Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 11

Open thy doors, O Lebanon - Lebanon, whose cedars had stood as its glory for centuries, yet could offer no resistance to the one who felled them and carried them off to adorn the palaces of its conquerors (see above at Zephaniah 2:14, and note 2, p. 276), was in Isaiah (Isaiah 14:8; Isaiah 37:24) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 22:6–7) the emblem of the glory of the Jewish state. In Ezekiel, it was an emblem of Jerusalem, as the prophet himself explains (Ezekiel 17:3, Ezekiel 17:12): glorious, beautiful, inaccessible, as long as it was defended by God; a ready prey when abandoned by Him.

The center and source of her strength was the worship of God. Thus, Lebanon has long ago been understood to be the temple, which was built with cedars of Lebanon, towering aloft upon a strong summit. It was the spiritual glory and the eminence of Jerusalem, as Lebanon was of the whole country. “To strangers who came to it, it appeared from afar like a mountain full of snow; for, where it was not gilded, it was exceedingly white, being built of marble.” But at the time of its destruction, it was a den of thieves (Matthew 21:13), just as Lebanon, amidst its beauty, was a den of wild beasts.

Rup.: “I suppose Lebanon itself, that is, “the temple,” felt the command of the prophet’s words, since, as its destruction approached, its doors opened without the hand of man. Josephus relates how, “at the Passover, the eastern gate of the inner temple, being of brass and very firm, and with difficulty shut at evening by twenty men; moreover with bars strengthened with iron, and having very deep bolts, which went down into the threshold, itself of one stone, was seen at six o’clock at night to open of its own accord. The guards of the temple running told it to the officer, and he, going up, with difficulty closed it.

“This the uninstructed thought a very favorable sign, that God opened to them the gate of all good things. But those taught in the divine words understood that the safety of the temple was removed of itself, and that the gate opened.”

A saying of this sort is still extant: “Our fathers have handed down, forty years before the destruction of the house, the lot of the Lord did not come up on the right hand, and the tongue of splendor did not become white, nor did the light from the evening burn, and the doors of the temple opened of their own accord, until Rabbi Johanan ben Zaccai rebuked them, and said, ‘O temple, why do you alarm yourself? I know concerning you that your end is to be destroyed, and of this Zechariah prophesied, “Open thy doors, O Lebanon, and let the fire devour thy cedars.”’” The “forty years” mentioned in this tradition carry back the event exactly to the Death of Christ, the temple having been burned AD 73. Josephus adds that they opened at the Passover, the season of His Crucifixion.

On the other hand, the shutting of the gates of the temple, when they had “seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple” (Acts 21:30), seems miraculous and significant, that, having thus violently refused the preaching of the Gospel, and cast Paul out, they themselves were also shut out, denoting that an entrance was afterward to be refused them.

And let a fire devour thy cedars - Jerusalem, or the temple, was, after those times, burned by the Romans only. The destruction of pride, opposed to Christ, was prophesied by Isaiah in connection with His Coming (Isaiah 10:34; Isaiah 11:1).

Howl, O cypress, for the cedar is fallen - Jerusalem or the temple, having been likened to Lebanon and its cedars, the prophet carries on the image, speaking of the priests, princes, and people, under the title of firs, cypresses, and oaks—trees inferior, but magnificent. He shows that it is imagery, by ascribing to them the feelings of people.

The more glorious and stately, “the cedars,” were destroyed. Woe then to the rest, “the cypress;” as our Lord says, If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done, in the dry? (Luke 23:31), and Peter says, If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (1 Peter 4:18).

For the defended forest has come down - That which was closed and inaccessible to the enemy. All that was high and lifted up was brought low, “came down,” even to the ground.

A voice of the howling of the shepherds, for their glory is spoiled - This echoes from Jeremiah before the captivity: Howl, you shepherds—a voice of the cry of the shepherds and an howling of the principal of the flock; for the Lord has spoiled their pasture (Jeremiah 25:34, 36).

There is one chorus of desolation: the mighty and the lowly; the shepherds and the young lions; what is at other times opposed is joined in one wailing. “The pride of Jordan” refers to the stately oaks on its banks, which shroud it from sight until you reach its very edges. After the captivity of the ten tribes, this area became the haunt of lions and their chief abode in Palestine, “on account of the burning heat, and the nearness of the desert, and the breadth of the vast solitude and jungles” (Jerome).

See Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 50:44; 2 Kings 17:25. The lion lingered there even until the close of the 12th century (Phocas, in Reland, Palaestina, i. 274). Cyril, writing in his own time, says, “There are very many lions there, roaring horribly and striking fear into the inhabitants.”

Thus saith the Lord my God, Feed the flock of the slaughter—The fulfillment of the whole prophecy shows that the person addressed is the prophet, not in or for himself, but (as belongs to symbolic prophecy) as representing Another, our Lord. It is addressed, in the first instance, to Zechariah.

For Zechariah is commanded, take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd (Zechariah 11:15), in words addressed to himself, personally: And the Lord said unto me. But he who was to represent the foolish shepherd had represented the True Shepherd, since it is said to him, Take unto thee yet.

