Favor and Union—two staffs
This is what the LORD my God says: “Pasture the flock marked for slaughter. 5Their buyers slaughter them and go unpunished. Those who sell them say, ‘Praise the LORD, I am rich!’ Their own shepherds do not spare them. 6 For I will no longer have pity on the people of the land,” declares the LORD. “I will hand everyone over to his neighbor and his king. They will oppress the land, and I will not rescue them from their hands.”
7 So I pastured the flock marked for slaughter, particularly the oppressed of the flock. Then I took two staffs and called one Favor and the other Union, and I pastured the flock. 8 In one month I got rid of the three shepherds.
The flock detested me, and I grew weary of them 9 and said, “I will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die, and the perishing perish. Let those who are left eat one another’s flesh.”
This chapter is a prophecy of the Shepherd, Jesus. There is a symbolic picture and personification in the two staffs, Favor and Union. Those two staffs describe two aspects of the blessings God’s ancient people stood to receive under the rule of the Good Shepherd.
This does not mean that parts of the prophecy spoken of here did not find an actual fulfillment in Zechariah’s day. (The getting rid of the three shepherds in one month, for instance, or the people’s rejecting the ministry of Zechariah.) It does mean that, ultimately, the words found complete fulfillment in the Savior, something that we are struck by in reading the passion story when the narrative time and again states, “This happened so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.”
Verses 4 to 6 talk about the Shepherd’s unhappiness with his people. They desired other shepherds instead of him. They even desired those shepherds who were in shepherding just for the money, the kind that said (and perhaps still say), “Praise the Lord, I am rich.” When the true Prophet and Shepherd is rejected, he at last must say, “Have it your way then. If you are not for me, then you are against me, and you will most certainly bear the consequences.” In the text the Lord said, “I will not rescue them from their hands.” The desire of those who reject the Shepherd becomes their punishment.
According to Jesus’ own words, there are only two kinds of shepherds—good and bad. The thing that is shocking to hear in chapter 11 is that the sheep call the Good Shepherd bad! “The flock detested me.” Jesus was the Good Shepherd, but no matter. The stubborn flock screamed, “Crucify! Crucify!” He laid down his life, but they were not impressed.
This detesting grieved Jesus. He wept, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). The word the evangelists used to describe Jesus’ weeping was not a word that shows merely a trembling lip and perhaps a lone tear stealing down the cheek. They used a word that describes loud and hopeless sobbing.
The time will come when the Good Shepherd will make his final pronouncement: “I will not be your shepherd.” This finds its final fulfillment with the awful words on judgment day: “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Finally the time comes when the Lord will break the two staffs, Favor and Union.
We sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus.” We admit this with this hymn text: “You treat no other friend so ill” [TLH 650:1] God wants to be our friend; he wanted to be the friend of Zechariah’s people. From young to old, friendship means a great deal. The Lord God wanted to shepherd his people with the staff called Favor! He wanted to be their friend.
Union too. Union—unity—is so important in life. “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! (Psalm 133:1). How much better this unity is when it exists between God and his people. This unity doesn’t exist because God has lowered his requirements for righteousness. Rather, it comes only because God the Father has made a way through his Son, Jesus, whereby all people can truly be united with him.
We cannot be sure who the three shepherds were who were gotten rid of in three months (verse 8). They were some threat to the flock. The shepherds, here the prophet and, in the wider prophecy, Jesus himself, have acted like good shepherds. They have gotten rid of the threat. But this action went unappreciated. The flock detested the shepherds—even shepherds with the flock’s best interest at heart. The sheep turned on their own shepherds!
It is a small wonder why the shepherd finally admitted, “I grew weary of them.” Centuries earlier Pharaoh had insisted on hardening his heart. Finally, the God of infinite patience said, “Be hard, then.” And the heart of stone sank that way in the Red Sea. “Let the dying die and the perishing perish.” This is the frightful but inevitable result of detesting the Shepherd.