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THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH
Lesson 23, Chapter 11 Continued
We’ll continue, today, to work our way carefully, thoughtfully, through the intricate maze of Zechariah chapter 11. While indeed it is quite the task, it is worth it because of the important information that God wants us to know about the End Times. Think about it: everything in the Bible is there because God wants you and I to know it. God doesn’t want us to be ignorant. So, He gives us a means to know… not only about what pleases Him, and what our duties are as His worshippers… but also what the plan of redemption is, the path it is going to take, the way we can get on board, and what the future holds… much more specifically than we might think especially if we can come to see that as valuable as is the Book of Revelation, that is not where all that is knowable about the End Times is found. Rather, it is in the Prophets.
To that end of helping us all to know, I’m going to take the time needed to explain some pretty arcane things that I normally might not. That you are listening to this says that you are serious Bible students, and therefore without you at least having an inkling of some these difficult and obscure things, you’ll be as lost in Zechariah’s words as are so many modern Pastors and Bible teachers who instinctively revert to allegory in order to try to establish some kind of meaning because the words seem to them almost like an unbreakable code. In fact, the code is breakable, and the information is accessible.
To begin to set the stage, recognize that the overall mood and tone of chapter 11 is chilling and dark; anything but happy. The pain that is involved in portraying the fulfillment of what is given to Zechariah about the future, and then passed along to us, is most obvious. In this section of His prophetic book, it can only be concerning what precedes, and then immediately begins to occur, at the return of our Messiah to battle the evil forces of the Anti-Christ and the nations that harbor them. Only after that time will there be planet-wide peace, universal shalom, true justice, and joyous faces as Yeshua finally rules from His throne in the City of Jerusalem.
At that time, although the world will be a very different place from what it had been only a few weeks prior to His stunning return, nonetheless it will still be planet Earth just as we know it now. But our planet will be terribly scarred from the horrendous wars, the likes of which had never been known. Living on this earth will not be so easy and carefree just yet. This is why in the many Christian songs about how wonderful the return of Messiah shall be, and the usual happiness if not giddiness of those that lift their hands to Heaven and excitedly sing “Come, Lord come!”, it needs to be tempered with a large dose of sobriety, and Zechariah presents us with the sobering reality of what lay ahead. Why? So, we can be prepared.
As a short refresher, the first 3 verses of chapter 11, which are a poetically written oracle from God through the hand and mind of Zechariah, expands on a subject that was opened in the previous chapter: the return of the 10 Lost Tribes… the member tribes of the Kingdom of Ephraim… to their homeland. What we immediately learn in chapter 11 is that the numbers of the returnees will be so immense that it will be impossible for them all to fit into the nation of Israel as we know it today. It will be just too small. I have no idea how these thousands of people will emerge and been drawn to go to Israel… but it will happen. So, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan are depicted in metaphor using cypresses and cedar trees, and then are symbolized as being burned up and destroyed to make room for new inhabitants. Those new inhabitants will be the returning Israelite tribes. It appears, then, that at some point parts of (if not all of) Lebanon, Syria and Jordan will be annexed by Israel most likely through war (countries don’t just voluntarily give up their sovereign land to historic enemies). That Israel will accomplish this annexation and facilitate the return of the Lost Tribes is clear because God says that He will make Judah (modern Israel) militarily strong, and they will use that strength to gather in the Lost Tribes. Folks, that is a pretty big and a vital piece of information for us to know about the End Times and where things are going to trend towards in the future of the Middle East. The tectonic shifts we see happening today are, no doubt, setting the stage for these things to happen.
Verse 4 of chapter 11 shifts gears from the first 3 verses, and changes from a poetic oracle to what is (over the next several verses) actually an explanation for the cause of God’s judgment, which is that the leaders of Israel will not lead Israel (the Judeans at that time are regularly called Israel) to accept their good shepherd… which eventually will be Messiah. Remember, this prophecy about a future rejection of their Messiah was 5 centuries before Yeshua appeared. So, it had to be that the early hearers of Zechariah’s prophecy only partly understood the dual fulfillment that it actually speaks of. Zechariah is personally the one who is to be the immediate good shepherd God uses, and then later another prophet will complete the fulfillment as the final and permanent good shepherd over the Israelites… and he is Yeshua. Yet, when we consider that even at His first coming Yeshua was every bit Israel’s good shepherd, the civic and religious leaders of Jerusalem rejected Him. When He comes again, He will once more be Israel’s good shepherd, but in a different way than the first time… a most fierce way.
