelt of the children of Judah, and of the children of Benjamin, and of the children of Ephraim and Manasseh; and between them there grew a brotherly conjunction and consociation, a league of love, as the Septuagint render it, or a national covenant (διαθηκην). This God threateneth here to dissolve and disannul; so that Ephraim shall be against Manasseh, and Manasseh against Ephraim, and both against Judah, Isaiah 9:21. Not many years before Christ's coming in the flesh those two brethren, Hircanus and Aristobulus, disagreed about the government and high priesthood; and called in Pompey, who subdued the country, and reduced it into a province. And not many years after Christ's passion Titus, the Roman emperor, utterly broke the brotherhood between Judah and Israel; and so scattered them, that like those priests in Ezra, they have utterly lost their pedigree, know not one another by their tribe or family, nor yet agree within themselves, Ezra 2:62. Those of them that were in Spain, and are now banished into the East (A.D. 1492), they hold to be of the tribe of Judah; and the other, in Germany and Italy, to be of the tribe of Benjamin; who in honour of the more noble tribe, and to correspond with them the better, do learn the Spanish tongue, which those still retain.