1. Open, O Lebanon, your doors. There is a double meaning here. These are the doors of the kingdom within which are the great stands of cedar; and they are the gates of the city within which are buildings with sumptuous cedarwood paneling.

2. dense forest. Though batsir usually means “vintage,” a forest is not a vineyard, and hence in this instance the word may reflect the verbal stem that means “fortified” or, by implication, “impenetrable.”

3. shepherds, / . . . lions. As in many other lines of poetry, these are the leaders (in the case of the lions, perhaps military commanders).

4. the sheep to be slaughtered. The prophet continues the metaphor of the leaders as shepherds and the people as their flock. Here, the flock is bought and sold and slaughtered with impunity.

7. the sheep traders. The received text reads aniyey hatsoʾn, “the poor of the sheep,” but poverty seems an odd attribute for sheep. The Septuagint, which appears to have used a Hebrew text that had likhenaʿaney hatso’n, “for sheep traders,” is followed in this translation.

Bruising. The Hebrew ḥovlim reflects one of two homonymous verbal stems, one meaning “to bruise” and the other “to bundle together.” Some translations opt for the latter and render the name as Unity. But there is a biblical notion of antithetical staffs, one for mercy and one for punishment, and the present translation assumes that this is reflected here.

8. the three shepherds. They are introduced without explanation.

9. I said. It appears that the prophet is now speaking, not God.

each will eat the other’s flesh. The metaphor of the flock now takes a fantastic, and grisly, turn: the herbivore sheep, reflecting the nature of the people they represent figuratively, turn into voracious carnivores consuming each other’s flesh.

10. my covenant that I had sealed with all the peoples. The reference is by no means transparent. First, since it would be strange for Zechariah to have a covenant with all the peoples, he may have segued into speaking on behalf of God, such slippage being not uncommon in biblical usage. But the content of the covenant is unclear. It might be a tacit agreement—not at all like God’s covenant with Israel—that the peoples are not to destroy Israel. “Pleasantness” might then be linked with this covenant through its pacific connotation.

12. If it is good in your eyes. That is, if you accept my breaking of the staff, even though as a shepherd I would need it.

give me my wages. In the metaphor of the flock, the prophet, observing what is happening to the flock, is represented as someone hired by the sheep traders.

13. the potter’s kiln. The Hebrew noun hayotseir is opaque. Many interpreters understand it as though it were haʾotsar, “the treasury,” but there is scant evidence for interchangeability between those two terms, despite a limited phonetic similarity, and the violent verb “fling” for putting something in a treasury would be surprising. Yotseir means “potter,” and perhaps here, through metonymy, it refers to the potter’s kiln, where the weights of silver would be smelted.

14. to annul the brotherhood between the house of Judah and the house of Israel. This is still another anomalous detail in this enigmatic prophecy, because the northern kingdom of Israel ceased to exist three centuries before this prophet wrote.

15. a foolish shepherd. His foolishness is spelled out in the next verse.

16. The lad. This word, naʿar, is used because it was often young men (alternately, subalterns) who tended the flocks, as we see at the beginning of David’s career in 1 Samuel 16. Again, the reference is to the king.

the immobile one. The Hebrew hanitsavah is unclear. It would ordinarily mean “one who is standing,” hence the guess of this translation.