Before we exit this brief refresher, I’ll say one final thing: for any branch of the modern Church to proclaim that God is done with the Jews and with the land of Israel, they must necessarily ignore the Minor Prophets as well as a couple of the Major ones like Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah to arrive at such a position. So, don’t believe it.
RE-READ ZECHARIAH CHAPTER 11:4 – end
Yehoveh commands Zechariah to become shepherd of Israel, with Israel metaphorically called the doomed flock or the flock of slaughter. In this verse, Yehoveh is more literally called Yehoveh Elohim, which is actually a functionary title for God. We’re going to take a little detour, here, to do some explaining that can very much help your understanding. But your focus and some closely listening ears are necessary.
In this matter of the use of the term Yehoveh Elohim, it is the elohim as the members of God’s Divine Council that is imagined here, with Yehoveh functioning as the Chief of the Divine Council. As Chief, He delegates His will to the several lower elohim who form the Divine Council for them to carry it out. So, like a few other Hebrew titles or roles for God… such as Yehoveh Tzva’ot…Yehoveh of hosts… which speaks of God’s role as the Commander in Chief of Heaven’s army of angels, Yehoveh Elohim speaks of God in the role of the Chief Administrator of Heaven and Earth. The idea is that Zechariah is explaining who it is that delegated to him the divine right and the job to lead the flock of Israel… to be their shepherd. To get the fuller scope of what is intended, we need to extrapolate this into Zechariah’s future and even on to Yeshua, who was also delegated the divine right and role to shepherd the flock of Israel by this same God…Yehoveh. This is fundamentally meant as an authentication and validation of Zechariah’s position as a Prophet of God, as well as Yeshua’s authentication to also be a Prophet given the role as good shepherd.
The trick to understanding the point that is being made, is to recall that Prophets of God were meant to be authoritative messengers from God. Their job was to bring truth to the kings and to the commoners of Israel. Whereas kings of Israel exercised their God-given authority to shepherd Israel as their civil leaders, Prophets were the shepherds of the flock in the sense of being the truth-bearers of God’s oracles to Israel. Unfortunately, the flock of Israel was doomed as sheep going to the slaughter because they were going to be decimated as a judgment due to their constant rebellion and unfaithfulness… mostly caused by poor leadership… which are the bad or false shepherds. Yet, as chapter 10 explains, a large remnant will remain of Judah (Israel) that will (in the End Times) be powerful and used by God to redeem and bring back home the remainder of Israel. The remainder of Israel is Ephraim (the 10 tribes of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel, conquered and scattered by Assyria late in the 8th century B.C.).
In verse 5, the matter gets quite complicated because a series of metaphors are used in a kind of symbolism to explain the circumstances. Especially in the Bible when metaphors are also used as symbolic of something… whether of objects or events… in order to grasp what is happening we have to understand how the metaphor as a symbolic literary device was used. First, Bible metaphors are almost never explained. The entire point of choosing something as a metaphor is because it is an everyday part of life, so it is already understood. The audience will inherently know the real-life aspects of the object or event being used as the metaphor. Sheep and shepherds, for example, used as metaphors was something the ancient Hebrew audience knew all about. No one had to explain the characteristics of sheep, flocks, or shepherds as it was common knowledge. It would be as if, in the 21st century, a car and a car dealer were used as metaphors for something. No one has to explain what a car is, what it does, its characteristics, etc. nor what a car dealer is, what it does, or basically what purpose it serves. It is common knowledge. Therefore, the author that uses a car and car dealer as metaphors doesn’t need to explain it. Rather, it is what the car and car dealer are being compared to that is getting explained by using a car and a dealer’s known characteristics to help paint a better picture of this other object or event.
Then if we were to expand this use of metaphor and the object or event it is being compared to, and raise it to the level of being symbolic of something else (like what is happening here in Zechariah chapter 11), then even though symbols are by nature very hazy in their meaning… especially when talking about the future (because symbols are attempting to describe something that might not yet exist)… then the knowledge of what the metaphor means helps to better understand the range of possibilities of the symbolic meaning. Bottom line: one has to understand the mind of the people, the culture, the era, and the history of those using a particular metaphor as a symbol in order to ascertain it’s intended meaning.
