Zechariah 4:5

4:5 He replied, “Don’t you know what these are?” So I responded, “No, sir.”

Zechariah 7:14

7:14 ‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ¹  land a waste.”

Zechariah 9:5

9:5 Ashkelon will see and be afraid; Gaza will be in great anguish, as will Ekron, for her hope will have been dried up. ²  Gaza will lose her king, and Ashkelon will no longer be inhabited.

Zechariah 11:5

11:5 Those who buy them ³  slaughter them and are not held guilty; those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich.’ Their own shepherds have no compassion for them.

Zechariah 11:9

11:9 I then said, “I will not shepherd you. What is to die, let it die, and what is to be eradicated, let it be eradicated. As for those who survive, let them eat each other’s flesh!”

Zechariah 11:12

11:12 Then I ⁴  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. ⁵ 

Zechariah 12:7

12:7 The Lord also will deliver the homes ⁶  of Judah first, so that the splendor of the kingship ⁷  of David and of the people of Jerusalem may not exceed that of Judah.

Zechariah 14:7

14:7 It will happen in one day (a day known to the Lord); not in the day or the night, but in the evening there will be light. ⁸ 

Zechariah 14:17

14:17 But if any of the nations anywhere on earth refuse to go up to Jerusalem ⁹  to worship the King, the Lord who rules over all, they will get no rain.

Zechariah 14:19

14:19 This will be the punishment of Egypt and of all nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

¹ tn Or “desirable”; traditionally “pleasant” (so many English versions; cf. TEV “This good land”).

¹ tn The present translation presupposes a Hiphil perfect of יָבֵשׁ (yavesh, “be dry”; cf. NRSV “are withered”) rather than the usually accepted Hiphil of בּוֹשׁ (bosh, “be ashamed”; cf. KJV, ASV), a sense that is less suitable with the removal of hope.

¹ sn The expression those who buy them appears to be a reference to the foreign nations to whom Israel’s own kings “sold” their subjects. Far from being good shepherds, then, they were evil and profiteering. The whole section (vv. 4-14) refers to the past when the Lord, the Good Shepherd, had in vain tried to lead his people to salvation and life.

¹ sn The speaker (Zechariah) represents the Lord, who here is asking what his service as faithful shepherd has been worth in the opinion of his people Israel.

² 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).

¹ tn Heb “the tents” (so NAB, NRSV); NIV “the dwellings.”

² tn Heb “house,” referring here to the dynastic line. Cf. NLT “the royal line”; CEV “the kingdom.” The same expression is translated “dynasty” in the following verse.

¹ sn In the evening there will be light. The normal pattern is that light breaks through in the morning (Gen 1:3) but in the day of the Lord in judgment it would do so in the evening. In a sense the universe will be “de-created” in order to be “recreated.”

¹ sn The reference to any…who refuse to go up to Jerusalem makes clear the fact that the nations are by no means “converted” to the Lord but are under his compulsory domination.