NOTES for Eze 34:15-16

Chapter 34 holds a central place in the whole Book of Ezekiel, because it is here that the Lord speaks to the prophet about the coming of the Messiah, the Shepherd of Israel. A whole series of remarkable biblical texts run parallel to this chapter, foremost among them the words of the Lord Jesus Christ himself in chapter 10 of John's Gospel, declaring that he is the Good Shepherd. The Lord also sends the apostles ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ and depicts a sinner's conversion as a shepherd finding a sheep that has strayed.

This prophecy begins, however, by denouncing those who ought to have been shepherds of God's people but failed to become so. The Lord says terrible things about shepherds who feed themselves and take no care for the people's condition. An attentive reader cannot fail to notice how precisely the prophet's words apply not only to the priests of his own time but, to an even greater degree, to the chief priests and scribes of the time of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What matters to us first of all is the very comparison of God's people to a flock of sheep. Characteristic of a number of psalms—for example, Psalms 23, 80, 95 and 100—it goes back to ancient times, when the Lord led his people out of Egypt as a shepherd. In the Psalms, the idea of the Lord's flock stands in contrast to turning aside into idolatry. Later, the New Testament repeatedly returns to this image. The Lord says of himself, ‘I am the Good Shepherd,’ and these words refer specifically to the prophecy in Ezekiel 34 about the Messiah as Shepherd. Christ is thus saying that he is the very Shepherd of Israel foretold by the prophets. And later, when appointing the apostle Peter to his ministry, the Lord commands him: ‘Feed my sheep.’ In his First General Epistle, Peter himself passes this charge on to his fellow ministers: ‘Tend the flock of God that is among you,’ and his words too refer us to Ezekiel 34.

When the Bible speaks of the Church, of God's people in both the Old and the New Testaments, as a flock, it always implies that the Lord himself will lead his people and care for them, as in the days of the Exodus. But in every age there are people whom he entrusts with carrying this out. This charge is closely connected with the responsibility of which God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel in the preceding chapter. The Lord desires not the death of sinners but their conversion and salvation, and the responsibility of prophets and shepherds is to reveal God's truth to every person. Yet, unlike Ezekiel himself, the shepherds of God's people in his day do not take this responsibility upon themselves...

The prophet describes the task set before the shepherds in verse 4, and since this is a theme running through both Testaments, it remains unchanged for all servants of the One God, in the Old Testament as in the New. The Lord says that the shepherds should have cared for the spiritual—and physical—condition of the flock: strengthening the weak, healing the sick and wounded, and seeking the return of those who have gone astray. Instead, they care about their own well-being and honour, about the splendour of the Temple, about anything except what is needed. Every person, and especially every shepherd, is charged with sharing God's love and mercy with others. Clearly, no human being can do this perfectly; yet the mystery of God's presence wherever we are gathered in his name fills our imperfect mercy with his fullness and healing power. ‘You ruled them with violence and cruelty,’ says the Lord: the shepherds of Israel are thus blocking an important channel through which God's mercy can spread in the world.

In essence, the shepherds of Israel have replaced the service entrusted to them by the Lord with concern for maintaining proper worship—and their own well-being—which was the sole function of pagan priests among Israel's neighbouring peoples. They have forgotten what is most important in the Law: justice, mercy and faith, whereas, in the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘you ought to have held to these without neglecting the others.’ And the Lord says that this will no longer be so.

Of how he will henceforth shepherd his people, the Lord says: ‘I myself will seek my sheep,’ ‘I will be their Shepherd,’ ‘I will feed them with justice.’ Together with the words about the Messiah becoming the new and true Shepherd of the people, these words, as in the other prophets, are an implicit prophecy of Christ's being both God and man. On the one hand, it is the Messiah, the descendant of David, who will do this; on the other, God says of it, ‘I myself.’

When set alongside the Gospel, the passage from verses 17 to 22 is utterly striking: the Lord says that he will judge between the sheep—‘I will judge between sheep and sheep.’ Relationships between people, including their conflicts, become a place where God himself is present and acts. He says the same thing in other words in chapter 25 of Matthew's Gospel: ‘Whatever you did to one of these little ones, you did to me.’ With the coming of the Messiah, relationships between people can no longer be morally and spiritually neutral: the Lord enters into every such relationship. This Gospel truth, too, turns out to have been foretold by the prophet.

The Lord then promises the coming of the Messiah, the descendant of David, who will be the Shepherd of God's people. An important part of this promise is that the Lord says: ‘I will set over them one shepherd... my servant David.’ The shepherds of the New Testament therefore do not entirely ‘reproduce’ those of the Old, because God leaves responsibility for the sheep's destiny with the Messiah. Stepping back from the context, one cannot but marvel at the immensity of this promise. God himself will be our Shepherd; he himself will lead each of us to life, heal our wounds and strengthen us in our weakness. He himself, and no one else! This astonishing degree of God's closeness is first revealed to us in the Book of Ezekiel.