How this metaphor-as-symbolism works in the ancient Hebrew language and culture completely goes against what modern day thoughts are about literary logic, structure, and making a paragraph coherent to modern readers. That is why it’s meaning can be so hard for modern Westerners to ascertain, and why so many otherwise good scholars think we are dealing with textual errors and later edits, etc. The reality is that these passages have a meaning all their own that are embedded deep within their own unique literary properties and their ultimate purpose. Once we accept that premise, then we can begin to do the hard work to understand how the Hebrews thought about it, and this will lead us to truth. This is the unique value of the Hebrew Roots movement and its Hebraic approach to understanding the Scriptures.
Here in chapter 11 much irony is used by the Prophet as a literary technique to get across His message, and often the irony is less the situation and more how the Hebrew language itself is used. It can be quite dramatic, as though the Prophet was an actor in a play with the audience observing it all. Even so, imagine if in the 17th century a playwright attempting to portray something that wouldn’t even exist until the 21st century. All he would have to use is the language of his day, and symbols that had a meaning of sorts in his era. In our case, the only way we can “get” what Zechariah is saying is to grasp his irony, and the only way to do that is to crawl into the 5th century B.C. Hebrew mind, and to delve into their political and social environment. So, as we progress in chapter 11 we find the true and Godly Prophet Zechariah ironically accepting a wage… something that a true Prophet of God in that era would never do. Therefore, the irony and shock value of this alerts us that there is an ironic role reversal taking place here. And this type of situation is what I’m attempting to help you with. So, bear with me.
Let us remember the background for chapter 11. Chapters 9 and 10 were (for the most part) positive and uplifting for the Jews. However, the mood suddenly reverses course in chapter 11. As best you can, imagine the predicament Zechariah’s audience was in. It’s the 5th century B.C., the Judeans’ former brethren (the 10 tribes that formed the Northern Kingdom) have been gone for over 200 years. And, their former homeland is now named Yehud and is but one of many provinces that are part of the superpower known as the Persian Empire. The Judeans had been exiled to Babylon well more than a century earlier and had returned about 2 generations ago. So, the idea that Ephraim and Judah are going to be reunited into one nation seems irrelevant, even absurd. And further, to think that their former homeland will become once again free and sovereign and re-populated with Hebrews so enormously that not everyone can even fit in it, is not fathomable. So, the first thing that had to happen is to make clear to the Judeans why and how these exiles happened in the first place, what the Prophets have said about it, and that God has promised a future restoration.
One of the things we have to notice about Zechariah’s prophecies is that he very much identifies not with his contemporaries, but rather with the Prophets of old. So, he is always interweaving a future view, with a retrospective view, to explain God’s actions. This is to do something that I have attempted to do in Torah Class teachings over the past quarter century: to demonstrate that a pattern exists that God always follows, which in turn helps us to know what to expect and why. And, as painful as it is for Zechariah and his audience to swallow, it is that it is their own God… Yehoveh… that has given the power to the gentile nations to harm and disassemble Judah and Ephraim because of their refusal to obey the Covenants of Abraham and Moses.
So, we have to start with understanding that the split and dissolution of united Israel form the core background for what is being explained. With this information, let’s return now to verse 5.
CJB Zechariah 11:5 Their buyers kill them and go unpunished; while those who sell them say, 'Barukh Yehoveh! Now I'm rich!' Even their own shepherds show them no pity.
Who are these buyers who kill the flock and go unpunished? There is no scholarly consensus on this. In the end, there’s really only 2 options: the buyers are part of Israel, or they are foreigners. It is my contention that this is speaking about Hebrews… people who are part of Israel. These are bad shepherds… bad leaders of Israel (religious and civil)… who are some of the worst covenant violators, but who no doubt held themselves up as exemplary and worthy to be believed and followed. They have various means of control and manipulation of the people.
It is interesting that the CJB (as do nearly all English translations) say “…will kill” or “…will slay” them. Kill or slay is translating exactly the same Hebrew word as used in earlier verses, which they translated as “slaughter”. While it isn’t wrong to use kill or slay, it misses the intended impact of first calling Israel the people of slaughter, and then a few words later saying that is the buyers who are their slaughterers. The connection made helps us to understand that it is people internal to Israel who are the perpetrators, and not outsiders.
