Having now reviewed the whole of Second Zechariah, I find myself asking the question, what the heck did that daggone shepherd imagery actually mean?  This is the imagery that initially dragged me into this larger examination, since particularly Matthew seems to have found it quite compelling as a way of interpreting the events surrounding Jesus’ death.  In the pursuit of my continued efforts to figure out what is going on, I think my approach here will be to review the various shepherd metaphors in Zechariah on their own terms and then subsequently examine them within the context of Matthew’s citations.  

The first shepherd imagery appears in Zechariah 10:2-3:

[2]…

Therefore the people wander like sheep;

Because of this they shall be removed as sheep 

They suffer for lack of a shepherd.

And they shall be harmed, for there was not healing.

[3] My anger is hot against the shepherds,

My wrath has been provoked against the shepherds,

And I will punish the leaders;

And I shall have care for the lambs;

Relative to the rest of the text, this usage seems to stand apart, inasmuch as Zechariah 9-10 seem like they were originally composed separately from the prose of later chapters.  My initial reading of this passage is that it was a later addition to the text of Zechariah 10, intended to add to the thematic unity between it and Zechariah 11, but it is also possibly the case that the imagery existed in the original, separate composition and was a key reason for its collection together with later chapters.  In ch. 9, this shepherd reference fairly immediately turns to God’s promise for a victorious Judah. 

The subsequent Shepherd imagery which occurs in Zechariah 11 & 13 also involves an ultimate turn toward God’s redemption, but it has much more involved discussions of the suffering which will be the result of the bad shepherds.  In the case of ch. 11, this passage seems to me to be describing the cause of the Babylonian exile, and although the narrator in the passage is the worthless shepherd, it perhaps makes sense to read this worthless shepherd as the Davidic monarchs, and the various sheep merchants and other shepherds as the nobility/priesthood.  When read this way, ch. 12, which takes a great deal of care to suggest that the tribe of Judah and the house of David will be rejuvenated by the fidelity of Jerusalem, seems to be describing the redemption of the Davidic ruling class, as a result of a newly ascendant Jerusalem.  It is especially notable in ch.12 that Judah is initially numbered among Jerusalem’s enemies, and only God’s power on behalf of Jerusalem causes them to return to godliness.

Zechariah 13-14 repeat the pattern of ch. 11-12. Zechariah 11: 1-6 is an ambiguous condemnation of prophets (or false prophets depending on the textual tradition from which you are reading), but the shepherd return in the poetry of vv. 7-9, in which the shepherd is struck, the sheep are scattered, two-thirds of people are destroyed, and the remaining third are purified by fire like they are silver or gold being smelted. Here too it is possible to read the passage as referring to the Babylonian exile as the event being described.  Ch 14 then turns to another description of Jerusalem surrounded, with even Judah fighting, divine intervention in the form of plagues cast upon those besieging (and their horses, camels, donkeys, and mules), and then ultimately a utopian state in which God is Emperor of even Egypt and everyone makes obeisance to God and is religiously observant of Succoth. 

Viewing these passages as a whole, my preferred reading of the bad shepherd imagery is that it is based off the experience of the Babylonian exile, as well as the prophetic tradition condemning the Babylonian exile as a result of injustices by the ruling class and infidelity by religious leaders. Prophetic of proto-apocalyptic literature in the Bible is as much about vibes as anything else, and so we should not expect a precise series of metaphors that are logically consistent, and I think it is fine for the bad shepherd metaphor to work to describe failed political and religious leadership, the genuine but futile fidelity of the prophets, and the narrator of Zechariah themself.  

Ultimately the actions of the shepherd(s) are irrelevant to the course of events, because the particular emphasis of the Second Zechariah is the primacy of Jerusalem as God’s dwelling place, which leads it to ultimate invincibility and a final status as the home of God as emperor to which neighboring peoples will be subjected after a period of violence and calamity. 

Now let’s turn our attention to the the New Testament!