Chapter 34 ends with a revelation about the New Covenant. As was customary, the prophet portrays it through apocalyptic images of a transformed world. The central point of his words is that, with the coming of the Messiah, a New Covenant will be established, and it will be a covenant of peace, of our reconciliation with God. In it, God's blessing will be bestowed upon the whole of human life, and we will be granted peace, freedom and safety. God will lead us as a shepherd and will be ‘our God.’ Echoing the opening words of the Ten Commandments—‘I am the Lord your God’—this promise emphasises that the New Covenant will be no less in scope than the covenant at Sinai, while also being its continuation and fulfilment. And the words ‘they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them’ connect this prophecy with Isaiah's prophecy of the Virgin giving birth to a Child named ‘Immanuel, which means: God with us,’ and with the account of its fulfilment in the first chapter of Matthew's Gospel.

Today's reading offers us one of Ezekiel's messianic prophecies. The "David" mentioned here, who is to become the shepherd of God's flock (vv. 23-24), was unambiguously associated by the prophet's contemporaries with the coming Messiah. The prophecy clearly sounded in Babylon, where the prophet ended up with the first group of Jerusalem residents deported from Judea, although Jerusalem itself had not yet been finally destroyed. The most terrible thing, the complete destruction of the city and the Temple, still lay ahead of the people. And Ezekiel, as we can see, explains to his fellow tribesmen the spiritual meaning of the events of which they had become witnesses and participants.

It appeared to many at that time that everything happening was only a misunderstanding, the intrigues of the enemies of the people of God, to which God would soon put an end, and then everything would again be as before. The prophet, however, points to the spiritual problems that led to the catastrophe: the absence of true shepherds (vv. 2-6) and the abnormal relationships within the people, who, according to God's design, were to become a people-community, but in practice were very far from this ideal (vv. 17-19).

For Ezekiel, the Babylonian devastation turns out to be only a stage on the way to the triumph of that messianic Kingdom to which Isaiah of Jerusalem had already borne witness. And Ezekiel sees in precisely this triumph the only possible way out of the situation that had developed. It is pointless to replace some shepherds with others; only God Himself can be the true Shepherd for His people (vv. 7-16). And only God Himself, through the Messiah He sends, can renew relationships within the people-community (vv. 17-24).

At first glance, such an assessment of the situation appears excessively harsh. Of course, if matters had reached a national catastrophe, the spiritual situation truly had to be extremely serious; but was there really not a single true shepherd left among the people of God who had kept faith with God and with his calling? In that case, clearly, this people would have had no future at all. The point is rather something else: in order for the Kingdom to become reality, the relationships between God and His people had to change in quality. Now each person had to learn to build his own relationships with God and with his neighbors, and to bear responsibility for them himself, without shifting it to a neighbor, a mentor, or a temple priest. For the Kingdom is above all relationships, relationships with God and with one's neighbor. And each person must build them himself, entrusting this building to no one else, whoever that other person may be and whatever he may say about himself.

From our earliest years, we learn from someone, obey someone, and have someone who takes responsibility for us, feeds us, and cares for us—in short, shepherds us. When we come to faith, we often simply pass from one set of teachers to another, from one set of rules to another, and from one system of values to another.

But the essence of faith about which the prophet Ezekiel speaks to us today is much deeper and more serious. God promises His people that He Himself will shepherd them, judge, care for, seek and find, correct and punish them. In one prophecy, the prophet joins the promises of God’s direct guidance with that of the mediation of “David” (that is, the King from his line), which allows us to see in it a reference to the divine nature of the Mediator. Thus, when we become part of God’s people, we become the object of the care and responsibility not only of the leaders of Christian communities (some pastors still remember this), but above all of God Himself.

The stern preaching that denounces the people’s leaders for neglecting their duty flows naturally into a prophecy about a good shepherd from the house of David who will become a true leader. Ezekiel’s contemporaries must have imagined this shepherd as a just king who would ascend the throne after the people returned to the Promised Land. Yet in the prophecy, as the Lord reveals the age to come, He Himself appears as the shepherd who protects the flocks and searches for lost sheep.

Thus we see the Old and New Testaments united in the prophetic revelation, while the Gospel image of the Good Shepherd is the image of that very God who had already revealed Himself to people in Old Testament times. We may put it another way: through this prophecy, we can touch the mystery of the consubstantiality of God the Father and God the Son.