Zechariah - The Old Testament

¹ Open your gateways, Lebanon, and the fire shall burn down your cedar trees!

² Wail, juniper, for the cedar tree has fallen, the majestic ones have been ravaged! Wail, oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest has been felled!

³ The sound of the wailing of shepherds! Their majesty has been ravaged. The sound of the roaring of young lions! The pride of the Jordan has been ravaged.

⁴ Yahweh my God says this, 'Pasture the sheep for slaughter,

⁵ whose buyers kill them and go unpunished, whose sellers say of them, "Blessed be Yahweh; now I am rich!" and whose own shepherds show them no pity.

⁶ For I shall show no further pity for the inhabitants of the country -- Yahweh declares! Instead, I shall put everyone into the clutches of a neighbour, into the clutches of the king. They will crush the country and I shall not rescue anyone from their clutches.'

⁷ Then I pastured for slaughter the sheep belonging to the sheep-dealers. I took two staves: the one I called 'Goodwill', the other 'Couplers'; and I pastured the sheep myself,

⁸ getting rid of three shepherds in one month. But I lost patience with them, and they equally detested me.

⁹ I then said, 'I am not going to pasture you any more; the one doomed to die can die; the one doomed to perish can perish; and the rest can devour one another.'

¹⁰ I then took my staff, 'Goodwill', and broke it in half, to break my covenant, which I had made with all the peoples.

¹¹ When it was broken, that day the sheep-dealers, who were watching me, realised that this had been a word of Yahweh.

¹² I then said to them, 'If you see fit, give me my wages; if not, never mind.' So they weighed out my wages: thirty shekels of silver.

¹³ Yahweh said to me, 'Throw it to the smelter, this princely sum at which they have valued me!' Taking the thirty shekels of silver, I threw them into the Temple of Yahweh, for the smelter.

¹⁴ I then broke my second staff, 'Couplers,' in half, to rupture the brotherly relationship between Judah and Israel.

¹⁵ Next, Yahweh said to me, 'This time, take the gear of a good-for-nothing shepherd.

¹⁶ For I am now going to raise a shepherd in this country, who will not bother about the lost, who will not go in search of the stray, who will not heal the injured, who will not support the swollen, but who will eat the meat of the fat ones, tearing off their very hoofs.

¹⁷ Disaster to the shepherd who deserts his flock! May the sword attack his arm and his right eye! May his arm shrivel completely and his right eye be totally blinded!'