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Two Kinds of Shepherds

4 Thus said the Lord my God: Be a shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. ⁵Those who buy them kill them and go unpunished; and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich’; and their own shepherds have no pity on them. ⁶For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord. I will cause them, every one, to fall each into the hand of a neighbour, and each into the hand of the king; and they shall devastate the earth, and I will deliver no one from their hand.

7 So, on behalf of the sheep dealers, I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. I took two staffs; one I named Favour, the other I named Unity, and I tended the sheep. ⁸In one month I disposed of the three shepherds, for I had become impatient with them, and they also detested me. ⁹So I said, ‘I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die; what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let those that are left devour the flesh of one another!’ ¹⁰I took my staff Favour and broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples. ¹¹So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep dealers, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. ¹²I then said to them, ‘If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.’ So they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. ¹³Then the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it into the treasury’^*—this lordly price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury^* in the house of the Lord. ¹⁴Then I broke my second staff Unity, annulling the family ties between Judah and Israel.

15 Then the Lord said to me: Take once more the implements of a worthless shepherd. ¹⁶For I am now raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for the perishing, or seek the wandering,^* or heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy,^* but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.
¹⁷ Oh, my worthless shepherd,
   who deserts the flock!
May the sword strike his arm
   and his right eye!
Let his arm be completely withered,
   his right eye utterly blinded!