Zechariah 11:8

The effect of the prophet’s (i.e., God’s) feeding the flock is that He “cut off three shepherds in one month.” As in Ezekiel and Daniel (Ezekiel 4:4; Daniel 9:24, &c.), the space of time mentioned here seems to be symbolical; and taking a day for a year, one month will mean about thirty years. Some take “one month” to mean “a short time.” This interpretation will also agree with our view of the case. Some, again, take each day to represent seven years — so that thirty days would be two hundred and ten years — and explain the three shepherds as the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, and Macedonian Empires, which lasted two hundred and fifteen years, from the captivity to Babylon up to the death of Alexander the Great. But no instance can be cited in which a prophetic day is equivalent to seven years. “The three shepherds” may be, then (according to the view which we have adopted with regard to the expression “one month”), the Syro-Grecian kings (B.C. 172-141) — Antiochus Epiphanes (who died miserably in Persia), Antiochus Eupator (put to death by Demetrius I.), and Demetrius I. (overthrown by Alexander Balus). As specimens of attempts to find for the passage an historical reference, taking the expression “one month” literally, the following may be cited: — Cyril considers that kings, priests, and prophets are meant; and Pusey, “priests, judges, and lawyers,” who, having “delivered to the cross the Saviour, were all taken away in one month, Nisan, A.D. 33.” But the rejection of the good shepherd is spoken of by the prophet as posterior to the cutting off of the shepherds. Maurer would interpret the three shepherds of Zechariah (son of Jeroboam II.), his murderer, Shallum, who reigned but a month, and of a third unknown usurper, whose downfall speedily took place. But Shallum was certainly murdered by Menahem (2 Kings 15:10), and there is no room for a third unknown usurper. Hitzig would avoid the difficulty by rendering “I removed the three shepherds which were in one month” (in support of which construction he refers, and rightly, to such passages as Exodus 34:31; Isaiah 23:17; Ezekiel 26:20), and takes them to be the kings Zechariah, Shallum, and Menahem, who in about the space of one month sat upon the throne of Israel. But the difficulty is really not so obviated. Shallum reigned actually “a month of days” (2 Kings 15:13), and the events referred to occupied much longer.

Them. — The sheep, not the shepherds. In spite of what He did for them, they abhorred Him. Though, at first sight, it would seem more natural to refer the pronoun to “the shepherds,” we are precluded from so doing by the consideration that the fact that God loathed the shepherds, and they abhorred Him — shepherds whom He had cut off for the good of His flock — would be no reason for His refusing any more to feed the flock (Zechariah 11:9); whereas the flock’s disregard of all His loving-kindness towards them would afford good cause for His so doing.