Zechariah 11

Complete Jewish Bible

⁴ Adonai my God says this: “Shepherd the flock for slaughter. ⁵ Their buyers kill them and go unpunished; while those who sell them say, ‘Barukh Adonai! Now I’m rich!’ Even their own shepherds show them no pity. ⁶ I will no longer show pity to the inhabitants of the land,” says Adonai. “No, I will hand every one of them over to the power of a neighbor and to the power of his king; they will crush the land; and I won’t rescue them from their power.”

⁷ So I shepherded the flock for slaughter, truly the most miserable of the sheep; and I took two staffs for myself. I called the one No‘am [pleasantness], the other I called Hovalim [bound together], and I shepherded the flock. ⁸ “In a single month I got rid of three shepherds, because I grew impatient with them; and besides, they detested me. ⁹ I said, ‘I’m not going to shepherd you. Whichever one is going to die, let it die; whichever is going to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and the rest can all devour each other.’”

¹⁰ I took my staff No‘am and snapped it in two, “in order to break my covenant, which I made with all the peoples.” ¹¹ On that day when it was broken, the most miserable of the sheep who paid attention to me knew that this was indeed a message from Adonai. ¹² I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; if not, don’t.” So they weighed out my wages, thirty silver [shekels, that is, twelve ounces]. ¹³ Concerning that “princely sum” at which they valued me, Adonai said, “Throw it into the treasury!” So I took the thirty silver [shekels] and threw them into the treasury in the house of Adonai.

¹⁴ Then I snapped in two my other staff Hovalim [bound together], in order to break up the brotherhood between Y’hudah and Isra’el. ¹⁵ Adonai said to me, “This time, take the equipment of a worthless shepherd. ¹⁶ For I am going to raise up a shepherd in the land who won’t bother about the ones who have been destroyed, won’t seek out the young, won’t heal the broken and won’t feed those standing still; on the contrary, he will eat the meat of the fat ones and break their hoofs in pieces.