And I said unto them, If ye think good, give Me My price - God asks of us a return, not having any proportion to His gifts of nature or of grace, but such as we can render. He took the Jews out of the whole human race, made them His own, "a peculiar people," freed them from "the bondage and the iron furnace of Egypt," gave them "the land flowing with milk and honey," fed and guarded them by His Providence, taught them by His prophets. He, the Lord and Creator of all, was willing to have them alone for His inheritance, and, in return, asked them to love Him with their whole heart, and to do what He commanded them. "He sent His servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of the vineyard; and the husbandmen took His servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Last of all, He sent unto them His Son" Matthew 21:34-37, to ask for those fruits, the return for all His bounteous care and His unwearied acts of power and love. o "Give Me," He would say, "some fruits of piety, and tokens of faith."

Osorius: "What? Does He speak of a price? Did the Lord of all let out His toil? Did He bargain with those, for whom he expended it for a certain price? He did. He condescended to serve day and night for our salvation and dignity; and as one hired, in view of the reward which He set before Him, to give all His care to adorn and sustain our condition. So He complains by Isaiah, that He had undergone great toil to do away our sins. But what reward did He require? Faith and the will of a faithful heart, that thereby we might attain the gift of righteousness, and might in holy works pant after everlasting glory. For He needeth not our goods; but He so bestoweth on us all things, as to esteem His labor amply paid, if He see us enjoy His gifts. But tie so asketh for this as a reward, as to leave us free, either by faith and the love due, to embrace His benefits, or faithlessly to reject it. This is His meaning, when He saith,"

And if not, forbear - God does not force our free-will, or constrain our service. He places life and death before us, and bids us choose life. By His grace alone we can choose Him; but we can refuse His grace and Himself. "Thou shalt say unto them," He says to Ezekiel, "Thus saith the Lord God, He that heareth, let him hear, and he that forbeareth, let him forbear" (Ezekiel 3:27; add Ezekiel 2:5, Ezekiel 2:7; Ezekiel 3:11). This was said to them, as a people, the last offer of grace. It gathered into one all the past. As Elijah had said, "If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him" 1 Kings 18:21; so He bids them, at last to choose openly, whose they would be, to whom they would give their service; and if they would refuse in heart, to refuse in act also. "Forbear," cease, leave off, abandon; and that forever.

So they weighed for My price thirty pieces of silver - The price of a slave, gored to death by an ox Exodus 21:32. Whence one of themselves says, o, "you will find that a freeman is valued, more or less, at 60 shekels, but a slave at thirty." He then, whom the prophet represented, was to be valued at "thirty pieces of silver." It was but an increase of the contumely, that this contemptuous price was given, not to Him, but for Him, the Price of His Blood. It was matter of bargain. "Judas said, What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?" Matthew 26:15. The high priest, knowingly or unknowingly, fixed on the price, named by Zechariah. As they took into their mouths willingly the blasphemy mentioned in the Psalm; "they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted in the Lord, that He would deliver Him; let Him deliver Him, seeing that He delighted in Him" Psalm 22:7-8; so perhaps they fixed on the "thirty pieces of silver," because Zechariah had named them as a sum offered in contumely to him, who offered to be a shepherd and asked for his reward.

If ye think good, give me my price - "Give me my hire." And we find they rated it contemptuously; thirty pieces of silver being the price of a slave, Exodus 21:32.

And I said unto them, If ye think good,.... Not to the poor of the flock that waited on him, and knew the word of the Lord, and valued it; but to the other Jews that despised Christ and his Gospel:

give me my price; or, "give my price" (i); what I am valued at by you, to Judas the betrayer: or the price due unto him for feeding the flock, such as faith in him, love to him, reverence and worship of him. So the Targum paraphrases it, "do my will". Kimchi says the price is repentance, and good works:

and if not, forbear; unless all is done freely, willingly, and cheerfully; see Ezekiel 2:5 or, if worth nothing, give nothing:

So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver; the price a servant was valued at, Exodus 21:32 see the fulfilment of this prophecy in Matthew 26:15. The Jews own (k) that this prophecy belongs to the Messiah; but wrongly interpret it of thirty precepts given by him: in just retaliation and righteous judgment, thirty Jews were sold by the Romans for a penny, by way of contempt of them (l).

(i) "date mercedem meam", Vatablus, Calvin, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius. (k) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 98. fol. 85. 3.((l) Egesippus de Urb. excidio Anacep. p. 680.

