Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 11:5

"whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty; and they that sell them say, Blessed be Jehovah, for I am rich; and their own shepherds pity them not." — Zechariah 11:5 (ASV)

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.