of a foolish shepherd, i.e., to set forth the action of a foolish shepherd. Whether the pastoral staff of the foolish shepherd was of a different kind from that of the good shepherd, is a matter of indifference, so far as the meaning of the symbol is concerned. Folly, according to the Old Testament view, is synonymous with ungodliness and sin (cf. Psa 14:1.). The reason for the divine command is given in Zec 11:16 by a statement of the meaning of the new symbolical action. God will raise up a shepherd over the land, who will not tend, protect, and care for the flock, but will destroy it. That we are not to understand by this foolish shepherd all the evil native rulers of the Jewish people collectively, as Hengstenberg supposes, is as evident from the context as it possibly can be. If the good shepherd represented by the prophet in Zec 11:4-14 is no other than Jehovah in His rule over Israel, the foolish shepherd who is raised up over the land in the place of the good shepherd, who had been despised and rejection, can only be the possessor of the imperial power, into whose power the nation is given up after the rejection of the good shepherd sent to it in Christ, i.e., the Roman empire, which destroyed the Jewish state. The rule of the foolish shepherd is depicted not only as an utter neglect, but as a consuming of the flock, as in Eze 34:3-4; Jer 23:1-2. The perishing sheep he will not seek, i.e., will not take charge of them (cf. Jer 23:9). הנּער cannot be the young or tender one; for not only is na‛ar, the boy, not used of animals, but even when used of men it has not the meaning tender or weak. The word is a substantive formation from nâ‛ar, to shake, piel to disperse, used in the sense of dispulsio, and the abstract being used for the concrete, the dispersed, the scattered, as the early translators rendered it. Hannishbereth, that which is broken, i.e., injured through the fracture of a limb. The opposite of nishbereth is הנּצּבה, that which stands upon its feet, and therefore is still strong. But not only will he neglect the flock: he will also seize upon it, and utterly consume it, not only devouring the flesh of the fat one, but even tearing in pieces the claws of the sheep. Not indeed by driving them along bad and stony roads (Tarn., Ewald, Hitzig), for this does no great harm to sheep, but so that when he consumes the sheep, he even splits or tears in pieces the claws, to seize upon the swallow the last
