Zechariah 11:12 Komentář

God's prophet, who, in the chapters before, was an ambassador sent to promise peace, is here a herald sent to declare war. The Jewish nation shall recover its prosperity, and shall flourish for some time and become considerable; it shall be very happy, at length, in the coming of the long-expected Messiah, in the preaching of his gospel, and in the setting up of his standard there. But, when thereby the chosen remnant among them are effectually called in and united to Christ, the body of the nation, persisting in unbelief, shall be utterly abandoned and given up to ruin, for rejecting Christ; and it is this that is foretold here in this chapter - the Jews rejecting Christ, which was their measure-filling sin, and the wrath which for that sin came upon them to the uttermost. Here is, I. A prediction of the destruction itself that should come upon the Jewish nation (Zac 11:1-3). II. The putting of it into the hands of the Messiah. 1. He is charged with the custody of that flock (Zac 11:4-6). 2. He undertakes it, and bears rule in it (Zac 11:7, Zac 11:8). 3. Finding it perverse, he gives it up (Zac 11:9), breaks his shepherd's staff (Zac 11:10, Zac 11:11), resents the indignities done him and the contempt put upon him (Zac 11:12, Zac 11:13), and then breaks his other staff (Zac 11:14). 4. He turns them over into the hands of foolish shepherds, who, instead of preventing, shall complete their ruin, and both the blind leaders and the blind followers shall fall together into the ditch (Zac 11:15-17). This is foretold to the poor of the flock before it comes to pass, that, when it does come to pass, they may not be offended.

INTRODUCTION TO ZECHARIAH 11 This chapter contains a prophecy of the destruction of the Jews, and shows the causes and reasons of it; and is concluded with a prediction concerning antichrist. The destruction of the temple and city of Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of it, is signified by figurative expressions, Zac 11:1 which occasions an howling among the shepherds or rulers of Israel, on account of whose cruelty and covetousness the wrath of God came upon them without mercy, Zac 11:3 but inasmuch as there were a remnant according to the election of grace among them, named the flock of the slaughter, Christ is called upon to feed them; who undertakes it, and prepares for it, Zac 11:4 but being abhorred by the shepherds, whom he therefore loathed and cut off, he determines to leave the people to utter ruin and destruction, Zac 11:8 and, as a token of it, breaks the two staves asunder he had took to feed them with, Zac 11:10 and, as an instance of their ingratitude to him, and which is a justification of his conduct towards them, notice is taken of his being valued at and sold for thirty pieces of silver, Zac 11:12 but, in the place of these shepherds cut off, it is suggested that another should arise, who is described by his folly, negligence, and cruelty, Zac 11:15 to whom a woe is denounced, Zac 11:17.

And I said unto them, If ye think good,.... Not to the poor of the flock that waited on him, and knew the word of the Lord, and valued it; but to the other Jews that despised Christ and his Gospel: give me my price; or, "give my price" (i); what I am valued at by you, to Judas the betrayer: or the price due unto him for feeding the flock, such as faith in him, love to him, reverence and worship of him. So the Targum paraphrases it, "do my will". Kimchi says the price is repentance, and good works: and if not, forbear; unless all is done freely, willingly, and cheerfully; see Eze 2:5 or, if worth nothing, give nothing: So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver; the price a servant was valued at, Exo 21:32 see the fulfilment of this prophecy in Mat 26:15. The Jews own (k) that this prophecy belongs to the Messiah; but wrongly interpret it of thirty precepts given by him: in just retaliation and righteous judgment, thirty Jews were sold by the Romans for a penny, by way of contempt of them (l). (i) "date mercedem meam", Vatablus, Calvin, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius. (k) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 98. fol. 85. 3. (l) Egesippus de Urb. excidio Anacep. p. 680.

Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me. [Zechariah 11:12]

(Verse 12, 13.) And I said to them: If it is good in your eyes, give me my reward, and if not, stop; and they gave me my reward, thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, Throw them (Vulgate: it) to the potter, a handsome price at which I was appraised by them: and I took the thirty pieces of silver, and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter. LXX: And I will say to them: If it is good in your sight, give those who determine my reward, or refuse. And they set my wages at thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me: Put them in the melting pot, and see if they are proven, as I have been proven for them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and put them in the house of the Lord in the melting pot. To the poor shepherds of the Israelite flock, who keep my commandments, it is the word of the Lord that I spoke, and the truths that I said, he said to them, that is, to the poor shepherds, if it pleases you (for you are men and I created you with free will, to whom I also spoke in the wilderness: If you listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land (Isa. 1)) for this assumption, by which I rejected the whole human race, and chose you as my special flock, and desired to have a small cord, give me my wages, that is, keep my commandments. But if you do not want to give payment, and it is not pleasing in your eyes to be considered in my name, openly refuse, and do what you want. And those indeed responded to Moses: Whatever the Lord says, we will do (Exod. XXIV, 3). But in the end of times, because I chose them from among the nations, and I freed them from the iron furnace of Egypt, they paid my payment with thirty silver coins, giving them to the Jewish traitor for my blood (Matt. XXVI). And he said, as the prophet said, the Lord said to me, or rather, the Savior, whose words are before, that the Father spoke to him, testifying: Cast it to the sculptor: for which in Hebrew is read Joser (), that is, the sculptor, whom we can call the maker and potter. And the meaning is: Cast my price to the sculptor, who is the Creator and maker of all things. And he did not say, put down; but, cast, so that the payment of the Lord could be judged by the judgment of the sculptor and the potter. And ironically, seeing his own worth, that is, the divine majesty, for thirty pieces of silver, and being betrayed for such a cheap price: 'This,' he says, 'is the price at which I am appraised by them; but it should be read more closely with the mockery and derision of the speaker: 'So much did my people, and the poor flock once chosen by me as children, judge me worthy of buying and selling. And I, says the Lord through the prophet, as it had been commanded to me by God, took thirty pieces of silver and did not keep them, but threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter: in the house of the Lord, I made them be given to the priests and Pharisees, the very ones who sold me, confessing: 'I have sinned, betraying innocent blood' (Matthew 27:4). But because they considered it the price of blood, they did not want to return it to the treasury, that is, the treasury; but they bought with it a potter's field as a burial place for strangers. For all of us who were foreigners and strangers to the Law have been redeemed by his precious blood, and we are buried and rest in the house of the potter and the Creator of all. For πλάστῃ and fictore, I have once interpreted as a sculptor, forced by the ambiguity of the word, which signifies both a sculptor and a maker of statues. The Jews, interpreting this passage maliciously, mention thirty pieces of silver, and they mention thirty commandments of the Law, which they are commanded to do in the Law, and again thirty-six others which are prohibited in the Law, and they say that they should return the silver of the Lord's commandments to their own goldsmith and maker: but because they did not want to do this, they were rejected. I wanted to briefly indicate what they think, otherwise I am tired of going through their tedious explanation, so let's move on to the rest.

Hear now in regard to thirty pieces of silver: “And I will say to them, ‘If it seems good to you, give me my wages, or refuse.’ ” One recompense is due me for curing the blind and the lame, and I receive another; instead of thanksgiving, dishonor, and instead of worship, insult. Do you see how Scripture foresaw all this? “And they counted out my wages, thirty pieces of silver.” O prophetic accuracy! A great and unerring wisdom of the Holy Spirit! For he did not say ten or twenty but thirty, exactly the right amount. Tell also what happened to this payment, O prophet! Does he who received it keep it, or does he give it back? And after its return what becomes of it? The prophet says, “So I took thirty pieces of silver, and I cast them into the house of the Lord, into the foundry.” Compare with the prophecy of the Gospel, which says, “Judas repented and flung the pieces of silver into the temple and withdrew.”

