Zechariah 11:4 Commentary and Bible Study

Zechariah is told to feed the flock of God, which in his context is the nation of Israel viewed as God’s people. He seems to be told to get some of the poorest people of the land together in Jerusalem. They are called the flock of slaughter because of what they will suffer not just at the hands of the Romans, but at the hands of God, for he will bring to an end the national covenant and withdraw his protection from them. ‘Flock of slaughter’ – who are they? The people didn’t know. Is it us? Are we to be slaughtered? They are the Jews alive when Christ comes. In A.D. 70 when Jerusalem fell to Titus, the Roman general, one and a half million Jews in Jerusalem and around were slaughtered. There is a coming pogrom, Zechariah tells them. The terrible events that were to take place at that time were extreme in their violence. Christ describes that time in Matthew 24:21, ‘Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.’ They suffered this extreme cruelty at the hands of the Romans, but the Romans were good at justifying themselves and held themselves not guilty. They thought it right to slaughter the nation which had been so troublesome to govern, and to take spoil from them. Calvin says that this cruelty contrasted with the longsuffering of God which had put up with their disobedience for so many centuries, and that they should had learnt from this threatened future event how ungrateful they had been not to submit themselves to God more readily.How is it that God will no longer protect them as he had done for so long? Quoting Isaiah 65:2, Paul says in Romans 10:21: ‘All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.’ From his New Testament perspective Paul says, God’s patience on the nation has been exhausted and he has cast away his people, but not his elect people. The national covenant is going to end and the nation is going to be cast away and never again will Israelites be blessed as a nation while still in an unbelieving state. But the elect remnant of Israelites has not been cast away and never will be. It is because of that imminent judgment on the nation that God calls them the flock of slaughter. At the same time, as Calvin tells us, the verse reminds us that ‘God had ever been ready to rule this people, so that he could not be accused by them of not having done what could possibly have been looked for or expected from a good shepherd.’ God instructed the shepherds of the nation to continue to feed the flock with his word right up to the time when that slaughter would take place, because out of that flock would come a truly spiritual minority of people who would appreciate all that God had done for them and trust in the Messiah.‘I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land’ – what a terrible message! God will no longer deal with the Jews. Out of them a remnant will come: the church will consist of some Jews and many Gentiles, but the nation itself will be judged. God only ever intended it to last for a time. If at the end of history a large number of Jewish people are to blessed by God, it will be as believing Jews and not simply as ethnic Jews that God will deal with them. The Romans will occupy the land for many years, and the church will be planted and begin to grow while they are in the land, but in the providence of God the Jews will so provoke their overlords that eventually they will crush the nation with irresistible force. Gill refers to the factions in Israel at the time – everyone into his neighbour’s hand – and to the fact that at the trial of Jesus Christ they had said, we have no king but Cesar. Then they will call on the name of the Lord for help as they have done many times before, and he will be silent.