#berechiah

Next few posts we’ll be looking at the prophecy found in Zechariah 11:1-17. These studies come from the book Messianic Christology and I encourage you to obtain a copy.

From bible.org we learn that, “Zechariah says he is the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo. Iddo was head of the priestly families coming back from exile (Neh 12:4,16). This would make Zechariah a priest and a prophet. It would also explain his emphasis on temple and priestly matters in the book.“

Now we’re going to look at the commission of the prophet found in Zechariah 11:4-6;

4 Thus said the Lord my God: Be a shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. 5Those who buy them kill them and go unpunished; and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich’; and their own shepherds have no pity on them. 6For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord. I will cause them, every one, to fall each into the hand of a neighbor, and each into the hand of the king; and they shall devastate the earth, and I will deliver no one from their hand.

Arnold Fruchtenbaum writes;

“...Zechariah is given a commission; he is given a role to act out as a message to the people. The part he is to play is that of Messiah at His First Coming. Messiah is symbolized as the character of a shepherd, feeding a flock. The flock (verse 4) is symbolic of Israel. The sheep are being destroyed by their owners, symbolic of Rome, and even “their own shepherds,” symbolic of Jewish leaders, “have no pity on them.” In verse 5, the flock, the people of Israel, have been abandoned by man; but further, in verse 6, they have also been abandoned by God.

God states that He will cause each and every man to fall “into the power of his king.” At first this seems a little confusing since, at the time of the Roman occupation, Israel had no king. However, we read in the Gospels that when Jesus, the True Shepherd, stood at His trial, Pontius Pilate declared to the peole, “Here is your king.” But the Pharisees rejected Jesus and cried out, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).