The Good Shepherd: A Biblical Theology of Ezekiel 34, Part 5

The Cannonical Horizon

As we move into the final horizon of Scripture, the canonical, we find ourselves wrestling with the connection between the “true Shepherd” and the Lord God Himself. How are these two connected? How can God say, “I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country” (34:13), and still also say, “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (34:23)?  Who is going to feed God’s lambs, David or the Lord Himself? The answer to this mild dilemma is resolved in the person of Christ Jesus. For the answer is “both.”

 If the chapter as a whole falls in line with the long-standing prophetic traditions pointing to the Messiah, then it points to the man whom we know to be that Messiah. Not David himself, not Solomon, not Hezekiah, but Jesus Christ. In Jesus we find both the descendant of David and the divine being perfectly present. It is, through Christ, both God and David who feed the sheep. Hear the words that our savior uses to describe His own ministry to God’s sheep, the resemblance to Ezekiel 34 is unparalleled:

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. (John 10:14-18)

Note that Jesus calls Himself the “good shepherd,” in obvious contrast to the evil shepherds. Those evil shepherds of Ezekiel 34 who fatten themselves up while the sheep starve. This “good shepherd” is in stark contrast to the hired hands who “sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep” (John 10:12-13).