jewish shepherds

Bursting Out of the Pen

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock in its pasture; the place will throng with people. One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out. Their king will pass through before them, the LORD at their head. – Micah 2:12-13

In Micah, we find a passage about a “shepherd” that was considered very messianic in the time of Jesus. His listeners understood that the “one who breaks open the way” was the messenger, who would cause people to repent and be ready for the Messiah, and that the Messiah was the shepherd king going out with the sheep. Interestingly, the passage says that the Shepherd is the LORD – hinting that the Messiah is God himself! (We have the benefit of being able to look back and can see how this passage was prophecy about John the Baptist and Jesus.)

This passage is much more meaningful if we understand the imagery behind it, that of shepherding. It tells us that the flock will be gathered together like many sheep in a pen, and “one who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out.”

Pen in pasture

In biblical times, the shepherd would lead the sheep around open land to graze all day. As they sun was going down, he would herd them into a pen made with boulders or into a cave closed with boulders. He himself would sleep in the gate or “be” the gate. In the morning, the sheep would be restless, hungry, bursting with energy and eager to get out to pasture.

Suddenly, one of the shepherd’s helpers would “break open the way” by pushing aside a boulder in the fence. The sheep wouldn’t just leave calmly – they would burst out in a stampede, breaking through the other boulders in their way. The shepherd would exit along with them and then they would follow the him out to pasture.

The picture is really one of a people who are full of joy at the coming of their Messiah – like sheep that are stampeding out of their pen after a night of being confined. The “sheep” of the messianic shepherd will be exuberant at his coming, and eager to follow where ever he leads. He heals us from our diseases and releases us from the bondage and guilt of sin. Our Shepherd, the LORD Himself, has come to save us now and forever!

This passage in Micah was probably alluded to by Jesus in Matthew 11:12. For more about that reference, read the article “The Kingdom Breaks Forth” at this link.

Photo: Bob Jones

The Great Shepherd

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

I am the good shepherd, and I know my own and my own know me, even as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. – John 10:14

ShepherdJesus says “I am the good shepherd” in John’s gospel, and we may not realize that the image of the “shepherd” as the Messiah is all over the Old Testament, in Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah and other books. In the next few devotionals we will look at what these Messianic prophecies said about Jesus.

What is a “good shepherd”? In his classic book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, (1) Phillip Keller describes the difference between the good and bad shepherd, and the lesson he learned:

In memory I can still see one of the sheep ranches in our district which was operated by a tenant sheepman. He ought never to have been allowed to keep sheep. He gave little or no time to his flock. Every year these poor creatures were forced to gnaw away at bare brown fields and impoverished pastures. Shelter to safeguard and protect the suffering sheep from storms and blizzards was scanty and inadequate. In their thin, weak and diseased condition these poor sheep were a pathetic sight. To all their distress, the heartless, selfish owner seemed utterly callous and indifferent.

I never looked at those sheep without an acute awareness that this was a precise picture of those wretched old taskmasters, Sin and Satan, on their derelict ranch — scoffing at the plight of those within their power. It is a picture of the pathetic people of the world over who have not known what it is to belong to the Good Shepherd, who suffer instead under sin and Satan. How amazing it is that individual men and women vehemently refuse and reject the claims of Christ on their lives. He came to set men free of their own sins, their own selves, their own fears. Those so liberated loved Him with fierce loyalty. It is this One who insists that He was the Good Shepherd, the understanding Shepherd, the concerned Shepherd who cares enough to seek out and save and restore lost men and women.

(1) Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, 1996, Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-21435-1. The passages above are from Chapter 1, “The Lord is My Shepherd.”

Photo: http://www.artnet.de/artist/16406/henry-ossawa-tanner.html