11 1 Open your doors, Lebanon — let fire devour your cedars! 2 Wail, cypress, for the cedar has fallen, the majestic trees are ruined! Wail, oaks of Bashan, for the thick forest has come down! 3 Listen — the wailing of the shepherds, for their glory is ruined! Listen — the roaring of young lions, for the thickets of the Jordan are ruined!
4 This is what my Father says: "Shepherd the flock marked for slaughter." 5 Their buyers slaughter them unpunished; their sellers say, "Praise God, I've grown rich!" — and their own shepherds show them no compassion. 6 For I will no longer pity the land's people, declares our Father. I am handing everyone over — each into the hand of his neighbor and his king; they will crush the land, and I will rescue no one from their hand.
7 So I shepherded the flock marked for slaughter, the most oppressed of the flock. I took two staffs, naming one Favor and the other Union, and shepherded the flock. 8 In one month I removed the three shepherds. I grew impatient with them, and they also hated me. a a v8 The identity of 'the three shepherds' is unknown; no scholarly view has won consensus. 9 Then I said, "I won't shepherd you. Let the dying die, the doomed be destroyed, and those left devour one another's flesh."
10 I took my staff Favor and broke it, breaking the covenant I made with all the peoples. 11 So it was broken that day, and the poor of the flock watching me knew this was the word of our Father. 12 I said to them, "If it seems right, give me my wages; if not, keep them." So they weighed out my wages — thirty pieces of silver. b b v12 These thirty pieces of silver are the very price the New Testament names as the money paid to betray Jesus (Matthew 27:9-10).
13 Then our Father said to me, "Throw it to the potter" — the grand price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of our Father, to the potter.
14 Then I broke my second staff, Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
15 Then our Father said to me, "Take up once more the gear of a foolish shepherd." 16 For I am raising up a shepherd in the land who will not tend the perishing, not seek the scattered, not heal the broken, not sustain the healthy — but will eat the flesh of the fat ones and tear off their hooves. 17 Woe to my worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock! May the sword fall on his arm and on his right eye! Let his arm wither away completely, and his right eye go utterly blind!
