Verse 31
"Then" (Gr. tote) here expresses a logical rather than a temporal connection with what precedes. Jesus emphasized that the disciples would desert Him very soon, that very night. They would find Him to be a source of stumbling (Gr. skandalon, cf. Matthew 11:6). Jesus’ arrest would trip them up, and they would temporarily stop following Him faithfully. They still did not understand that the Messiah must die. By quoting Zechariah 13:7 freely Jesus was telling them again that He would die and that their scattering from Him was something within God’s sovereign plan. This did not excuse their failure, but it prepared them for it and helped them recover after it.
In Zechariah 13:1-6 the prophet spoke of a day when, because of prevailing apostasy, the Shepherd would be cut down and His followers would scatter. The sheep in the prophecy are the Jews, many of whom would depart from the Shepherd, but a third of whom would remain. The disciples constituted the core of this remnant that Zechariah predicted God would bless in the future (Zechariah 13:7-9).
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