The Prophet Jeremiah not only validates Zechariah’s words, he explains more than Zechariah so that we get a fuller view of who exactly this is speaking about.
CJB Jeremiah 5:26-31 26 "For among my people there are wicked men, who, like fowlers, lie in wait and set traps to catch their fellow human beings. 27 Their houses are as full of fraud as a cage full of birds. They grow rich and great, 28 sleek and bloated; they excel in acts of wickedness but do not plead on behalf of the orphan, thus enabling his cause to succeed; nor do they judge in favor of the poor. 29 "Should I not punish for this?" asks ADONAI. "Should I not be avenged on a nation like this? 30 A shocking and horrifying thing has happened in the land: 31 The prophets prophesy lies, the cohanim obey the prophets, and my people love it that way. But what will you do at the end of it all?
It seems to me that the choice of the words “buyers and sellers” is meant to create a mental image of financial transactions. Monetary gain. And, among some in ancient times, just as we see in modern times, there are those who adhere to the principle that as worshippers of God, if one has great monetary gain, it is to be taken as proof of divine favor, which in turn means God approves of them and whatever it is they are doing. This is not entirely different from what we read in Proverbs and in some of the Prophets about the relationship between faithfulness and prosperity. However, in the Bible, prosperity and abundance more mean sufficiency. There is enough to meet needs. It doesn’t mean luxurious or fabulous wealth. Further, prosperity is to come in the process of one’s Torah obedience; not as a result from violating it. One of the conundrums Judeo-Christianity has always faced was how to explain obviously wicked people usually being among the wealthiest. But, at the same time, some of the most righteous just as usually have barely enough to get by. The reality is that the Bible never says that the wicked will always lose and the righteous will always win in a material world. The world, right now, is in the hands of the Prince of the Air… Satan. The deck is stacked in favor of those who violate God’s laws and commands, as far as material wealth is concerned.
This is the reason that I am quite disappointed with the Christian Prosperity Doctrine and its kin…the name it and claim it movement. Those doctrines are entirely unbiblical and play right in with Satan’s principles. The leaders of those movements have twisted and spun the true biblical meaning for their own benefit and gain. That is what is happening here in verse 5. The leaders are twisting and spinning God’s commands and telling the common people half-truths or outright falsehoods; and people being sheep tend to follow their shepherds… even the bad ones. It is also the reason that we must be aware of our own shepherds and test them against God’s Word to see if they measure up. If what they espouse or teach doesn’t mesh with God’s Word… all of it… as you plainly read it, these are not good shepherds (even if they might be nice people) and you need to change flocks to get a better shepherd or face the consequences!
The quote in the middle of this verse literally reads: Bless (or praise) Yehoveh, for I have become wealthy. This lends more weight to the premise that this quote about the buyers and sellers of the flock are Hebrews… Judeans. Foreigners would not be praising the Hebrew God. And, it further demonstrates that the use of buying and selling words is to make it clear that these bad shepherds will happily peddle lies and deceit in order to gain personal wealth. In this way, they are shepherds who have no compassion for those they are shepherding. As with aristocrats, they see the common people as only there to serve them, the shepherds. The people are disposable items, and they have no need for anything more than what the aristocrats want to give them. I’ll be blunt: from both the political sphere and the religious sphere…open your eyes to what you see and hear!
Verse 6 begins: “I will no longer show pity to the inhabitants of the land," says Yehoveh.
In nearly every English translation I have consulted, an important word is omitted. The Hebrew word is od, and it means “again”. So, it more literally reads: “I will not again pity…” That is, whereas God used to show pity (compassion) on His people, He stopped and as of the described circumstances and time, He has no intentions of starting again to show pity. So, at one time God felt sorry for and showed much patience and mercy on His people, but quit. And, He is not yet ready to begin again. Clearly, when this refers to the people of the land, it is to the Judeans.
Another Hebrew word left out in nearly all English translations occurs at the end of that sentence. That word is hinneh, which means behold in the sense of indeed! It is an emphasis that points to making it clear that what comes next will happen. It’s guaranteed. Next, we are told that God will hand them over to a neighbor. Whereas in English translations we see this refer to “them” or more often “men or man”, what is being translated is the Hebrew adam. And while it can mean “man” in the sense of all who are of the species called humans, here it is best translated as “the people” or something like this. It isn’t meant to speak only of males, but rather all of the Israelite people in general.
