What is the meaning of "strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter" (Zechariah 13:7)?

Then is heard a voice still more solemn. It is not wolves now, but God. "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, says Jehovah of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." There is no more difficulty in "the sword" here than in Zechariah 11:17, where it is spoken of for the judgment of the worthless shepherd: it is used figuratively as to both for a violent end of life; but O how deep the contrast! No longer do we hear of deceivers, or idolaters, or other wicked persons, who are outwardly and ostensibly in the house of the Messiah's friends; but Jehovah Himself gives Him up to complete humiliation and rejection. A most solemn consideration; and how true! For we must remember that whatever the mischievous and miserable hatred of the Jews against the Messiah, it could have availed nothing unless Jehovah had allowed it for His own mighty purposes; and this He did. Consequently here it is applied to Him. "Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." Out of the rejection of Christ comes all blessing to those that are His — out of that which was His unexampled shame and His unutterable sorrow in the cross; and this, in every point of view, not only for the counsels of grace, but also in the government of God. There is nothing holy in God which is not vindicated by it; there is nothing gracious toward man for which it has not laid a righteous ground.

Zechariah 13:2-5, seem to treat of the thorough cleansing that the land will undergo, when the national sin has been thus forgiven; while in verses 6, 7, we seem to be carried back to the repentance of the remnant as foretold in the previous chapter. Here we get a closer view of it. "They shall look upon me whom they have pierced" is Messiah's language in Zechariah 12. Here we read, "And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." Not only do "the remnant" discern that it is their Messiah whom they have pierced, but also that their Messiah is Jehovah's fellow — that the One who was wounded in the house of His friends, is the One against whom the sword of divine justice awoke, when as the sin-bearer He became exposed to its stroke. Thus are the secrets of redemption fully opened to them.

He was wounded by His friends, but He was smitten of Jehovah and thus we read, "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." (v. 7.) The application and fulfilment of this scripture have been indicated by the Lord Himself. After the Passover feast, "when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." (Matt. 26:30-31.) This makes it plain that the death of Christ in His character as the Shepherd is signified, and thus supplies the key to the interpretation of the passage. The address is to the sword, the sword being a figure of the judicial stroke that fell upon Christ in His death (compare Jer. 47:6); and the command to smite reveals that while the Jews by wicked hands took and crucified their Messiah, He was yet delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Wounded in the house of his friends was man's work and man's wickedness, smitten by the sword of judgment, though man was the instrument, brings in rather God's action; and thus in these two verses we have indicated His sufferings from the hands of man, and His sufferings from the hand of God. Under the hand of man He died for righteousness' sake a martyr, as suffering under the hand of God, because He offered Himself for the glory of God in expiation, He died as the sacrifice for sin. The sixth verse is therefore the sixty-ninth, and the seventh is the twenty-second Psalm.

v.7Then the character in which the Messiah is here presented must be noticed. First He is termed "My Shepherd." This title is especially used in relation to Israel. We thus read in Ezekiel, "I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd." (Ezek. 34:23.) And the Lord when down here claimed for Himself that He was the Good Shepherd, even as also the apostle speaks of Him as the great Shepherd of the sheep. (Heb. 13) As here used the title describes Him as the Messiah, who, in the words of Isaiah, "shall feed His flock like a shepherd, He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young." (Isa. 40:11; compare Ps. 23, Ps. 78:70-72, etc.) Since, moreover, He is termed "my" Shepherd, He is brought before us as the One of God's providing and appointment, and as the One who answers to His mind. In a word, the Messiah will be God's Shepherd for His people when they are once again restored and blessed in the land; and He was presented as such on His first coming, but, refused, He laid down His life for the sheep. He was smitten of Jehovah's sword in the language of our Scripture. If, however, the term shepherd points to His official place as the King, "the man that is my fellow" reveals to us His divinity; for of no other than He, who was one with the Father (John 10), who subsisted in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. 2), and who, as the Word was with God and was God (John 1), could such language be employed. Wondrous words are they to be spoken of the meek and lowly Jesus, of Him whose "visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men" (Isa. 52:14); but being used, they unfold the truth that Jesus of Nazareth was in very deed God manifest in flesh. And remark, as has often been done, that, addressed here in His humiliation as the "fellow" of Jehovah, in His exaltation where He is addressed as God, the saints are spoken of as His "fellows." (Psalm 45; Heb. 1.)

