Zechariah 11

This chapter is an incredibly dark prophecy. It makes me shutter just to read it... Because so much of it came true.

In verse 6 Zechariah writes "For I will no longer have pity on the people of the land,” declares the LORD. “I will give everyone into the hands of their neighbors and their king. They will devastate the land, and I will not rescue anyone from their hands.”

In 70AD the Romans started in Antioch and moved south, destroying everything.

Verse 8 "In one month I got rid of the three shepherds."

Most scholars think that the three shepherds are the prophet, priest and king. The last prophet was John the Baptist, the Romans destroyed the temple so there was no priest and following the war with the Romans, Israel ceased to exist politically for 1900 years. Israel was not on the map anymore, there was no longer a king. All three were gone.

In verse 9 God said, “I will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die, and the perishing perish. Let those who are left eat one another’s flesh.”

The Romans encircled Jerusalem before they destroyed it, leading to starvation and cannibalism.

Why?

Verses 12-13 "I told them, “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the LORD.

Judas betrayed Jesus for how much? Thirty pieces of silver.

I think we all prefer to read the bible with a highlighter in one hand and a sharpie in the other. We highlight our favorite verses and black out the ones we don't like.

Instead of blacking out some texts we need to learn to live with them. There is nothing I can write that makes this chapter sound any better, any more loving.

It is what it is... It's ugly.

What Jesus went through was ugly.

What the Jews went through was ugly.