translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: ZEC

label: NET study note

text: In this poetic section, plants and animals provide the imagery for rulers, especially evil ones (cf. respectively Isa 10:33-34 ; Ezek 31:8 ; Amos 2:9 ; Nah 2:12 ).


text: The expression those who buy them appears to be a reference to the foreign nations to whom Israel’s own kings “sold” their subjects. Far from being good shepherds, then, they were evil and profiteering. The whole section (vv. 4-14 ) refers to the past when the Lord , the Good Shepherd, had in vain tried to lead his people to salvation and life.


text: The first person pronoun refers to Zechariah himself who, however, is a “stand-in” for the Lord as the actions of vv. 8-14 make clear. The prophet, like others before him, probably performed actions dramatizing the account of God’s past dealings with Israel and Judah (cf. Hos 1-3 ; Isa 20:2-4 ; Jer 19:1-15; 27:2-11 ; Ezek 4:1-3 ).


text: The two staffs represent the two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. For other examples of staffs representing tribes or nations see Num 17:1-11 ; Ezek 37:15-23 .


text: Zechariah is only dramatizing what God had done historically (see the note on the word “cedars” in 11:1 ). The “one month” probably means just any short period of time in which three kings ruled in succession. Likely candidates are Elah, Zimri, Tibni ( 1 Kgs 16:8-20 ); Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem ( 2 Kgs 15:8-16 ); or Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah ( 2 Kgs 24:1 – 25:7 ).


text: The speaker (Zechariah) represents the Lord, who here is asking what his service as faithful shepherd has been worth in the opinion of his people Israel.


text: If taken at face value, thirty pieces (shekels) of silver was worth about two and a half years’ wages for a common laborer. The Code of Hammurabi prescribes a monthly wage for a laborer of one shekel. If this were the case in Israel, 30 shekels would be the wages for 2 1/2 years (R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel , pp. 76, 204-5). For other examples of “thirty shekels” as a conventional payment, see K. Luke, “The Thirty Pieces of Silver ( Zech. 11:12 f.), Ind TS 19 (1982): 26-30. Luke, on the basis of Sumerian analogues, suggests that “thirty” came to be a term meaning anything of little or no value (p. 30). In this he follows Erica Reiner, “Thirty Pieces of Silver,” in Essays in Memory of E . A . Speiser , AOS 53, ed. William W. Hallo (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1968), 186-90. Though the 30 shekels elsewhere in the OT may well be taken literally, the context of Zech. 11:12 may indeed support Reiner and Luke in seeing it as a pittance here, not worth considering (cf. Exod 21:32 ; Lev 27:4 ; Matt 26:15 ).


text: The grammar (e.g., the incipient participle מֵקִים , maqim , “about to raise up,” v. 16 ) and overall sense of vv. 15-17 give the incident a future orientation. Zechariah once more is role-playing but this time he is a “foolish” shepherd, i.e., one who does not know God and who is opposed to him (cf. Prov 1:7; 15:5; 20:3; 27:22 ). The individual who best represents this eschatological enemy of God and his people is the Antichrist (cf. Matt 24:5, 24 ; 2 Thess 2:3-4 ; 1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3 ; 2 John 7 ).