What is also important to know is that the word translated as deliver or delivered in Hebrew is matsa, and in the form it is used here it more means to cause something to happen. That is, probably a more nuanced meaning is that God will cause the Israelites to be turned over to their neighbor, as opposed to God being the one who actually does the turning over Himself. He delegates it; He stirs up some king or people to do it on His behalf. Small difference, yes, but it changes the mood from God doing it by some miraculous “turning over” from His Heavenly Throne, to God influencing an enemy to bring about His will. It is an inside look into God’s nature; how He nearly invariably uses humans to bring about His will, whether it is to bless or to curse. And those He uses are only sometimes His own people. So, to be clear: God is saying He will use a neighboring nation to harm and take control over the Israelites.
The remainder of the verse explains that the neighbor (foreign nation) will come against (smite) the land of Israel, and God will not intervene to save them from it or to rescue them when it happens. Verse 7 now shifts from God speaking to Zechariah speaking.
CJB Zechariah 11:7 So I shepherded the flock for slaughter, truly the most miserable of the sheep; and I took two staffs for myself. I called the one No'am [pleasantness], the other I called Hovalim [bound together], and I shepherded the flock.
From here forward it is the feeding of the flock that is described. That Zechariah is telling us how he responded to God’s command to feed the flock, then we know that in this prophetic oracle’s first fulfillment, it was Zechariah who did it. In other words, what is called for here is not only for the future, but also for Zechariah’s present. The words that stress the most miserable of the sheep are not to say that these miserable are the only part of the flock that Zechariah fed. It is that he fed both the satisfied and the weak of the flock; everyone. However, there is an interesting alternative to understand these first few words. Here is the RSV, which might be on to something that the other Bible versions aren’t.
RSV Zechariah 11:7 So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slain for those who trafficked in the sheep.
So, whereas the typical English version says something like “the most miserable of the sheep”, the RSV says “those who trafficked in the sheep”. Quite different in meaning. However, in the Greek Septuagint, it reads differently. It says: “So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slain for the Canaanites of the flock”. Strange; except that Canaanite was by Zechariah’s day a nasty epithet that meant “merchant”. Merchants were considered to be as vial and unscrupulous as tax collectors. And, since Canaanites were hated and reviled by the Hebrews, calling someone a Canaanite was the same as referring to them as a merchant.
I see a good case for accepting the Greek version because the term merchants would well connect with the buyers and sellers of verse 5. Therefore, perhaps a more nuanced translation that expresses what it might mean is: “So I became a shepherd of the flock doomed to be slain for those buyers and sellers of the sheep”. And, the buyers and sellers (the merchants) of the flock are Israel’s leaders. I prefer this to the more traditional translation, although I certainly wouldn’t claim that it isn’t possible for the more traditional to be correct.
Next is the matter of the two staffs. This is a symbolic action. A staff could be anything from a tool used for divination, to something to steady you when you walk, or even Aaron’s budding almond staff. Most naturally in this passage however, the staff must be a shepherd’s crook since sheep and shepherds are so much in focus. It is hard not to notice that Zechariah’s two staffs are very similar to Ezekiel’s 2 sticks in Ezekiel 37. The main point of Ezekiel’s 2 sticks… one called Judah, and the other called Ephraim… is that they are to be joined to form 1 stick, representing the reunification of Judah and Ephraim into the whole House of Israel.
CJB Ezekiel 37:15-19 15 The word of ADONAI came to me: 16 "You, human being, take one stick and write on it, 'For Y'hudah and those joined with him [among] the people of Isra'el.' Next, take another stick and write on it, 'For Yosef, the stick of Efrayim, and all the house of Isra'el who are joined with him.' 17 Finally, bring them together into a single stick, so that they become one in your hand. 18 When your people ask you what all this means, 19 tell them that Adonai ELOHIM says this: 'I will take the stick of Yosef, which is in the hand of Efrayim, together with the tribes of Isra'el who are joined with him, and put them together with the stick of Y'hudah and make them a single stick, so that they become one in my hand.'
