Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2

by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

It must be well observed that רֹעִים is here without the article, but, in ver. 2, with it. Venema remarks on this: "A general woe upon bad shepherds is premised, which is soon applied to the shepherds of Judah, q.d., since Jehovah has denounced a woe upon all bad shepherds, therefore ye bad shepherds," &c. By the "shepherds," several interpreters would understand only the false prophets and priests. Others would at least have them thought of, along with the kings. This view has exercised an injurious influence upon the understanding of the subsequent Messianic announcement, inasmuch as it occasioned the introduction into it of features which are altogether foreign to it. It is only when it is perceived, that the bad shepherds refer to the kings exclusively, that it is seen that, in the description of the good Shepherd, that only is applicable which has reference to Him as a King. But the very circumstance that, according to a correct interpretation, nothing else is found in this description, is a sufficient proof that, by the bad shepherds, the kings only can be understood. But all doubt is removed when we consider the close connection of the verses under consideration with chap. xxii. In commenting upon chap. iii. 15, we saw that, ordinarily, rulers only are designated by the shepherds; compare, farther, chap. xxv. 34-36, and the imitation and first interpretation of the passage under review by Ezekiel, in chap. xxxiv. Ps. lxxviii. 70, 71: "He chose David his servant, and took him from the sheep-folds. He took him from behind the ewes to feed Jacob, His people, and Israel, His inheritance," shows that a typical interpretation of the former circumstances of David lies at the foundation of this usus loquendi; compare Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24: "And I raise over them one Shepherd, and he feedeth them, my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd."--What is to be understood by the destroying and scattering, must be determined partly from ver. 3 and vers. 13 ff. of the preceding chapter; partly from ver. 3 of the chapter before us. The former passages show that the acts of violence of the kings, their oppressions and extortions, come here into consideration (compare Ezek. xxxiv. 2, 3: "Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, &c., and with force and with cruelty ye rule them"), while the latter passage shows that it is chiefly the heaviest guilt of the kings which comes into consideration, viz., all that by which they became the cause of the people's being carried away into captivity. To this belonged, besides their foolish political counsels, which were based upon ungodliness (comp. chap. x. 21), the negative (Venema: "It was their duty to take care that the true religion, the spiritual food of the people, was rightly and properly exercised"), and positive promotion of ungodliness, and of immorality proceeding from it, by which the divine judgments were forcibly drawn down. It is in this contrast of idea and reality (Calvin: "It is a contradiction that the shepherd should be a destroyer"), that the woe has its foundation, and that the more, that it is pointed out that the flock, which they destroy and scatter, is God's flock. (Calvin: "God intimates that, by the unworthy scattering of the flock, an atrocious injury had been committed against himself") צאן מרעיתי must not be explained by: "the flock of my feeding," i.e., which I feed. For, wherever מרעית occurs by itself, it always has the signification "pasture," but never the signification pastio, pastus commonly assigned to it. This signification, which is quite in agreement with the form of the word, must therefore be retained in those passages also where it occurs in connection with צאן, when it always denotes the relation of Israel to God. Israel is called the flock of God's pasture, because He has given to them the fertile Canaan as their possession, compare my remarks on Ps. lxxiv. 1. It is, at first sight, strange that a guilt of the rulers only is spoken of, and not a guilt of the people; for every more searching consideration shows that both are inseparable from one another; that bad rulers proceed from the development of the nation, and are, at the same time, a punishment of its wickedness sent by God. But the fact is easily accounted for, if only we keep in mind that the Prophet had here to do with the kings only, and not with the people. To them it could not serve for an excuse that their wickedness was naturally connected with that of the people. This natural connection was not by any means a necessary one, as appears from the example of a Josiah, in whose case it was broken through by divine grace. Nor were they justified by the circumstance, that they were rods of chastisement in the hand of God. To this the Prophet himself alludes, by substituting, in ver. 3: "I have driven away," for "you have driven away," in ver. 2. All which they had to do, was to attend to their vocation and duty; the carrying out of God's counsels belonged to Him alone. From what we have remarked, it plainly follows that we would altogether misunderstand the expression "flock of my pasture," if we were to infer from it a contrast of the innocent people with the guilty kings. Calvin remarks: "In short, when God calls the Jews the flock of His pasture, He has no respect to their condition, or to what they have deserved, but rather commends His grace which He has bestowed upon the seed of Abraham." The kings have nothing to do with the moral condition of the people; they have to look only to God's covenant with them, which is for them a source of obligations so much the greater and more binding than the obligations of heathen kings, as Jehovah is more glorious than Elohim. The moral condition of the people does, to a certain degree, not even concern God; how bad soever it is, He looks to His covenant; and when more deeply viewed, even the outward scattering of the flock is a gathering.

Ver. 2. "Therefore thus saith the Lord the God of Israel, against the shepherds that feed my people: Ye have scattered my flock and driven them away, and have not visited them; behold, I visit upon you the wickedness of your doings, saith the Lord."

