Today in God’s Word

Today in God's Word—December 2024

East Tallassee Church of Christ

December 28, Zechariah 11

Thus said the LORD my God: "Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter"

- Zechariah 11:4

The glorious prophecies about Messiah's future kingdom In Chapters 9 and 10 give way to a blunt death sentence for the nation in Chapter 11. Israel had been God’s beloved and favored flock. But now the Lord called them a flock doomed to slaughter. Their temple, built with beautiful wood from the finest trees in the thick forests, would be destroyed. The people who had once been a great nation would be no more, except for a small remnant.

We sometimes describe the returned exiles from captivity as the remnant, and in a sense they were. They were survivors from the once strong nation that no longer existed. But even in that smaller group, not all of them were the true remnant of faith. Their leaders had failed to shepherd them in paths of righteousness for so long that most of them were corrupt and ungodly. God often paired promises of blessing with warnings of curses throughout Israel’s history, first in the words of the law and later in the words of the prophets. So this juxtaposition of blessings and curses was nothing new.

It was also not uncommon for God to assign his prophets dramatic roles to illustrate things to come. In this chapter, the Lord told Zechariah to become a shepherd to the flock doomed for slaughter. God would still keep the promises to Abraham, but God's patience and pity for the nation would come to an end.

Zechariah took the assignment. By doing so, he prefigured what Jesus would do when he came as the Good Shepherd to call the lost sheep of the house of Israel to come to him. When they rejected him, they would face terrible consequences for their choice. The people did not want what Zechariah and the Lord wanted for them, and so Zechariah resigned as their shepherd and left them to suffer the consequences of their decision. He used two staffs he named Favor and Union to illustrate God's covenant with his people. He broke the staffs to show that their covenant agreement with God had been canceled.

Zechariah asked for his wages, and they gave him 30 pieces of silver. That payment amount is rich in prophetic significance. It was rooted in the law of Moses. It prophesied the exact amount the Jewish leaders would pay Judas to betray Jesus. It may also reveal the attitude of the Jewish leaders toward Jesus, the Messiah they rejected.

The Law of Moses set the monetary value of a slave's life and usefulness as 30 pieces of silver. That was the amount due the master of a slave killed or injured by an ox. The negligent owner of the ox had to pay 30 pieces of silver to the servant’s master as a civil settlement prescribed by the law.

Did the ungodly Jews know they paid a price that implied that Zechariah was useless or dead to them? Maybe not, but you can see the foreknowledge and hand of God in this drama that would prefigure the price the Jewish leaders centuries later would pay Judas. I suspect the experts in the law who sat on the Sanhedrin knew the significance of the price when they offered that to Judas.

When Zechariah threw the thirty pieces of silver into the temple, he foretold another specific detail that would be fulfilled in the dark events surrounding the betrayal of Jesus. The Lord told him to do it, and Zechariah somehow knew that a potter would be involved in the future transaction. Centuries later, when Judas threw the money down, the Sanhedrin hypocrites said it wasn't lawful to put the money back into the treasury. They even acknowledged it was blood money, and used it to buy a field for a burial ground for strangers from a potter.

Let’s note one other detail about the thirty pieces of silver. The law ordered not only the compensation for damages; it also ordered that the offending animal be destroyed. Did the Jewish leaders remember that part of the law? Did any of them realize that their own destruction would come within forty years at the hand of the king they chose (Caesar) when they rejected Jesus as their king?

The tragic trajectory of Israel’s history should remind us of the price we pay if we won’t listen to God's word and if we reject Jesus as our Shepherd King. God help us to not repeat their fatal folly!

Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.