In Zechariah’s continuing use of irony in chapter 11, we find that while Ezekiel has two sticks that become 1, Zechariah uses 2 staffs when using only 1 shepherd’s crook is the norm. Later in verse 14, one staff is snapped into 2. It is a reversal of Ezekiel. So, while Ezekiel speaks of the unification of Judah and Ephraim, Zechariah speaks of the end of unity. One of the staffs of Zechariah receives the name no’am. The other is called chobelim. No’am means delight or beauty. Some Bibles say it is favor or pleasant. There are also other English words offered, but they all express something good and positive. Chobellim means bonds, as in to bind something together. So, we’ll find other Bible versions use words like unity, union, and concord, which all express essentially the same idea. But, the word also carries with it the notion of a pledge… a binding together facilitated by a pledge to one another. So, in English a more complete way of thinking about the name of that staff from the ancient Hebrew perspective is “mutual obligation pact”. This becomes more clear when we get to verse 14.
Verse 8 is really fascinating, especially if it is reasonable to keep extrapolating and applying this to the Messiah that was yet to come. But at the same time, it seems that it is something Zechariah claims as having done. So, if I have it right, it represents Zechariah’s past, present and future, and in regard to Messiah, it is something that Yeshua will do not upon His advent, but rather upon His return in the End Times.
CJB Zechariah 11:8 8 "In a single month I got rid of three shepherds, because I grew impatient with them; and besides, they detested me.
Remembering that what we are now reading is the Prophet explaining how he is going about being the good shepherd that leads the doomed flock, this single verse is called by many Bible scholars “the most enigmatic in the whole of the Old Testament”. Very early in the 20th century, the renowned Bible scholar H.G. Mitchell, who while studying in Germany, wrote that he has encountered no fewer than 40 explanations concerning this verse that revolved around who these 3 shepherds were that the Prophet “got rid of”. As usual, most Bible scholars simply throw in the towel and decide it must be an allegorical statement since they can come up with no satisfying explanation. Because defining terms is so important when considering the impact of extracting meaning from the Bible, allow me to remind you what allegorical actually means. Allegory represents a larger point about society or human nature that is made by telling a fictional story whose different characters are most often nothing more than representations or personifications of abstract ideas. The word “allegory” comes from the Latin “allegoria,” meaning speaking to imply something else. The point is, allegorical Bible interpretation is like Silly Putty. You can bend it, pull it and shape it, and make almost anything you want to out of it, because there is no wrong answer. Rather than do that, let’s see what we can know.
The number 3 (3 shepherds) is always important when used especially in the Old Testament. Much like the number 10, 3 represents completeness, wholeness or totality. 3 is the smallest number that can represent such completeness. Thus, rather than attempting to identify 3 distinct people as those shepherds, such a statement is intentionally vague and can include any amount of people who, together, represent the totality of people involved. It’s the concept of being inclusive… it’s all of them… it is all who are a certain type of leader. And since the Prophet says he got rid of these 3 shepherds, then the idea is that ALL the bad leaders of Israel will be gotten rid of in less than a month.
There is no record of Zechariah ever getting rid of anyone, let alone some of the bad leaders of the Judeans. Therefore, it is most reasonable to continue to apply this event of getting rid of the 3 shepherds to include the End Times return of the Messiah. In fact, it could be that the only time this happens is in the End Times. While I cannot take this any further without speculation for which there is simply too little evidence to say with any certainty, about the best I can do is to take from this that within the first month of Yeshua’s return, He is going to rid Israel of all their bad shepherds, as He comes to be their good shepherd.
The calendar amount of time of one month actually is a short time, and often term “one month” is not meant to be literal in the Scriptures but is only an expression meaning a short time. It’s like us saying “a little while” or “a few days”. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that we find the word “impatient” used to describe the quick action the good shepherd is going to take, because the decision to the make the leadership change must happen in a short time. There is another Bible version that I think better captures both the meaning and the literary technique of describing what is happening and why. The NAS version says:
NAS Zechariah 11:8 Then I annihilated the three shepherds in one month, for my soul was impatient with them, and their soul also was weary of me.
In other words, there was a reciprocal action happening between the good shepherd and all the bad ones who had had a great deal of negative tension going on between them and him. The reason the bad shepherds were done away with in a short time was that the Messiah’s soul simply grew weary of their intransigence and harm to Israel, and in turn the bad, money-grubbing shepherds were sick of having to deal with the Messiah, so the Messiah solved the problem by getting rid of them all.
Folks; this is going to happen when Messiah returns, so you can add this to the list of things we know He is going to do when He comes back. We’ll stop here and continue in chapter 11 next time.