In the designation of God as Jehovah the God of Israel, there is already implied that which afterwards is expressly said. Because God is Jehovah, the God of Israel, the crime of the kings is, at the same time, a sacrilegium; they have desecrated God. It was just here that it was necessary prominently to point out the fact, that the people still continued to be God's people. In another very important aspect, they were indeed called Lo-Ammi (Hos. i. 9); but that aspect did not here come into consideration. Calvin: "They had estranged themselves from God; and He too had, in His decree, already renounced them. But, in one respect, God might consider them as aliens, while, in respect to His covenant, He still acknowledged them as His, and hence He calls them His people."--The words "that feed my people," render the idea still more prominent and emphatic than the simple "the shepherds" would have done, and hence serve to make more glaring the contrast presented by the reality. The words "you have not visited them," seem, at first sight, since graver charges have been mentioned before, to be feeble. But that which they did, appears in its whole heinousness only by that which they did not, but which, according to their vocation, they ought to have done. This reference to their destination imparts the greatest severity to the apparently mild reproof Similar is Ezek. xxxiv. 3: "Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, and ye feed not the flock." The visiting forms the general foundation of every single activity of the shepherd, so that the לא פקדתם comprehends within itself all that which Ezekiel particularly mentions in chap. xxxiv. 4: "The weak ye strengthen not, and the sick ye heal not, and the wounded ye bind not up, and the scattered ye bring not back, and the perishing ye seek not."--The words: "the wickedness of your doings," look back to Deut. xxviii. 20: "The Lord shall send upon thee curse, terror, and ruin in all thy undertakings, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly, because of the wickedness of thy doings, that thou hast forsaken me." The gentle allusion to that fearful threatening in that portion of the Pentateuch, which was the best known of all, was sufficient to make every one supplement from it that, which was there actually and expressly uttered. Such an allusion to that passage of Deuteronomy can be traced out, wherever the phrase רע מעללים occurs, which, in later times, had become obsolete; compare chap. iv. 4 and xxi. 12 (in both of these passages מפני, too, is introduced); Is. i. 16; Ps. xxviii. 4; Hos. ix. 15.

Ver. 3. "And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries whither I have driven them away, and I bring them back again to their folds, and they are fruitful and increase."

Compare chap. xxix. 14, xxxi. 8, 10; Ezek. xxxiv. 12, 13: "As a shepherd looketh after his flock in the day that he is in the midst of his flock, the scattered, so will I look after my flock, and I deliver them out of all the places, where they have been scattered in the day of clouds and of darkness. And I bring them out from the nations, and gather them from the countries, and bring them to their land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel, in the valleys, and in all the dwelling places of the land."--A spiritless clinging to the letter has, here too, led several interpreters to suppose, that the Prophet had here in view merely the return from the Babylonish captivity, and perhaps, also, the blessings of the times of the Maccabees, besides and in addition to it. Altogether apart from the consideration that, in that case, the fulfilment would very little correspond to the promise,--for, to the returning ones, Canaan was too little the land of God to allow of our seeing, in this return, the whole fulfilment of God's promise--we can, from the context, easily demonstrate the opposite. With the gathering and bringing back appears, in ver. 4, closely connected the raising of the good shepherds; and according to ver. 5, that promise is to find, if not its sole fulfilment, at all events its substance and centre, in the raising of David's righteous Branch, the Messiah. And from vers. 7, 8, it appears that it is here altogether inadmissible to suppose that these events will take place, one after the other. The particle לכן with which these verses begin, and which refers to the whole sum and substance of the preceding promises, shows that the bringing back from the captivity, and the raising of the Messiah, cannot, by any means, be separated from one another; and to the same result we are led by the contents of the two verses also. How indeed could it be said of the bodily bringing back from the captivity, that it would far outshine the former deliverance from Egypt, and would cause it to be altogether forgotten? The correct view was stated as early as by Calvin, who says: "There is no doubt that the Prophet has in view, in the first instance, the free return of the people; but Christ must not be separated from this blessing of the deliverance, for, otherwise, it would be difficult to show the fulfilment of this prophecy." The right of thus assuming a concurrent reference to Christ is afforded to us by the circumstance, that Canaan had such a high value for Israel, not because it was its fatherland in the lower sense, but because it was the land of God, the place where His glory dwelt. From this it follows that a bodily return was to the covenant-people of value, in so far only as God manifested himself as the God of the land. And since, before Christ, this was done in a manner very imperfect, as compared with what was implied in the idea, the value of such a return could not be otherwise than very subordinate. And in like manner, it follows from it, that the gathering and bringing back by Christ is included in the promise. For wherever God is, there is Canaan. Whether it be the old fold, or a new one, is surely of very little consequence, if only the good Shepherd be in the midst of His sheep. As a rule, such externalities lie without the compass of prophecy, which, having in view the substance, refers, as to the way of its manifestation, to history. Into what ridiculous assertions a false clinging to the letter may lead, appears from remarks such as those of Grotius on the second hemistich of the following verse: "They shall live in security under the powerful protection of the Persian kings."

