Zechariah 13:6-9
The following verse tells of Christ's rejection: "And one shall say unto Him, What are these wounds in Thine hands? Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends." v. 6. He had in love become the servant of man; and for His love He had hatred, rejection, and crucifixion, and this, as He explains, in the house of His friends. For, according to the flesh, He was a Jew, Son of David, heir of the promises, and as such He came into the house of His friends. For Him too they waited; all their hopes were centered on His advent, and yet they would not receive Him, but met Him with the enmity of their evil hearts, and rested not until they had pierced His hands and His feet. All this is familiar to us, but we never weary of meditating upon it, because the cross, and the cross alone, is the measure of His love. One further remark may be added. He cannot conceal His love for His people; for though showing the wounds He had received while in their midst, He yet says, "the house of My friends." Truly, blessed Lord, Thy love is both unchangeable and unquenchable!
He was wounded by His friends, but He was smitten of Jehovah; and thus we read, "Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones." v. 7. The application and fulfillment of this scripture have been indicated by the Lord Himself. After the Passover feast, "when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of Me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." Matt. 26:30, 31. This makes it plain that the death of Christ in His character as the Shepherd is signified, and thus supplies the key to the interpretation of the passage. The address is to the sword, the sword being a figure of the judicial stroke that fell upon Christ in His death (compare Jer. 47:6); and the command to smite reveals that while the Jews by wicked hands took and crucified their Messiah, He was yet delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Wounded in the house of His friends was man's work and man's wickedness; smitten by the sword of judgment, though man was the instrument, brings in rather God's action; and thus in these two verses we have indicated His sufferings from the hands of man, and His sufferings from the hand of God. Under the hand of man He died for righteousness' sake a martyr; as suffering under the hand of God, because He offered Himself for the glory of God in expiation, He died as the sacrifice for sin. The 6th verse is therefore the 69th, and the 7th is the 22nd Psalm.
Then the character in which the Messiah is here presented must be noticed. First, He is termed "My shepherd." This title is especially used in relation to Israel. We thus read in Ezekiel, "I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even My servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd." Chap. 34:23. And the Lord when down here claimed for Himself that He was the Good Shepherd, even as also the Apostle speaks of Him as the great Shepherd of the sheep (Heb. 13). As here used, the title describes Him as the Messiah, who, in the words of Isaiah, "shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young." Isa. 40:11. (Compare Psalm 23; 78:70-72, etc.) Since, moreover, He is termed "My" Shepherd, He is brought be fore us as the One of God's providing and appointment, and as the One who answers to His mind. In a word, the Messiah will be God's Shepherd for His people when they are once again restored and blessed in the land; and He was presented as such on His first coming, but, refused, He laid down His life for the sheep. He was smitten of Jehovah's sword in the language of our scripture. If, however, the term shepherd points to His official place as the King, "the man that is My fellow" reveals to us His divinity; for of no other than He, who was one with the Father (John 10), who subsisted in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. 2), and who, as the Word was with God and was God (John 1), could such language be employed. Wondrous words are they to be spoken of the meek and lowly Jesus, of Him whose "visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men (Isa. 52:14); but being used, they unfold the truth that Jesus of Nazareth was in very deed Gad manifest in flesh. And remark, as has often been done, that, addressed here in His humiliation as the "fellow" of Jehovah, in His exaltation where He is addressed as God, the saints are spoken of as His "fellows." (Psalm 45:7; Heb. 1:9.)
The Messiah then, as the Shepherd of Israel, and as the One who is described as the fellow of Jehovah, is seen here as smitten - smitten by the sword of judgment because, as the Good Shepherd, He laid down His life for the sheep, thus intercepting the stroke that was their due, that He might, on their behalf, meet all God's holy claims, and glorify Him concerning their sins.
A twofold immediate effect here follows. First, the sheep are scattered. This was fulfilled literally on the night of His apprehension, when all His disciples, those who had acknowledged Him as the Shepherd of Israel, forsook Him and fled; and in another way, we cannot doubt, it has been accomplished in the scattering of the Jews over the face of the whole earth; for it is written, "He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd does his flock" (Jer. 31:10). He came to gather His sheep, but when they as a people refused to listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, and He was smitten, God in His government, and judicially, "scattered" the flock. It is also added, "I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones." Thus while judgment should descend upon the sheep who did not know the voice of their Shepherd, and who, instead of fallowing Him, demanded His crucifixion, God would cover with His hand the "little ones" who had recognized their Messiah, the remnant in fact, who had attached themselves to Him during His earthly ministry, in that day of evil and trouble.
Last, we have the consequences of the smiting of the Shepherd in their final results for God's people. "And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: and they shall call on My name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is My people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God." vv. 8, 9. It is clear, we judge, that the whole of the present interval of grace must be interposed between the 7th and 8th verses; for while judgment, and terrible judgment, did fall upon the Jewish nation some thirty or forty years after the death of Christ, no such result as the bringing a third part through the fire into relationship with God was then reached. The accomplishment of this word, therefore, must be looked for in the future, when the Jews shall have been brought back to their land in unbelief, when God will resume His dealings with them, and when, as we know from other scriptures (Matt. 24; Rev. 13) they will be subjected to hitherto unheard of persecutions. It is then that God will deal with them on account of their sin in rejecting their Messiah, and when, as we read here, "two parts... shall be cut off and die," and when, as the Lord foretold, "except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." Matt. 24:22. But a third part shall be brought through this fire, a fire seven times hotter than even Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, and God will purify them in the process, refining them as silver, and trying them as gold (compare Mal. 3:2, 3; also 1 Pet. 1:7), and thereby bring them back into relationship with Jehovah their God. This represents the end of all God's ways, in His judicial dealings, with the Jews. Because of their sins He had written the sentence of Lo-ammi (not My people) upon them; and now the sentence is reversed, and He out of the fullness of His heart, on His part, declares, It is My people; and they, brought back, repentant and restored, in gratitude respond, The Lord is my God. Blessed, happy, consummation for which God still waits, and for which too His ancient people unconsciously wait, but which will surely arrive in its own time; and when it comes, it will usher in the peace and blessing of the millennial day.

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