You observe that he was appraised by the traitor’s covetousness at thirty pieces of silver. Of this also the prophet speaks, “And I said to them, If you think good, give me my price, or if not, forbear”; and “presently, I received from them,” he says, “thirty pieces of silver, and I cast them into the house of the Lord, into the foundry.” Is not this what is written in the Gospels, that Judas, “repenting of what he had done, brought back the money, and threw it down in the temple and departed”? Well did he call it his price, as though blaming and upbraiding. For he had done so many good works among them, he had given sight to the blind, feet to the lame, the power of walking to the palsied, life also to the dead; for all these good works they paid him death as his price, appraised at thirty pieces of silver. It is related also in the Gospels that he was bound. This also the word of prophecy had foretold by Isaiah, saying, “Woe to their soul, who have devised a most evil device against themselves, saying, ‘Let us bind the just one, seeing that he is unprofitable to us.’ ”

The commencement of this chapter relates to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish polity, probably by the Babylonians; at least in the first instance, as the fourth verse speaks of the people thus threatened as the prophet's charge, Zac 11:1-6. The prophet then gives an account of the manner in which he discharged his office, and the little value that was put on his labors. And this he does by symbolical actions, a common mode of instruction with the ancient prophets, Zac 11:7-14. After the prophet, on account of the unsuccessfulness of his labors, had broken the two crooks which were the true badges of his pastoral office, (to denote the annulling of God's covenant with them, and their consequent divisions and dispersions), he is directed to take instruments calculated to hurt and destroy, perhaps an iron crook, scrip, and stones, to express by these symbols the judgments which God was about to inflict on them by wicked rulers and guides, who should first destroy the flock, and in the end be destroyed themselves, Zac 11:15-17. Let us now view this prophecy in another light, as we are authorized to do by Scripture, Mat 27:7. In this view the prophet, in the person of the Messiah, sets forth the ungrateful returns made to him by the Jews, when he undertook the office of shepherd in guiding and governing them; how they rejected him, and valued him and his labors at the mean and contemptible price of thirty pieces of silver, the paltry sum for which Judas betrayed him. Upon which he threatens to destroy their city and temple; and to give them up to the hands of such guides and governors as should have no regard to their welfare.

If ye think good, give me my price - "Give me my hire." And we find they rated it contemptuously; thirty pieces of silver being the price of a slave, Exo 21:32.

DESTRUCTION OF THE SECOND TEMPLE AND JEWISH POLITY FOR THE REJECTION OF MESSIAH. (Zec. 11:1-17) Open thy doors, O Lebanon--that is, the temple so called, as being constructed of cedars of Lebanon, or as being lofty and conspicuous like that mountain (compare Eze 17:3; Hab 2:17). Forty years before the destruction of the temple, the tract called "Massecheth Joma" states, its doors of their own accord opened, and Rabbi Johanan in alarm said, I know that thy desolation is impending according to Zechariah's prophecy. CALVIN supposes Lebanon to refer to Judea, described by its north boundary: "Lebanon," the route by which the Romans, according to JOSEPHUS, gradually advanced towards Jerusalem. MOORE, from HENGSTENBERG, refers the passage to the civil war which caused the calling in of the Romans, who, like a storm sweeping through the land from Lebanon, deprived Judea of its independence. Thus the passage forms a fit introduction to the prediction as to Messiah born when Judea became a Roman province. But the weight of authority is for the former view.

I said--The prophet here represents the person of Jehovah-Messiah. If ye think good--literally, "If it be good in your eyes." Glancing at their self-sufficient pride in not deigning to give Him that return which His great love in coming down to them from heaven merited, namely, their love and obedience. "My price"; my reward for pastoral care, both during the whole of Israel's history from the Exodus, and especially the three and a half years of Messiah's ministry. He speaks as their "servant," which He was to them in order to fulfil the Father's will (Phi 2:7). if not, forbear--They withheld that which He sought as His only reward, their love; yet He will not force them, but leave His cause with God (Isa 49:4-5). Compare the type Jacob cheated of his wages by Laban, but leaving his cause in the hands of God (Gen 31:41-42). So . . . thirty pieces of silver--thirty shekels. They not only refused Him His due, but added insult to injury by giving for Him the price of a gored bond-servant (Exo 21:32; Mat 26:15). A freeman was rated at twice that sum.

