to take (in the widest variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular
staff
מַקְלִי֙mak.Li
H4731
a shoot · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix
Beauty
נֹ֔עַםNo.'am
H5278
agreeableness · noun, common masculine singular absolute
asunder
וָאֶגְדַּ֖עva.'eg.Da'
H1438
to fell a tree · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular
break
לְהָפֵיר֙le.ha.Feir
H6565
to break up (usually figuratively) · preposition + verb, hiphil infinitive construct
covenant
בְּרִיתִ֔יbe.ri.Ti
H1285
a compact (because made by passing between pieces of fl… · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix
made
כָּרַ֖תִּיka.Ra.ti
H3772
to cut (off · verb, qal perfect, 1st person common singular
people
הָעַמִּֽיםha.'a.Mim
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · definite article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Zechariah 11:7 And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the other…
Psalms 89:39 Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.
Jeremiah 14:21 Do not abhor us, for thy name’s sake, do not disgrace the throne of thy glory: remember, break not thy covenant with us.
Jeremiah 31:31-32 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
Hebrews 8:8-13 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and w…
1 Samuel 2:30 Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now t…
Psalms 90:17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish th…
Luke 21:5-6 And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said,
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Zechariah 11:4-14
The prophet here is made a type of Christ, as the prophet Isaiah sometimes was; and the scope of these verses is to show that for judgment Christ came into this world (Joh 9:39), for judgment to the Jewish church and nation, which were, about the time of his coming, wretchedly corrupted and degenerated by the worldliness and hypocrisy of their rulers. Christ would have healed them, but they would not be healed; they are therefore left desolate, and abandoned to ruin. Observe here,
I. The desperate case of the Jewish church, under the tyranny of their own governors. Their slavery in their own country made them as miserable as their captivity in strange countries had done: Their possessors sla…
covenant which I made with all the people--The covenant made with the whole nation is to hold good no more except to the elect remnant. This is the force of the clause, not as MAURER, and others translate. The covenant which I made with all the nations (not to hurt My elect people, Hos 2:18). But the Hebrew is the term for the elect people (Ammim), not that for the Gentile nations (Goiim). The Hebrew plural expresses the great numbers of the Israelite people formerly (Kg1 4:20). The article is, in the Hebrew, all the or those peoples. His cutting asunder the staff "Beauty," implies the setting aside of the outward symbols of the Jews distinguishing excellency above the Gentiles (see on Zac 1…
I took my staff - Beauty, and cut it asunder - And thus I showed that I determined no longer to preserve them in their free and glorious state. And thus I brake my covenant with them, which they had broken on their part already.
John Gill on Zechariah 11:10
And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder,.... Signifying that he dropped his pastoral care of them: the Gospel indeed, which is meant by the staff "Beauty", cannot be made void; it will have its designed effect; it is the everlasting Gospel, and will endure; its blessings, promises, doctrines, ordinances, and ministers, shall continue, till all the elect are gathered in, even unto the second coming of Christ: but then it may be removed from one place to another; it may be taken from one people, and given to another; and which is generally owing to contempt of it, unfruitfulness under it, and indifference to it; and this is the case here, it designs the taking away of the Gospel f…
The Church Fathers
(Vers. 10, 11.) And I took my staff, which was called Beauty, and I cut it in two to break the covenant that I had made with all the peoples. And it was broken on that day, so the poor of the flock, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. LXX: And I will take my beautiful staff and throw it away, to break the covenant that I had made with all the peoples, and it will be broken on that day, and the Canaanites will know that the sheep, which are being watched, are the word of the Lord. After the calling of the Israelites and the assumption of the second rod, which was called a cord, the Lord took the first rod, called "glory," and cut them off from his worship, because they worshipped idols, and all turned aside, becoming useless together (Psalm 14). And in order to make it more clear what this rod was, he added: "So that I might nullify my covenant which I made with all the people: For as soon as Israel was assumed, the multitude of the nations was cast aside: and as the daughter of the Archisynagogue was born, who is later narrated in the Gospel to be twelve years old, she began to bleed and suffer from a permanent illness (Mark 5; Matthew 9). And it was rendered null and void, he said, the covenant which I had made with all the nations. And the poor of the flock, that is, the people of Israel who keep my commandments, understood that the word of the Lord, that is, the will of the Lord, is to reject the nations that deny Him and to accept the Israelites in the line of Abraham. Because we have interpreted it, and the poor of the flock understood it thus, the Seventy translated it, and the Canaanites will know, the sheep that are entrusted to me, that some have explained: The people of the Jews will know, to whom it was said: The seed of Canaan, and not of Judah (Dan. XIII, 56); who now keep my ceremonies: whether because the Canaanites interpret it as being ready for humility, they will know those who were once ready to be humbled by the Lord and be left behind. But why they insulted us, poor people, for what we have interpreted, the reason is clear: among the Hebrews, thus, Chen () is said: Anie (), poor people; they connect those two words together, for what it is, thus poor people, that is, Chen Anie (, the name of the Canaanite people has been interpreted.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Zechariah 11:10, 11
10. And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.
10. Et accepi virgam meam, nempe Pulchritudinem, et confregi eam, ut irritum facerem foedus quod pepigeram cum omnibus gentibus (vel, populis.)
11. And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the LORD.
11. Et irritum fuit die illo; et cognoverunt sic paupers gregis qui me observabant, quod sermo Iehovae hic esset.
He confirms the same truth, but a metaphor is introduced: for he says, that when he freed himself from the office of a shepherd, he broke the two rods, even Beauty and…
From Zac 11:7 onwards the feeding of the flock is described. Zac 11:7. "And I fed the slaughtering flock, therewith the wretched ones of the sheep, and took to myself two staves: the one I called Favour, the other I called Bands; and so I fed the flock. Zac 11:8. And I destroyed three of the shepherds in one month." The difficult expression לכן, of which very different renderings have been given (lit., with the so-being), is evidently used here in the same sense as in Isa 26:14; Isa 61:7; Jer 2:33, etc., so as to introduce what occurred eo ipso along with the other event which took place. When the shepherd fed the slaughtering flock, he thereby, or at the same time, fed the wretched ones of…
Unlike Ezekiel, who dramatized the reunification of the Hebrew kingdoms (Ezek 37:15-19), Zechariah dramatized the division by cutting the staffs in two (see also Zech 11:14). The cutting of the staffs indicated the broken covenant bond between God and his people (11:11) and the broken bond of unity between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel (11:14). • A covenant between the Lord and all the nations is otherwise unknown. Zechariah might actually have been proclaiming the dissolution of the covenant binding Israel to God as his people (cp. Hos 1:6-9; see study note on Zech 13:9).
Rashi on Zechariah 11:10
And I took My [first] staff, [called] Pleasantness I broke the power of the kings of Israel in the days of Jehoahaz the son of Jehu - to the extent that the king of Aram destroyed them and made them like dust to trample (II Kings 13:7) - and in the days of Hoshea the son of Elah, when I delivered them into the hands of Sennacherib and he exiled them (ibid. 17:6).
to nullify My covenant that I [had] formed with all the peoples To show them that because they betrayed Me, I nullified My covenant that I formed with all the peoples concerning them, that the [peoples] not harm them. For, on that condition I gave them the Torah, that if they keep it, they will be free from the kingdoms; that no na…
