The Shepherds and the Shepherd

[Sung Psalm: 23]

In Ezekiel 34-37 we will hear that God promises to restore the Davidic king (ch 34), bring his people back into the land (ch 35), and take away their disgrace (ch 36), and even raise them up from the dead (ch 37).

And this starts in Ezekiel 34 with God's word against the shepherds. Throughout the ancient world, kings often referred to themselves as shepherds. The great Babylonian king Hammurabi (from roughly the time of Abraham) had referred to himself as the shepherd called by the gods. An old Babylonian proverb said “a people without a king (is like) sheep without a shepherd” (Block, 281).

In Numbers 27:17 Moses had prayed that God would appoint a successor for him so that Israel would not be “like sheep without a shepherd.” And especially from the time of David, the kings of Israel are often referred to as shepherds.

But Ezekiel 34 insists that above all earthly shepherds God himself is the Shepherd of Israel