JESUS IS THE SHEPHERD
GOSPEL OF JOHN
10:14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,
10:15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.
10:16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
The well known 23rd Psalm declares that God is the Shepherd.
King David says that it is not even that God is a shepherd in general, but God is his personal Shepherd as well. The very office of the earthly shepherds is well defined as the Shepherd is or supposed to be responsible for the well-being of the flock as a whole.
When King David prayed the 23 psalm on behalf the people, saying the lord is my shepherd, we can take it from him, that the Lord is our shepherd, as well, the Lord is your support in everything as the Lord is our Shepherd who cares about our well-being as we are a part of the flock.
The well-being of the whole flock is clearly ascribed to the King Shepherd as a responsibility as it is clearly written in the same psalm:
"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters."
Nonetheless, it is quite astonishing, that the Shepherd is also responsible for the spiritual well-being of the flock as it is also written by David, that:
“He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
In the ancient mythological tradition the kingship is an institution descended from the skies, aka from space to the Earth first in Sumeria at least according to the written sources we can go back to.
Most of the kings received their title as an opportunity to become an obnoxious tyrant rejecting any responsibility regarding the well-being of the subject population, still it should have been obvious for all, even for the Kings, that kingship must come with responsibilities, as the king should be the father of the country and not its tyrant.
Ancient Leadership embedded in a frame of broad responsibilities for the well-being of all, evolved into the very notion of the Shepherd King. There were a lot of kings listed on the ancient Mesopotamian tablets. Antediluvian kings, with thousand years of lifespan, having extraordinary powers and skills like Gilgamesh though he, himself, probably lived after the Flood .
One of the ancient Kings was Etana, the king of Kish, the Sumerian city. His name and his myth was found during the excavations of Nineveh the capital city of Assyria on clay tablets.
Once upon a time there was a tree with an eagle's nest among the branches and a serpent’s nest at the roots.
One day, the eagle ate the serpent's children. The serpent came back and cried. The Sun God told the serpent to hide inside the of a dead bull to set a trap for the eagle.
The eagle landed to eat the bull. The serpent took the eagle and threw it into a bottomless pit.
It looks that the snake had a just cause, still the Sun God, called Utu, sent Etana to save the eagle. Etana was childless for a longtime, but the grateful eagle found the plant of birth for him, and he begot a son.
The tale reads that King Etana "the shepherd king, who ascended to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries", has ruled for 635 years before being succeeded by his son Balih,who has ruled for 400 years.
In the Mesopotamian myth, we cannot help but to see that it talks about biblically long lifespans of Shepherd Kings. Although as heads of the very urbanized Egyptian society the Pharaohs also claimed the title if being Shepherd Kings. However, the biblical archetype of being a Shepherd King is Moses himself.
It is not a coincidence that the Bible depicts Moses literally as a shepherd, guarding the flock of his father-in-law Jennifer for 40 years in the desert.
As the forty years term is a well known symbolic number, it might be well understood, that as Moses' father in law was the Priest King of the Midianites, and Moses himself a fugitive Egyptian Prince, possibly a rival throne claimant of Pharaoh Seti I, so the literal shepherdhood of Moses is unthinkable in hierarchical society. It might mean that Moses became a co-regent, a shepherd king over the flock of the Midianites.
It might have been also not a coincidence that David was depicted also literally as a shepherd of the herds of his father, meanwhile even as a young boy, he was skillful enough to take on professional soldiers like Goliath, and a bit later to lead squadrons, battalions and divisions against the enemy.
It might mean that David's father, Jesse, was a tribal warlord in the territory of Juda, and David might have served on the side of his father.
From the desert wandering, nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, the Israelites gradually settled down, becoming farmers and city dwellers.
Still the responsibilities of a shepherd toward the whole flock, the ancient myths about the Shepherd King and the cherished memory of the leadership of Moses lived on.
Thus, when Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and the pilgrims greeted Him, using his Messianic title, the Son of David, everybody knew that the Shepherd King came to his own city, claiming the kingship which descended from Heaven into the hearts of the people.
And the Shepherd King gave his life for the ship, for the well-being of the flock, and today we are waiting for his return, which will mark the and of the human history, at least as we know it, as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew:
“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then the King will tell those on his right hand, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;”
May we be all among the blessed in Christ, the Shepherd King, AMEN.
