The portion of our passage that stood out to me today was Zechariah 11, the section about the good and evil shepherds.
Zechariah acting out the role of shepherd demonstrated how God would reject His people because they rejected him, and how God would let them fall into the clutches of evil shepherds. The shepherd staff named "Favor" was broken to show that God's covenant with His people was broken, and the staff named "Union" was broken to show that the unity between Judah and Israel was broken. It wasn't long after this that the Jews began to divide into many different groups - Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians, and Zealots - a broken union indeed!
I appreciated the prophetic significance of v12-13.
v12 speaks about paying the shepherd 30 pieces of silver - which was insulting. It's the same price paid to an owner for a slave gored by an ox (Exodus 21:32), but it's also the same amount of money Judas received for betraying Jesus (Matthew 27:3-10). As my Life Application Bible says: The priceless Messiah was sold for the price of a slave.
In v13 the 30 coins are thrown to the potter in the Temple of the Lord. In Matthew 27, Judas' 30 coins were returned to the temple and used to buy a potter's field.
And, of course, this passage reminds us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and that He is the one we should follow.
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage: Zechariah 12-14, Ezra 6:15-22, Ezra 4:6
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