But God disdaineth not to feed his flock, to guide, to govern, to defend them, to handle and heal them, to tend and take care of them.” (Trapp) “Saith Rabbi Joseph Bar Hamna, there is not a more contemptible office than that of a shepherd…. The great God of the universe has stooped to take just such care of you and me.” (Boice) If a family needed a shepherd, it was always the youngest son, like David, who got this unpleasant assignment.Jehovah has chosen to be our shepherd, David says. “In Israel, as in other ancient societies, a shepherd’s work was considered the lowest of all works. It’s remarkable that the LORD would call Himself our shepherd. One of the more common motifs in catacomb paintings was Jesus as a shepherd, with a lamb carried across His shoulders.

The idea of Jesus as the Good Shepherd was precious to early Christians. In John 10:11 and 10:14, Jesus clearly spoke of Himself as the good shepherd, who gives His life for the sheep and who can say, “ I know My sheep, and am known by My own.” Hebrews 13:20 speaks of Jesus as that great Shepherd of the sheep, 1 Peter 2:25 calls Jesus the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls, and 1 Peter 5:4 calls Jesus the Chief Shepherd. Zechariah 13:7 speaks of the Messiah as the Shepherd who will be struck, and the sheep scattered (quoted in Matthew 26:31).Micah 7:14 invites the LORD to Shepherd Your people with Your staff.As in days of old. Isaiah 40:11 tells us that the LORD will feed His flock like a shepherd He will gather the lambs with His arm.Ecclesiastes 12:11 speaks of the words of the wise, which are like well-driven nails, given by one Shepherd.Psalm 80:1 also looks to the LORD as the Shepherd of Israel, who would lead Joseph like a flock. In Psalm 28:9 David invited the LORD to shepherd the people of Israel, and to bear them up forever.

The idea begins as early as the Book of Genesis, where Jacob called the LORD the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel ( Genesis 49:24). It is also a familiar idea throughout the Bible that the LORD is a shepherd to His people. “In all Eastern thought, and very definitely in Biblical literature, a king is a shepherd.” (Morgan) There are other references to this analogy between the deity and his followers in ancient Middle Eastern cultures. God was like a shepherd to David, and David was like a sheep to God. The LORD is my shepherd: David thought about God, the God of Israel as he thought about his relationship with God, he made the analogy of a shepherd and his sheep. ( Psalm 23:1) A declaration and its immediate result.Ī. For some, the words of this psalm have been the last they have ever uttered in life.” (James Montgomery Boice)ġ. Ministers have used it to comfort people who are going through severe personal trials, suffering illness, or dying. “Millions of people have memorized this psalm, even those who have learned few other Scripture portions. It has made the dying Christian slave freer than his master, and consoled those whom, dying, he left behind mourning, not so much that he was gone, as because they were left behind, and could not go, too.” (Henry Ward Beecher, cited in Charles Spurgeon) Dying soldiers have died easier as it was read to them ghastly hospitals have been illuminated it has visited the prisoner, and broken his chains, and, like Peter’s angel, led him forth in imagination, and sung him back to his home again. It has poured balm and consolation into the heart of the sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in their pinching griefs, of orphans in their loneliness.

It has sung courage to the army of the disappointed. It has comforted the noble host of the poor. It has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows, than there are sands on the sea-shore. “It has charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the world. He had been a shepherd, and he was not ashamed of his former occupation.” Charles Spurgeon wrote, “I like to recall the fact that this psalm was written by David, probably when he was a king. Most account it to be a psalm of David’s maturity, but with vivid remembrance of his youth as a shepherd. Like many others, this beloved psalm bears the simple title A Psalm of David.

David jeremiah psalm 23