48:39 Oh, how shattered Moab will be!
Oh, how her people will wail!
Oh, how she will turn away 1 in shame!
Moab will become an object of ridicule,
a terrifying sight to all the nations that surround her.”
9:4 For their oppressive yoke
and the club that strikes their shoulders,
the cudgel the oppressor uses on them, 2
you have shattered, as in the day of Midian’s defeat. 3
10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, 4
a cudgel with which I angrily punish. 5
“Look how the oppressor has met his end!
Hostility 7 has ceased!
14:5 The Lord has broken the club of the wicked,
the scepter of rulers.
19:11 Its boughs were strong, fit 8 for rulers’ scepters; it reached up into the clouds.
It stood out because of its height and its many branches. 9
19:12 But it was plucked up in anger; it was thrown down to the ground.
The east wind 10 dried up its fruit;
its strong branches broke off and withered –
a fire consumed them.
19:13 Now it is planted in the wilderness,
in a dry and thirsty land. 11
19:14 A fire has gone out from its branch; it has consumed its shoot and its fruit. 12
No strong branch was left in it, nor a scepter to rule.’
This is a lament song, and has become a lament song.”
11:10 Then I took my staff “Pleasantness” and cut it in two to annul my covenant that I had made with all the people. 11:11 So it was annulled that very day, and then the most afflicted of the flock who kept faith with me knew that that was the word of the Lord.
11:12 Then I 13 said to them, “If it seems good to you, pay me my wages, but if not, forget it.” So they weighed out my payment – thirty pieces of silver. 14 11:13 The Lord then said to me, “Throw to the potter that exorbitant sum 15 at which they valued me!” So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter 16 at the temple 17 of the Lord. 11:14 Then I cut the second staff “Binders” in two in order to annul the covenant of brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
1 tn Heb “turn her back.”
2 tn Heb “for the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the scepter of the oppressor against him.” The singular pronouns are collective, referring to the people. The oppressed nation is compared to an ox weighed down by a heavy yoke and an animal that is prodded and beaten.
3 sn This alludes to Gideon’s victory over Midian (Judg 7-8), when the Lord delivered Israel from an oppressive foreign invader.
4 tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.
5 tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”
6 tn Heb “you will lift up this taunt over the king of Babylon, saying.”
7 tc The word in the Hebrew text (מַדְהֵבָה, madhevah) is unattested elsewhere and of uncertain meaning. Many (following the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa) assume a dalet-resh (ד-ר) confusion and emend the form to מַרְהֵבָה (marhevah, “onslaught”). See HALOT 548 s.v. II *מִדָּה and HALOT 633 s.v. *מַרְהֵבָה.
8 tn The word “fit” does not occur in the Hebrew text.
9 tn Heb “and it was seen by its height and by the abundance of its branches.”
10 sn The east wind symbolizes the Babylonians.
11 sn This metaphor depicts the Babylonian exile of the Davidic dynasty.
12 tn The verse describes the similar situation recorded in Judg 9:20.
13 sn The speaker (Zechariah) represents the
14 sn If taken at face value, thirty pieces (shekels) of silver was worth about two and a half years’ wages for a common laborer. The Code of Hammurabi prescribes a monthly wage for a laborer of one shekel. If this were the case in Israel, 30 shekels would be the wages for 2 1/2 years (R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, pp. 76, 204-5). For other examples of “thirty shekels” as a conventional payment, see K. Luke, “The Thirty Pieces of Silver (Zech. 11:12f.), Ind TS 19 (1982): 26-30. Luke, on the basis of Sumerian analogues, suggests that “thirty” came to be a term meaning anything of little or no value (p. 30). In this he follows Erica Reiner, “Thirty Pieces of Silver,” in Essays in Memory of E. A. Speiser, AOS 53, ed. William W. Hallo (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1968), 186-90. Though the 30 shekels elsewhere in the OT may well be taken literally, the context of Zech. 11:12 may indeed support Reiner and Luke in seeing it as a pittance here, not worth considering (cf. Exod 21:32; Lev 27:4; Matt 26:15).
15 tn Heb “splendor of splendor” (אֶדֶר הַיְקָר, ’eder hayqar). This expression sarcastically draws attention to the incredibly low value placed upon the
16 tn The Syriac presupposes הָאוֹצָר (ha’otsar, “treasury”) for the MT הַיּוֹצֵר (hayyotser, “potter”) perhaps because of the lack of evidence for a potter’s shop in the area of the temple. The Syriac reading is followed by NAB, NRSV, TEV. Matthew seems to favor this when he speaks of Judas having thrown the thirty shekels for which he betrayed Jesus into the temple treasury (27:5-6). However, careful reading of the whole gospel pericope makes it clear that the money actually was used to purchase a “potter’s field,” hence Zechariah’s reference to a potter. The MT reading is followed by most other English versions.
17 tn Heb “house” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).