With the breaking of the staff Favour, the shepherd of the Lord has indeed withdrawn one side of his pastoral care from the flock that he had to feed, but his connection with it is not yet entirely dissolved. This takes place first of all in Zechariah 11:12-14, when the flock rewards him for his service with base ingratitude. Zechariah 11:12. "And I said to them, If it seem good to you, give me my wages; but if not, let it alone: and they weighed me as wages thirty silverlings. Zechariah 11:13. Then Jehovah said to me, Throw it to the potter, the splendid price at which I am valued by them; and so I took the thirty silverlings, and threw it into the house of Jehovah to the potter. Zechariah 11:14. And I broke my second staff Bands, to destroy the brotherhood between Judah and Israel." אליהם (to them), so far as the grammatical construction is concerned, might be addressed to the wretched among the sheep, inasmuch as they were mentioned last. But when we bear in mind that the shepherd began to feed not only the wretched of the sheep, but the whole flock, and that he did not give up any one portion of the flock by breaking the staff Favour, we are forced to the conclusion that the words are addressed to the whole flock, and that the demand for wages is only intended to give the flock an opportunity for explaining whether it is willing to acknowledge his feeding, and appreciate it rightly. The fact that the prophet asks for wages from the sheep may be explained very simply from the fact that the sheep represent men. The demand for wages is not to be understood as implying that the shepherd intended to lay down his office as soon as he had been paid for his service; for in that case he would have asked for the wages before breaking the first staff. But as he does not ask for it till afterwards, and leaves it to the sheep to say whether they are willing to give it or not ("if it seem good to you"), this demand cannot have any other object than to call upon the sheep to declare whether they acknowledge his service, and desire it to be continued. By the wages the commentators have very properly understood repentance and faith, or piety of heart, humble obedience, and heartfelt, grateful love. These are the only wages with which man can discharge his debt to God. They weighed him now as wages thirty shekels of silver (on the omission of sheqel or keseph, see Ges. 120, 4, Anm. 2). "Thirty," - not to reward him for the one month, or for thirty days - that is to say, to give him a shekel a day for his service (Hofm., Klief.): for, in the first place, it is not stated in Zechariah 11:8 that he did not feed them longer than a month; and secondly, a shekel was not such very small wages for a day's work, as the wages actually paid are represented as being in Zechariah 11:13. They rather pay him thirty shekels, with an allusion to the fact that this sum was the compensation for a slave that had been killed (Exodus 21:32), so that it was the price at which a bond-slave could be purchased (see at Hosea 3:2). By paying thirty shekels, they therefore give him to understand that they did not estimate his service higher than the labour of a purchased slave. To offer such wages was in fact "more offensive than a direct refusal" (Hengstenberg). Jehovah therefore describes the wages ironically as "a splendid value that has been set upon me."

As the prophet fed the flock in the name of Jehovah, Jehovah regards the wages paid to His shepherd as paid to Himself, as the value set upon His personal work on behalf of the nation, and commands the prophet to throw this miserable sum to the potter. But the verb hishlı̄kh (throw) and the contemptuous expression used in relation to the sum paid down, prove unmistakeably that the words "throw to the potter" denote the actual casting away of the money. And this alone is sufficient to show that the view founded upon the last clause of the verse, "I threw it into the house of Jehovah to the potter," viz., that hayyōtsēr signifies the temple treasury, and that yōtsēr is a secondary form or a copyist's error for אוצר, is simply a mistaken attempt to solve the real difficulty. God could not possibly say to the prophet, They wages paid for my service are indeed a miserable amount, yet put it in the temple treasury, for it is at any rate better than nothing. The phrase "throw to the potter" (for the use of hishlı̄kh with 'el pers. compare 1 Kings 19:19) is apparently a proverbial expression for contemptuous treatment ( equals to the knacker), although we have no means of tracing the origin of the phrase satisfactorily. Hengstenberg's assumption, that "to the potter" is the same as to an unclean place, is founded upon the assumption that the potter who worked for the temple had his workshop in the valley of Ben-hinnom, which, having been formerly the scene of the abominable worship of Moloch, was regarded with abhorrence as an unclean place after its defilement by Josiah (2 Kings 23:10), and served as the slaughter-house for the city. But it by no means follows from Jeremiah 18:2 and Jeremiah 19:2, that this potter dwelt in the valley of Ben-hinnom; whereas Jeremiah 19:1, Jeremiah 19:2 lead rather to the opposite conclusion. If, for example, God there says to Jeremiah, "Go and buy a pitcher of the potter (Jeremiah 19:1), and go out into the valley of Ben-hinnom, which lies in front of the potter's gate" (Jeremiah 19:2), it follows pretty clearly from these words that the pottery itself stood within the city gate. But even if the potter had had his workshop in the valley of Ben-hinnom, which was regarded as unclean, he would not have become unclean himself in consequence, so that men could say "to the potter," just as we should say "zum Schinder" (to the knacker); and if he had been looked upon as unclean in this way, he could not possibly have worked for the temple, or supplied the cooking utensils for use in the service of God - namely, for boiling the holy sacrificial flesh. The attempts at an explanation made by Grotius and Hofmann are equally unsatisfactory. The former supposes that throwing anything before the potter was equivalent to throwing it upon the heap of potsherds; the latter, that it was equivalent to throwing it into the dirt. But the potter had not to do with potsherds only, and potter's clay is not street mire. The explanation given by Koehler is more satisfactory; namely, that the meaning is, "The amount is just large enough to pay a potter for the pitchers and pots that have been received from him, and which are thought of so little value, that men easily comfort themselves when one or the other is broken." But this does not do justice to hishlı̄kh involves the idea of contempt, and earthen pots were things of insignificant worth. The execution of the command, "I threw it ('ōthō, the wages paid me) into the house of Jehovah to the potter," cannot be understood as signifying "into the house of Jehovah, that it might be taken thence to the potter" (Hengstenberg). If this were the meaning, it should have been expressed more clearly. As the words read, they can only be understood as signifying that the potter was in the house of Jehovah when the money was thrown to him; that he had either some work to do there, or that he had come there to bring some earthenware for the temple kitchens (cf. Zechariah 14:20). This circumstance is not doubt a significant one; but the meaning is not merely to show that it was as the servant of the Lord, or in the name and by the command of Jehovah, that the prophet did this, instead of keeping the money (Koehler); for Zechariah could have expressed this in two or three words in a much simpler and clearer manner. The house of Jehovah came into consideration here rather as the place where the people appeared in the presence of their God, either to receive or to solicit the blessings of the covenant from Him. What took place in the temple, was done before the face of God, that God might call His people to account for it.

