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Shepherds
Ezekiel 34:2 “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks?”
What does your shepherd look like? This chapter describes how these shepherds dress themselves very nicely, they make themselves rich, they eat good foods and they don’t mingle with the poor. Or, do they remind you of Yeshua, small David in the field looking for the perfect stones in the riverbed. Or someone innocent like Abel, that just have a passion for his flock, and wants to give the best to YHWH. So much so, that Cain can’t stand his own brother. Is your shepherd humble or does he get jealous, and wants to be the best, but not give his best – instead keep the best for himself? Does he feel he deserves the best? Is he concerned with numbers, how many are following him.. and those that leave him.. does he care?
Click here to see previous posts on Shepherds, like Psalm 23 and even back in Genesis 46, where the egyptians looked down on Joseph’s family who to them were a bunch of shepherds. The Hebrew word for shepherd is Raa H7462 – rāʿâ, meaning to feed, to tend to, to look after and fix the broken. This same hebrew word also means friend (H7463 – rēʿê), and even means the “friend of the king“. That almost seems like two opposite world in today’s society : A Shepherd and a King. The Shepherd who is friends with the King.
Here is how Yeshua feel about those random few sheep that seem and feel lost, in Matthew 18:12-14 “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray”. Yeshua certainly didn’t make himself rich, and had dinners with the rich, and travelled in luxury on holidays. He mingled with the poor, and he got criticized and frowned upon for it.
Sheep
Ezekiel 34:6 “My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and on every high hill; yes, My flock was scattered over the whole face of the earth, and no one was seeking or searching for them.”
The hebrew word for sheep is son H6629 – ṣō’n, which seems fitting saying the word in english :). One might think, why sheep? What is so special about sheep, that YHWH makes a big deal of them? The Hebrew word son, doesn’t specifically just mean sheep, but it means flock. Flocks can be sheep, goats, cattle as well as birds. Birds are free to fly, and they don’t need a caretaker. Cattle are strong and can mostly defend themselves. Goats can be stubborn, naughty but also adventurous and not afraid. Sheep best represents a flock, as they feel protected in a flock, and they need a caretaker. They are also the only flock animal that can literally give all they have : their milk, their wool and their meat. They represent humbleness and meekness, not grand beauty. They fit in perfectly with a nomad lifestyle, they are not bothered about luxuries, they are clean animals and their white wool represents purity.
- Isaiah 1:18 says, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.“
- Revelation 1:14 “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow”
- Revelation 3:5 “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels”
- Revelation 7:14 “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb“
