Zechariah 11:15–16

Zechariah 11:15 — The Second Sign-Act: "Take the Equipment of a Foolish Shepherd"

The oracle opens with a divine imperative that mirrors the first commission in verse 4 ("Take for yourself the equipment of a shepherd"). The repetition of "yet again" (Hebrew 'ôd) signals deliberate structural parallelism: Zechariah has already enacted the role of the Good Shepherd (vv. 7–14); now he is made to embody its terrible inversion. The word translated "foolish" ('ewîl) in Hebrew carries not merely a connotation of intellectual deficiency but of moral perversity — the fool of Proverbs who "despises wisdom and instruction" (Prov 1:7), the one who acts as though God makes no claim on him. The "equipment" (kelî) — staff, bag, flute, or crook — is the standard pastoral kit; worn now by a prophet performing a judgment oracle, these implements become instruments of condemnation rather than care.

The sign-act is significant in the Catholic interpretive tradition because it underscores that prophecy is not merely verbal but embodied. Zechariah is commanded to become, even symbolically, what God is warning against — a practice found also in Hosea's marriage (Hos 1), Jeremiah's loincloth (Jer 13), and Ezekiel's lying on his side (Ezek 4). The prophet's body is pressed into service as a living parable.

Zechariah 11:16 — The Portrait of the Foolish Shepherd

Verse 16 is structured as a fourfold negation followed by a twofold indictment — a powerful rhetorical chiasm of failure and destruction. The four things the foolish shepherd will not do precisely invert the duties of the ideal shepherd of Israel:

1. "Will not visit those who are cut off" (nikkĕḥādôt) — The verb "visit" (pāqad) is a covenantal term in Hebrew, connoting God's own attentive oversight of his people (cf. Ps 8:4). The shepherd refuses the most basic obligation of searching for the lost.

2. "Neither will seek those who are scattered" — "Seek" (bāqaš) echoes the Good Shepherd language of Ezekiel 34:11–16, where God himself declares he will seek the lost sheep of Israel. This shepherd does the opposite of the divine model.

3. "Nor heal that which is broken" — Broken bones in sheep require patient, skilled tending; spiritually, the "broken" recalls those crushed by sin, hardship, or oppression. Healing is explicitly listed among the Messianic shepherd's tasks in Isaiah 61:1 and is the work Christ claims for himself in Luke 4:18.

4. "Nor feed that which is sound" — Even the healthy sheep, who might sustain themselves, are starved of proper shepherding. The negligence is total: not selective failure, but comprehensive abdication.

The indictment then shifts from neglect to active predation: "he will eat the meat of the fat sheep, and will tear their hoofs in pieces." This language is deliberately visceral. The fat sheep — the productive, flourishing members of the flock — are devoured rather than preserved. The tearing of hoofs (parsehem yĕparrēq) evokes an image of an animal wrenched apart, its very means of movement destroyed. The flock is not merely abandoned; it is consumed. This language deliberately recalls Ezekiel 34:3–4, where Israel's human shepherds "eat the fat, clothe yourselves with the wool, and slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the sheep." Zechariah intensifies that indictment to its logical extreme.

Typological and Spiritual Senses

In the fourfold sense of Scripture (the quadriga), this passage operates richly beyond its literal-historical meaning. Allegorically, the foolish shepherd anticipates the Antichrist figure — the final, consummate false shepherd who will arise at the end of days (cf. 2 Thess 2:3–4; Rev 13). Morally (tropologically), the text indicts every pastor — bishop, priest, parent, civil leader — who substitutes self-enrichment for self-gift. Anagogically, the passage reaffirms that the ultimate Shepherd is Christ himself (John 10), whose coming is made more luminous against the darkness of every false shepherd.

Catholic tradition has consistently read Zechariah 11:15–16 through the lens of its fulfillment in Christ and its warning against false pastoral authority, drawing on several interlocking strands of teaching.

The Antichrist Typology. St. Jerome, in his Commentary on Zechariah, identifies the foolish shepherd of verse 15 as a figure of the Antichrist — the ultimate anti-pastor who will seduce and devour rather than tend the People of God. This reading is sustained by St. Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses V.25), who links the figure to Paul's "man of lawlessness" (2 Thess 2:3). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that before Christ's Second Coming "the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers" including "a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth" (CCC §675). The foolish shepherd of Zechariah is one of Scripture's earliest portraits of that deception.

Contrast with the True Shepherd. Vatican II's Presbyterorum Ordinis (§13) describes the priest as one configured to Christ the Good Shepherd, whose ministry is defined by self-offering. The foolish shepherd of Zechariah is precisely the counter-image: he exists not to give his life but to take the lives of others. St. Gregory the Great, in his Regula Pastoralis, drew on exactly this contrast, insisting that a shepherd who seeks personal gain has already abandoned his flock in his heart before he abandons it in deed.

Judgment as Divine Pedagogy. Catholic tradition, following St. Augustine (City of God XVIII.45), reads the raising of the foolish shepherd not as divine endorsement of evil, but as God's permissive will operating through judgment — a consequence of Israel's rejection of the true Shepherd (v. 13). The Catechism affirms that God "in no way, either directly or indirectly, is the cause of moral evil" (CCC §311), yet permits evil to bring about greater goods, including the recognition of one's need for the true Shepherd.

The portrait of the foolish shepherd in Zechariah 11:15–16 speaks with uncomfortable directness to Catholic life today. The Church continues to reckon with failures of pastoral leadership — bishops and priests who, whether through corruption, cowardice, or careerism, have consumed rather than served their flocks. This passage invites every Catholic to hold pastoral authority accountable by the standard it defines: Does this leader visit the cut off? Does he seek the scattered, heal the broken, feed the sound? These are not abstract virtues; they are measurable pastoral actions.

But the passage also challenges every Catholic who holds any form of responsibility — parents, teachers, catechists, small group leaders. The foolish shepherd is not only a figure of formal church leadership but of every vocation of care. Where we accumulate the "fat" of influence, comfort, or recognition from our roles without proportionate self-gift, we risk putting on the equipment of the fool.

Finally, this text is a call to prayer for shepherds. Rather than mere cynicism toward failed leadership, the Catholic response is intercession — that those entrusted with pastoral care be converted into the image of the True Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11).