384 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
Jer. 1. 6-7, which was most probably before the mind of Zechariah. " My people hath been lost sheep : their shepherds have caused them to go astray : . . . all that found them have devoured tJiem : and their adversaries say we offend not (are not guilty *), because they have sinned against Jehovah, the habitation of justice, Jehovah, the hope of their fathers."
But, though it is true that Israel on account of their most terrible sins have been handed over by God as a righteous punishment into the hands of the Gentile world- powers, they are not held innocent for their cruel deeds towards them. This we see from the same 5oth chapter of Jeremiah, where God says : " Israel is a scattered sheep ; the lions (the Gentile world-powers who are likened to ferocious wild beasts} have driven him away : first, the king of Assyria hath devoured him ; and last this Nebuch adnezzar king of Babylon Jiath broken his bones. TJtere- fore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel : Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, as I have punished the king of Assyria" 2
And what God did to Assyria and Babylon, He did also to Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and still will do to nations and individuals whom He uses as a scourge against His own people, for His word in another part of Jeremiah still holds true : " Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured ; and all thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity ; and they that spoil thee shall be a spoil ; and all they that prey upon thee will I give for a prey" 3
But to return more directly to our scripture. Not only will they be thus abused and " slain " by Gentile oppressors, but " their own shepherds" by which we must understand their own civil and religious rulers, those who ought to have fed and defended them "pity them not" 4 thus proving themselves false shepherds, who only sought their own, and were the chief cause of the sheep becoming a prey.
1 o$>w K 1 ? the same verb as in Zech. xi. 5.
2 Jer. 1. 17, 18. -Jer. xxx. 16.
4 V nrr & -\r}K yo>nar lo-yadimol the verbs "sayeth" and "hath no pity" are singular an emphatic mode of expression, by which each individual is represented as doing or not doing the action of the verb.
