< Zechariah 11 >
1 Open, O Lebanon, your doors, And fire devours among your cedars.
2 Howl, O fir, for the cedar has fallen, For their majestic ones were destroyed, Howl, you oaks of Bashan, For the enclosed forest has come down,
3 A voice of the howling of the shepherds! For their robe of honor was destroyed, A voice of the roaring of young lions! For the excellence of Jordan was destroyed.
4 Thus said my God YHWH: “Feed the flock of the slaughter,
5 Whose buyers slay them, and are not guilty, And their sellers say, Blessed [is] YHWH, And I am rich, And their shepherds have no pity on them.
6 For I no longer have pity on inhabitants of the land, A declaration of YHWH, And behold, I am causing man to come forth, Each into the hand of his neighbor, And into the hand of his king, And they have beaten down the land, And I do not deliver out of their hand.”
7 And I feed the flock of slaughter, even you, you afflicted of the flock; and I take two staffs to myself; I have called one Pleasantness, and I have called the other Bands, and I feed the flock.
8 And I cut off the three shepherds in one month, and my soul is grieved with them, and also their soul has abhorred me.
9 And I say, “I do not feed you, the dying, let die; and the cut off, let be cut off; and the remaining ones, let each eat the flesh of its neighbor.”
10 And I take my staff Pleasantness, and cut it apart, to make void my covenant that I had made with all the peoples:
11 and it is broken in that day, and the afflicted of the flock who are observing me know well, that it [is] a word of YHWH.
12 And I say to them: “If good in your eyes, give my hire, and if not, refrain”; and they weigh out my hire—thirty pieces of silver.
13 And YHWH says to me, “Cast it to the potter”; the good price that I have been prized at by them, and I take the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them [into] the house of YHWH, to the potter.
14 And I cut apart my second staff, Bands, To break the unity between Judah and Israel.
15 And YHWH says to me, “Again take to yourself the instrument of a foolish shepherd.
16 For behold, I am raising up a shepherd in the land, The cut off he does not inspect, The shaken off he does not seek, And the broken he does not heal, The standing he does not sustain, And the flesh of the fat he eats, And their hooves he breaks off.
17 Woe [to] the worthless shepherd, forsaking the flock, A sword [is] on his arm, and on his right eye, His arm is utterly dried up, And his right eye is very dim!”