Verse 7 predicts that far greater matter. Israel nationally were God's sheep, and their sins and apostasy had a twofold effect. It stirred up God's governmental retribution in this world, of which the prophet had much to say; and it also raised the far more serious matter of God's eternal judgment in the life to come. The true Shepherd was to meet that in such fashion that Jehovah's sword was to awake against Him. The sword that had been awakened by the persistent sins of the faithless sheep, was to smite not them but the holy Shepherd.

v.7'The Man that is My Fellow' — these words may have been an enigma to the prophet who wrote them, for 1 Peter 1:10-11, tells us that often the Old Testament prophets had to discover they were saying things, the full meaning of which would only appear in an age to come: the privileged age in which we live. These words are no enigma to us, who can read Romans 1:3, and learn that He who became 'seed of David according to the flesh' was none other than 'His Son Jesus Christ'. When the Son of God assumed Manhood in holiness and perfection, there was indeed a Man that could be called Jehovah's Fellow. He could take the place of sinful men and allow the judgment sword to awake against Himself.

The Lord now warns the disciples, not only of what was about to befall Him, but how it would affect them. "All ye shall be offended; for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered abroad150" (Zech. 13:7). The cross has its side of shame and pain and danger for us, as well as of salvation through Him who bore our sins there. But here it is the way in which it would prove, not deliver, them of which the Saviour speaks. Does that mighty work of suffering for our sins, does the Atonement, "scatter" the sheep? Is it not, on the contrary, the only righteous foundation on which they are gathered? In virtue of Christ's death for our sins, the sheep, instead of being dispersed, are gathered together into one, even other sheep beyond those which Christ had in the Jewish fold, so that there might be one flock and one Shepherd (John 10, 11). But the smiting of the Shepherd expresses His utter humiliation as Messiah, cut off and having nothing. "I will smite," etc., refers to God's giving the Lord up to feel the reality of His rejection and death. No doubt atonement was therein wrought out. "Smiting" is a more general term; and though Christ takes it from God, it was literally His enemies who did the deed, and so became objects of Divine vengeance, as in Psalm 69. Smiting was the loss, so to speak; atonement was the gain of all. Now, that which was properly expiation or atonement was not the pure, however precious, act of Christ's death. Of course, death was necessary for this as for other objects in the counsels of God; but it is what Jesus went through from and with God when made sin — it is what He suffered for our sins, not only in body, but in soul, under Divine wrath, that the atonement depends on. Many besides Jesus have been crucified, but atonement was in no way wrought there. Many have suffered horrors of torment for the truth's sake in life and up to death, but they would have been the first to abhor the falsehood that their sufferings atoned for themselves any more than for others. Many saints have known what it was to be "smitten" and wounded of God, as the same Psalm testifies. In fact, this was more or less the place of God's servants, the prophets, and of righteous men from time to time in Israel, who accepted their affliction and persecution, whatever it was, from God, and not man. This place the Lord Himself tested to the full, for in all things He must have the pre-eminence. He only wrought atonement, but He knew every sorrow which it was possible for man perfect, the Son of God, to take. The smiting of Him who was the Shepherd, chief not only of the sheep, but of the very prophets whom the Lord had raised up for Israel, refers to that utter cutting off which befell Him on the cross; but the sense of this not only He felt anticipatively, but it was that which was called forth before the cross. There was far more than atonement there. He realised in His soul all the condition in which God's people were, and His own total rejection, through man's sin and folly and Satan's maliciousness. The effect, then, of all this humiliation of the Saviour, even before it was complete on the cross, was the scattering of the disciples: "the sheep shall be scattered abroad." They stumbled and fled the night before the blow actually fell on their Master. They did not understand the thing, any more than some do now the Scriptures which speak of it, though the ground of the difficulty be wholly different. They could not make out why the Messiah should be thus treated, and how God should allow it. For it is plain that Christ took all from God (not man), and imputed all to Him. Faith never considers that afflictions spring out of the dust, but owns our Father's hand in everything, however in itself shameful and cruel if one looks at the secondary agents. After "offended" A, etc., 1, 69, Syrpesch hcl sin add "because of Me"; the same authorities, with the exception of Syrsin, having also "this night." Edd. omit all these words, following ℵBCcorr D, etc.