Israel under the Good Shepherd and the Foolish One - Zechariah 11 In the second half of the "burden" upon the world-power, which is contained in this chapter, the thought indicated in Zac 10:3 - namely, that the wrath of Jehovah is kindled over the shepherds when He visits His flock, the house of Judah - is more elaborately developed, and an announcement is made of the manner in which the Lord visits His people, and rescues it out of the hands of the world-powers who are seeking to destroy it, and then, because it repays His pastoral fidelity with ingratitude, gives it up into the hands of the foolish shepherd, who will destroy it, but who will also fall under judgment himself in consequence. The picture sketched in Zac 9:8-10, Zac 9:12, of the future of Israel is thus completed, and enlarged by the description of the judgment accompanying the salvation; and through this addition an abuse of the proclamation of salvation is prevented. But in order to bring out into greater prominence the obverse side of the salvation, there is appended to the announcement of salvation in Zac 10:1-12 the threat of judgment in Zac 11:1-3, without anything to explain the transition; and only after that is the attitude of the Lord towards His people and the heathen world, out of which the necessity for the judgment sprang, more fully described. Hence this chapter divides itself into three sections: viz., the threat of judgment (Zac 11:1-3); the description of the good shepherd (Zac 11:4-14); and the sketch of the foolish shepherd (Zac 11:15-17).

