Zechariah 11 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Open your doors, Lebanon, and let the fire eat your cedars.

Wail, cypress, the cedar has fallen, the magnificent trees are wrecked. Wail, oaks of Bashan, the forest no one could walk into has come down.

Listen: the shepherds howling, their green pasture wrecked. Listen: the young lions roaring, the thickets along the Jordan wrecked.

This is what Yahweh my God said: Shepherd the flock marked for slaughter.

The people who buy them kill them and nobody calls it a crime. The people who sell them say, "Praise Yahweh, I am rich." Their own shepherds feel nothing for them.

I will not feel sorry for the people of this land any longer, says Yahweh. Watch me hand every one of them over, each into the grip of his neighbour and of his king. They will smash the country to pieces, and I will not pull anyone out of their hands.

So I shepherded the flock marked for slaughter, and above all the beaten-down animals in it. I took two staffs. One I named Kindness and the other I named Bonds, and I shepherded the flock.

In one month I got rid of the three shepherds. I ran out of patience with them, and they could not stand me either.

Then I said, I am not shepherding you any more. Whatever is dying, let it die. Whatever is being destroyed, let it be destroyed. Let the ones still standing eat each other's flesh.

I took my staff Kindness and snapped it in two, tearing up the agreement I had made with all the peoples.

It was torn up that day, and the beaten-down animals in the flock, the ones watching me, knew this was Yahweh speaking.

I said to them, "If it seems right to you, pay me my wages. If not, keep them." So they weighed out my wages: thirty pieces of silver.

Yahweh said to me, "Throw it to the potter, that grand price they put on me." So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of Yahweh, to the potter.

Then I snapped my second staff, Bonds, breaking apart the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

Yahweh said to me, "Now pick up the kit of a shepherd who is good for nothing."

Watch: I am putting a shepherd over this land who will not look after the animals that are dying, will not go searching for the young ones, will not patch up the injured, will not feed the ones still on their feet. He will eat the meat off the fat sheep and tear their hooves apart.

Grief to the shepherd who is good for nothing, who walks out on the flock. A sword against his arm and against his right eye. Let his arm wither to nothing, let his right eye go dark.