NRSV

[4] Thus said the LORD my God: Be a shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. [5] Those who buy them kill them and go unpunished; and those who sell them say, “Blessed be the LORD, for I have become rich”; and their own shepherds have no pity on them.  [6] For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the earth, says the LORD. I will cause them, every one, to fall each into the hand of a neighbor, and each into the hand of the king; and they shall devastate the earth, and I will deliver no one from their hand.  

LXX

[4] The Lord Almighty says this: Shepherd the sheep of slaughter, [5] which the buyers were slaughtering and were not regretting, and the sellers say these things “Blessed is the Lord and we have been made rich,” and their shepherds were not suffering anything for them.  [6] Because of this I shall no longer hold back against the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord, and see I shall hand over the people each unto the hands of his neighbor and unto the hands of this king, and they shall cut up the earth, and I shall certainly not rescue from their hands. 

Notes on Text

Here we see the shepherd metaphor continued, although obviously this passage has a much different tone than, for example Zechariah 9-10, in which any conversation about bad shepherds is softened by God’s promise to gather people in from exile into the restored Kingdom of Judah.  Instead, this has been replaced by the promise of fresh punishments.  

In this passage, people seem to have been divided into several categories.  One of those categories is “people external to the people of God,” as indicated by “neighbors” and “the king”. For the people of God, they seem to be divided on the one hand into a ruling class composed of shepherds, buyers, and sellers.  On the other hand is the general run of people, who are the sheep destined for slaughter.  The interrelationships among the ruling classes are particularly interesting.  

For one thing, it is ambiguous who the shepherd(s) are.  One way to read this passage is that vv. 4 calls the author specifically to become the shepherd of the sheep of slaughter, as a replacement for the neglectful shepherds described later.  Another way to read that verse is as a general call to a priestly audience, to either replace neglectful shepherds (who are worldly aristocrats), to reform their own behavior as neglectful shepherds (with worldly aristocrats as the buyers and sellers), or simply to indicate that they are in fact shepherds and are neglectful. This could also be read as generally identifying the aristocracy as neglectful shepherds and also buyers and sellers.  Subsequent passages in the chapter indicate that at least in vv. 4, the shepherd is the author himself and distinct from the neglectful shepherds, whose identity remains quite ambiguous.  

Overall the impression is quite condemnatory of the aristocracy.  There is also an interesting question about what precisely is meant in vv. 6 when God promises to no longer hold back/have pity on the inhabitants of the earth.  This promise seems to also encompass the sheep of the slaughter, in addition to the aristocracy.  In this, it appears, the poor sheep cannot catch a break.  One possible way to read this is that the sheep of the slaughter aren’t really worse off than they had been before.  Another way to read this is that “the inhabitants of the earth” implicitly really only means “the aristocratic inhabitants of the earth.” 

My suspicion is that both of these interpretations are simultaneously true. In the ancient world, it was fairly common for aristocrats to be taken hostage by their conquerors, essentially as a way to prevent insurrection.  Sometimes this looked like close relatives being taken hostage while the existing ruling class continued to rule what was now an imperial province, sometimes (as was seemingly the case of the Babylonian exile) the entire aristocracy was removed and quisling rulers were installed to rule the province.  In either situation, the peasantry was mostly left in place, and  beyond whatever additional horrors the conquest itself would have entailed, they were likely to have viewed either regime as similarly oppressive. 

However we would like to interpret this, though, it is fascinating that here we do not see God promising redemption, even to the most oppressed!  This is a sharp contrast to the preceding chapters of Zechariah.