Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Zechariah · About this commentary
No Shepherd, No Rain
Zechariah 10:1-12
1 Ask of Yahweh rain in the spring time, Yahweh who makes storm clouds, and he gives rain showers to everyone for the plants in the field. · WEB
Sheep wander because nobody is leading them, and the leaders who should have led are the ones God is angry with.
The chapter opens on rain, which in that country is the whole difference between a harvest and a famine: ask of Yahweh rain in the spring time. Spring rain fills the grain before it hardens, and it is the last rain that can still change the outcome.
The alternative sources are then dismissed together. The teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; and they have told false dreams. Household images, professional diviners, and dreams — three consultation methods, each producing something, none producing rain.
And the verdict on all three is not that they are false but that they are useless where it matters: they comfort in vain. They deliver comfort, which is exactly the problem, since comfort is what keeps a person from asking elsewhere.
The consequence is stated as a movement of animals: therefore they go their way like sheep. They are oppressed, because there is no shepherd Zechariah 10:2. Sheep without a shepherd do not rebel; they drift. The word shepherd runs through nine verses of this book, and every one of them is about failure or judgment.
Verse 3 names the target, and it is not the flock: my anger is kindled against the shepherds, and I will punish the male goats. The leading animals, not the led ones. In the same breath the flock is reassigned — Yahweh of Armies has visited his flock, the house of Judah — and then transformed into something a flock is not: his majestic horse in the battle.
What follows is a list of everything the community lacked, all sourced from one place. From him will come the cornerstone, from him the tent peg, from him the battle bow, from him every ruler together Zechariah 10:4. Four times from him: a foundation stone, the peg that anchors a tent, a weapon, and leadership. Permanence, shelter, defense, and government, from the same supply.
The gathering that follows reaches back to both houses — the house of Judah and the house of Joseph — which had been separate kingdoms for centuries. And the restoration is described with a clause that ignores the intervening history: they will be as though I had not cast them off.
The return route runs out of Egypt and Assyria, the two great captivities, and ends in a problem of abundance: there won't be room enough for them.
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