Zechariah 11:13

Unto the potter] better, 'into the treasury' (see RM), by the change of one letter in the Heb. A goodly price that I was prised at of them] a sarcastic parenthesis. St. Matthew applies the incident to the case of Judas Iscariot (see Matthew 27:9), but refers it to Jeremiah.

14. The last hope of uniting broken and distracted Israel vanishes. The prophet abandons his task in despair.

15. Instead he will personate a worthless ruler who will tear and destroy the sheep. According to some this worthless shepherd was Menelaus, a high priest whose rivalry with Jason, also a claimant for the priesthood, brought about the great oppression of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes, 171 b.c. In that case the good shepherd in Zechariah 13:7 may refer in the first instance to Jason, who represented the patriotic, as Menelaus represented the foreign, party. Jason, however, was in sympathy with foreign fashions, and he ultimately died in exile. On the other hand, Hyrcanus may be intended.