And I said to them, If ye think good, give me {p} my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

(p) Besides their ingratitude, God accuses them of malice and wickedness, who did not only forget his benefits, but esteemed them as nothing.

11:12 And I said - Upon parting, Christ seems after the manner of men, to mind them of his claims for them, and desire them to reckon with him. If ye think good - He puts it to them, whether they thought he deserved ought at their hands? So they - The rulers of the Jews, the high priest, chief priests, and pharisees. Weighed - Which was the manner of paying money in those days. Thirty pieces - Which amounts to thirty - seven shillings and six - pence, the value of the life of a slave, Exod 21:32. This was fulfilled when they paid Judas Iscariot so much to betray Christ.

If ye...: Heb. If it be good in your eyes

12. I said-The prophet here represents the person of Jehovah-Messiah.

If ye think good-literally, "If it be good in your eyes." Glancing at their self-sufficient pride in not deigning to give Him that return which His great love in coming down to them from heaven merited, namely, their love and obedience. "My price"; my reward for pastoral care, both during the whole of Israel's history from the Exodus, and especially the three and a half years of Messiah's ministry. He speaks as their "servant," which He was to them in order to fulfil the Father's will (Php 2:7).

if not, forbear-They withheld that which He sought as His only reward, their love; yet He will not force them, but leave His cause with God (Isa 49:4, 5). Compare the type Jacob cheated of his wages by Laban, but leaving his cause in the hands of God (Ge 31:41, 42).

So . thirty pieces of silver-thirty shekels. They not only refused Him His due, but added insult to injury by giving for Him the price of a gored bond-servant (Ex 21:32; Mt 26:15). A freeman was rated at twice that sum.

11:4-14 Christ came into this world for judgment to the Jewish church and nation, which were wretchedly corrupt and degenerate. Those have their minds wofully blinded, who do ill, and justify themselves in it; but God will not hold those guiltless who hold themselves so. How can we go to God to beg a blessing on unlawful methods of getting wealth, or to return thanks for success in them? There was a general decay of religion among them, and they regarded it not. The Good Shepherd would feed his flock, but his attention would chiefly be directed to the poor. As an emblem, the prophet seems to have taken two staves; Beauty, denoted the privileges of the Jewish nation, in their national covenant; the other he called Bands, denoting the harmony which hitherto united them as the flock of God. But they chose to cleave to false teachers. The carnal mind and the friendship of the world are enmity to God; and God hates all the workers of iniquity: it is easy to foresee what this will end in. The prophet demanded wages, or a reward, and received thirty pieces of silver. By Divine direction he cast it to the potter, as in disdain for the smallness of the sum. This shadowed forth the bargain of Judas to betray Christ, and the final method of applying it. Nothing ruins a people so certainly, as weakening the brotherhood among them. This follows the dissolving of the covenant between God and them: when sin abounds, love waxes cold, and civil contests follow. No wonder if those fall out among themselves, who have provoked God to fall out with them. Wilful contempt of Christ is the great cause of men's ruin. And if professors rightly valued Christ, they would not contend about little matters.