Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Shepherds Who Fed Themselves
Ezekiel 34:1-16
1 Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, · WEB
The leaders are charged with eating a flock they were supposed to feed, and God announces that he will do the job himself.
The charge is put as a question that answers itself: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Shouldn't the shepherds feed the sheep? What follows is an inventory of what they took — the fat, the wool, the fatlings — set against an inventory of what they did not do. The two lists are the whole indictment, and the second is longer than the first.
The list of omissions repays reading item by item, because it defines the office. You haven't strengthened the diseased. You haven't healed that which was sick. You haven't bound up that which was broken. You haven't brought back that which was driven away. You haven't sought that which was lost. Five duties, five failures, and every one of them concerns an animal in trouble. A shepherd's work is defined here entirely by his conduct toward the weakest members of the flock, and the healthy sheep are never mentioned.
What they did instead is given in one clause — you have ruled over them with force and with rigor — and then the consequence, which is stated twice as a bare fact rather than as a punishment: They were scattered, because there was no shepherd. Not because the shepherds were cruel, though they were, but because there was effectively nobody doing the work. The sheep wandered over every hill and became food for wild animals, and there was no one who searched or sought.
The response is announced in the first person and it is a dismissal followed by a substitution. Behold, I am against the shepherds. I will require my sheep at their hand. Then the same five verbs the shepherds failed at are taken up by God himself: he will search, seek out, deliver, bring back, bind up, strengthen. He will feed them on the mountains of Israel in a good fold. The remedy for bad shepherding is not better shepherds in the first instance. It is the owner coming for his own sheep. And one clause at the end refuses to sentimentalize it: I will feed them in justice.
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