With the breaking of the staff Favour, the shepherd of the Lord has indeed withdrawn one side of his pastoral care from the flock that he had to feed, but his connection with it is not yet entirely dissolved. This takes place first of all in Zac 11:12-14, when the flock rewards him for his service with base ingratitude. Zac 11:12. "And I said to them, If it seem good to you, give me my wages; but if not, let it alone: and they weighed me as wages thirty silverlings. Zac 11:13. Then Jehovah said to me, Throw it to the potter, the splendid price at which I am valued by them; and so I took the thirty silverlings, and threw it into the house of Jehovah to the potter. Zac 11:14. And I broke my second staff Bands, to destroy the brotherhood between Judah and Israel." אליהם (to them), so far as the grammatical construction is concerned, might be addressed to the wretched among the sheep, inasmuch as they were mentioned last. But when we bear in mind that the shepherd began to feed not only the wretched of the sheep, but the whole flock, and that he did not give up any one portion of the flock by breaking the staff Favour, we are forced to the conclusion that the words are addressed to the whole flock, and that the demand for wages is only intended to give the flock an opportunity for explaining whether it is willing to acknowledge his feeding, and appreciate it rightly. The fact that the prophet asks for wages from the sheep may be explained very simply from the fact that the sheep represent men. The demand for wages is not to be understood as implying that the shepherd intended to lay down his office as soon as he had been paid for his service; for in that case he would have asked for the wages before breaking the first staff. But as he does not ask for it till afterwards, and leaves it to the sheep to say whether they are willing to give it or not ("if it seem good to you"), this demand cannot have any other object than to call upon the sheep to declare whether they acknowledge his service, and desire it to be continued. By the wages the commentators have very properly understood repentance and faith, or piety of heart, humble obedience, and heartfelt, grateful love. These are the only wages with which man can discharge his debt to God. They weighed him now as wages thirty shekels of silver (on the omission of sheqel or keseph, see Ges. 120, 4, Anm. 2). "Thirty," - not to reward him for the one month, or for thirty days - that is to say, to give him a shekel a day for his service (Hofm., Klief.): for, in the first place, it is not stated in Zac 11:8 that he did not feed them longer than a month; and secondly, a shekel was not such very small wages for a day's work, as the wages actually paid are represented as being in Zac 11:13. They rather pay him thirty shekels, with an allusion to the fact that this sum was the compensation for a slave that had been killed (Exo 21:32), so that it was the price at which a bond-slave could be purchased (see at Hos 3:2). By paying thirty shekels, they therefore give him to understand that they did not estimate his service higher than the labour of a purchased slave. To offer such wages was in fact "more offensive than a direct refusal" (Hengstenberg). Jehovah therefore describes the wages ironically as "a splendid value that has been set upon me." As the prophet fed the flock in the name of Jehovah, Jehovah regards the wages paid to His shepherd as paid to Himself, as the value set upon His personal work on behalf of the nation, and commands the prophet to throw this miserable sum to the potter. But the verb hishlı̄kh (throw) and the contemptuous expression used in relation to the sum paid down, prove unmistakeably that the words "throw to the potter" denote the actual casting away of the money. And this alone is sufficient to show that the view founded upon the last clause of the verse, "I threw it into the house of Jehovah to the potter," viz., that hayyōtsēr signifies the temple treasury, and that yōtsēr is a secondary form or a copyist's error for אוצר, is simply a mistaken attempt to solve the real difficulty. God could not possibly say to the prophet, They wages paid for my service are indeed a miserable amount, yet put it in the temple treasury, for it is at any rate better than nothing. The phrase "throw to the potter" (for the use of hishlı̄kh with 'el pers. compare Kg1 19:19) is apparently a proverbial expression for contemptuous treatment (= to the knacker), although we have no means of tracing the origin of the phrase satisfactorily. Hengstenberg's assumption, that "to the potter" is the same as to an unclean place, is founded upon the assumption that the potter who worked for the temple had his workshop in the valley of Ben-hinnom, which, having been formerly the scene of the abominable worship of Moloch, was regarded with abhorrence as an unclean place after its defilement by Josiah (Kg2 23:10), and served as the slaughter-house for the city. But it by no means follows from Jer 18:2 and Jer 19:2, that this potter dwelt in the valley of Ben-hinnom; whereas Jer 19:1, Jer 19:2 lead rather to the opposite conclusion. If, for example, God there says to Jeremiah, "Go and buy a pitcher of the potter (Jer 19:1), and go out into the valley of Ben-hinnom, which lies in front of the potter's gate" (Jer 19:2), it follows pretty clearly from these words that the pottery itself stood within the city gate. But even if the potter had had his workshop in the valley of Ben-hinnom, which was regarded as unclean, he would not have become unclean himself in consequence, so that men could say "to the potter," just as we should say "zum Schinder" (to the knacker); and if he had been looked upon as unclean in this way, he could not possibly have worked for the temple, or supplied the cooking utensils for use in the service of God - namely, for boiling the holy sacrificial flesh. The attempts at an explanation made by Grotius and Hofmann are equally unsatisfactory. The former supposes that throwing anything before the potter was equivalent to throwing it upon the heap of potsherds; the latter, that it was equivalent to throwing it into the dirt. But the potter had not to do with potsherds only, and potter's clay is not street mire. The explanation given by Koehler is more satisfactory; namely, that the meaning is, "The amount is just large enough to pay a potter for the pitchers and pots that have been received from him, and which are thought of so little value, that men easily comfort themselves when one or the other is broken." But this does not do justice to hishlı̄kh involves the idea of contempt, and earthen pots were things of insignificant worth. The execution of the command, "I threw it ('ōthō, the wages paid me) into the house of Jehovah to the potter," cannot be understood as signifying "into the house of Jehovah, that it might be taken thence to the potter" (Hengstenberg). If this were the meaning, it should have been expressed more clearly. As the words read, they can only be understood as signifying that the potter was in the house of Jehovah when the money was thrown to him; that he had either some work to do there, or that he had come there to bring some earthenware for the temple kitchens (cf. Zac 14:20). This circumstance is not doubt a significant one; but the meaning is not merely to show that it was as the servant of the Lord, or in the name and by the command of Jehovah, that the prophet did this, instead of keeping the money (Koehler); for Zechariah could have expressed this in two or three words in a much simpler and clearer manner. The house of Jehovah came into consideration here rather as the place where the people appeared in the presence of their God, either to receive or to solicit the blessings of the covenant from Him. What took place in the temple, was done before the face of God, that God might call His people to account for it.