But He, the Shepherd addressed, who does the acts commanded, speaks with the authority of God. He says, I cut off three shepherds in one month (Zechariah 11:8); I broke My covenant which I had made with all the peoples (Zechariah 11:10); the poor of the flock waited upon Me (Zechariah 11:11); I cut asunder Mine other staff, Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel (Zechariah 11:14).

But in Zechariah’s time, no three shepherds were cut off, the covenant made by God was not broken on His part, and there was no such visible distinction between those who waited on God and those who, outwardly too, rejected Him.

Feed the flock of the slaughter—Those who were, even before the end, slain by their evil shepherds whom they followed, and who in the end would be given to the slaughter, as the Psalmist says, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter (Psalms 44:22), because they would not hear the voice of the True Shepherd and were not His sheep. They were already, by God’s judgment, a prey to evil shepherds and would be so yet more in the future.

As a whole then, they were “sheep of the slaughter.” It is a last Charge given to feed them. As our Lord says, Last of all, He sent unto them His Son, saying, They will reverence My Son (Matthew 21:37). This failing, nothing remained but that the flock would be given up, as they themselves say, He will miserably destroy those wicked people, and will let out His vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render Him the fruits in their seasons (Matthew 21:41). That is, our Lord explains it, The kingdom of heaven shall be taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

Yet a remnant should be saved (Matthew 21:43), for whose sake the larger flock was still to be fed.

And, as our Lord, as Man, wept over Jerusalem, whose sentence He pronounced, so He still feeds those who would not turn to Him that they might be saved, and who would in the end be “a flock of slaughter,” Death their shepherd (Psalms 49:14), since they chose death rather than Life.

Whose possessors—that is, their buyers—slay them and hold themselves not guilty; rather, they are not guilty either in their own eyes or in the sight of God, since He gave them up and would no longer avenge them. They contract no guilt. Formerly God said: Israel was holiness to the Lord, the first-fruits of His increase; all that devour him shall be guilty: evil shall come upon them, says the Lord (Jeremiah 2:3). Now God reversed this, as He said by the same prophet: My people has been lost sheep; their shepherds have caused them to go astray; they have turned them away on the mountains; all that found them have devoured them; and their adversaries say, We are not guilty, because they have sinned against the Lord, the habitation of justice, indeed, the hope of their fathers, the Lord (Jeremiah 50:6–7).

The offense of injuring Israel was that they were God’s people. When He cast them out, those who chastened them were His servants (Jeremiah 25:9; Jeremiah 27:6; Jeremiah 43:10), His instruments, and offended only when through pride they did not know in whose hands they themselves were (Isaiah 10:7; Habakkuk 1:11), or through cruelty exceeded their office (Isaiah 47:6; Zechariah 1:18), and so they became guilty.

And they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich—Even Sennacherib felt himself in part, or thought it best to acknowledge himself, to be an instrument in God’s hand (Isaiah 36:10). But Titus, when he “entered Jerusalem, marveled at the strength of the city and its towers, which ‘the tyrants’ in frenzy abandoned. When he then beheld their solid strength and the greatness of each rock, and how accurately they were fitted in, and how great their length and breadth, he said, ‘By the help of God we have warred: and God it was who brought down the Jews from those bulwarks: for what do the hands of man or his engines avail against such towers?’ Much of this sort he said to his friends.” The Jews also were “sold” in this war, as they had not been in former captures; and that, not by chance, but because the Roman policy was different from all, known by “experience” in the time of Zechariah. Into Babylon they had been carried captive, as a whole, because it was the will of God, after the “seventy years” to restore them.

In this war, it was His will to destroy or disperse them; and so those above seventeen were sent to Egypt for labor, while those below seventeen were sold. “The whole number taken prisoners during the wars was 1,100,000,” besides those who perished elsewhere. Jerome states: “We read in the ancient histories and the traditions of the mourning Jews, that at the Tabernaculum Abrahae (where a very crowded market is now held every year) after the last destruction, which they endured from Hadrian, many thousands were sold, and those who could not be sold were removed into Egypt, and destroyed by shipwreck or famine and slaughter by the people. No displeasure came upon the Romans for the utter destruction, as there had upon the Assyrians and Chaldeans.”

And their own shepherds—in contrast to those who “bought” and “sold” them, who accordingly were not their own, whether temporal or spiritual rulers—those to whom God had assigned them, who should have fed them with the word of God, strengthened the diseased, healed the sick, bound up the broken, and sought the lost, pity them not (Ezekiel 34:4). He states what they should have done, in blaming them for what they did not do. They owed them a tender compassionate love; they laid aside all mercy and became wolves, as Paul says: After my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them (Acts 20:29–30). Those who owed them all love will show them none.

Jerome states: “It is no wonder then, he says, if enemies use the right of conquest, when their very shepherds and teachers did not spare them, and, through their fault, the flock was given over to the wolves.” All were corrupted: high priest, priests, scribes, lawyers, Pharisees, Sadducees. No one had pity on them.