Xa-cha-ri 11

Open your gates, Lebanon

¹Open your gates, Lebanon, \q so that fire may devour your cedars! ²Wail, you junipers, for the cedar has fallen; \q the mighty trees are ruined! \q Wail, you oaks of Bashan, \q for the dense forest has been cut down! ³Hear the shepherds wail, \q for their splendor is ruined! \q Hear the young lions roar, \q for the Jordan’s thickets are laid waste!

The flock marked for slaughter

⁴The LORD my God says this: “Shepherd the flock that is marked for slaughter, ⁵whose buyers slaughter them and go unpunished. Those who sell them say, ‘Praise the LORD, I am rich!’ And their own shepherds show them no pity. ⁶For I will no longer pity the people who live in the land, declares the LORD. I am about to hand everyone over to their neighbor and to their king. They will crush the land, and I will not rescue anyone from their power.” ⁷So I became shepherd of the flock marked for slaughter, the most afflicted of the flock. I took two staffs; one I named Favor and the other Union, and I shepherded the flock.^{a 8}In one month I got rid of the three shepherds. Then I lost patience with the flock, and they, for their part, loathed me.^{b 9}Then I said, “I will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die and the perishing perish, and let those that are left eat one another’s flesh.” ¹⁰Then I took my staff named Favor and broke it, to annul the covenant I had made with all the peoples. ¹¹It was broken on that day, and the afflicted of the flock who were watching me understood that this was a word from the LORD.^{c 12}Then I said to them, “If you think it right, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they weighed out my pay: thirty pieces of silver. ¹³Then the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter, that fine price they set on me!” Taking the thirty pieces of silver, I threw them into the house of the LORD, to the potter.^{de 14}Then I broke my second staff, Union, to break the bond of brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

The equipment of a foolish shepherd

¹⁵Then the LORD said to me, “Take once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd. ¹⁶For I am about to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for the perishing, or look for the young, or heal the injured, or feed the healthy, but will eat the meat of the fat sheep and tear off their hooves.”

Woe to the worthless shepherd

¹⁷Woe to the worthless shepherd who deserts the flock! \q May the sword strike his arm and his right eye! \q Let his arm wither away, \q and his right eye go completely blind!