Protection by the world, and oppression by the world, differed very slightly only, in the case of the covenant-people. The circumstance that Gentiles ruled over them at all, was just that which grieved them; and this grief must therefore continue (compare Neh. ix. 36, 37), although, by the grace of God, a mild rule had taken the place of the former severe one; for this grace of God had its proper value only as a prophecy and pledge of a future greater one. The circumstance that it is to the remnant only that the gathering is promised (compare Is. x. 22; Rom. ix. 27), points to the truth, that the divine mercy will be accompanied with justice. Calvin remarks on this point: "The Prophet again confirms what I formerly said, viz., mercy shall not be exercised until He has cleansed His Church of filthiness, so great and so horrid, in which she at that time abounded." One must beware of exchanging the Scriptural hope of a conversion of Israel on a large scale, in contrast to the small ἐκλογή at the time of Christ and the Apostles, for the hope of a general conversion in the strict sense. When considering the relation of God to the free human nature, the latter is absolutely impossible. When consistently carried out, it necessarily leads to the doctrine of universal restoration. It is beyond doubt, that God wills that all men should be saved; and it would necessarily follow that all men could be saved, if all the members of one nation could be saved. There is no word of Scripture in favour of it, except the πᾶς in Paul, which must just be interpreted and qualified by the contrast to the small ἐκλογή, while there are opposed to it a number of declarations of Scripture,--especially all those passages of the prophets where, to the remnant, to the escaped ones of Israel only, salvation is promised. And, besides the Word of God, there are opposed to it His deeds also,--especially the great typical prefiguration of things spiritual by things external at the deliverance of the people from Egypt, when the remnant only came to Canaan, while the bodies of thousands fell in the wilderness; and no less at the deliverance from Babylon, when by far the greatest number preferred the temporary delight in sin to delight in the Lord in His land.

Ver. 4. "And I raise shepherds over them, and they feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be terrified, neither be lost, saith the Lord."

Even here, the reference to 2 Sam. vii. 12, and to the name of Jehoiakim, is manifest, although, in the subsequent verse, it appears still more distinctly, compare p. 401. This reference also is a proof in favour of this prophecy's having been written under Jehoiakim. The reference was, at that time, easily understood by every one; even the slightest allusion was sufficient. This reference farther shows that Venema, and several others who preceded him in this view, are wrong in here thinking of the Maccabees. These are here quite out of the question, inasmuch as they were not descended from David. Besides the contrast between the people's apostacy and God's covenant-faithfulness, the Prophet evidently has still another in view, viz., that between the apostacy of the Davidic house, and God's faithfulness in the fulfilment of the promise given to David. The single apostate members of this family are destroyed, although, appropriating to themselves the promise, they, in their names, promise deliverance and salvation to themselves. But from the family itself, God's grace cannot depart; just because Jehovah is God, a true Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin must rise out of it. It thus appears that the Maccabees are here as little referred to as Ezra and Nehemiah, of whom Grotius thinks. Much stronger ground is there for thinking of Zerubbabel, for his appearance had really some reference to the promise to David, although as a weak type and prelude only of the true fulfilment, to which he occupies the same relation, as does the gathering from the Babylonish captivity to the gathering by Christ. If, after all, we wish to urge the Plural, we must not, by any means, sever our verse from ver. 5, and declare this to be the sense: first will I raise up to you shepherds; then, the Messiah. We must, in that case, following C. B. Michaelis, rather supplement: specially one, the Messiah. In none of Jeremiah's prophecies are there different stages and degrees in the salvation; everywhere he has in his view the whole in its completion. Where this is overlooked, the whole interpretation must necessarily take a wrong direction, as is most clearly seen in the case of Venema. But there is no reason at all for laying so much stress on the Plural. Every Plural may be used for designating the idea of the whole species; and this kind of designation was here so much the more obvious, that the bad species, with which the good is here contrasted, consisted of a series of individuals. With the bad pastoral office, the Prophet here first contrasts the good one; then he gives, in ver. 5, a more detailed description of the individual who is to represent the species, in whom the idea of the species is to be completely realised. The correctness of this interpretation is confirmed by the comparison of the parallel passage in chap. xxxiii. 15, which, almost verbatim, agrees with that under consideration, and in which only one descendant of David, viz., the Messiah, is spoken of And that is quite natural; for, in that passage, there is no antithesis to the bad shepherds, which was the cause that here, at first, the species was made prominent. And another confirmation is afforded by Ezek. xxxiv. With him, too, one good shepherd is mentioned in contrast with the bad shepherds.--The words: "And they feed them" stand in contrast to "Who feed my people," in ver. 2. The shepherds mentioned in ver. 2 ought to feed the flock; but, instead of doing that, they feed themselves (compare Ezek. xxxiv. 2); the shepherds, however, mentioned in our verse, really feed. The former are shepherds in name only, but, in reality, wolves; the latter are shepherds, both in name and reality. פקד must be taken in the signification "to be missing," "lacking." (Compare the Remarks on chap. iii. 16.) There is an allusion to לא פקדתם in ver. 2. Because the bad shepherd does not visit, the sheep are not sought, q.d., they are lost; but those who did not visit, are now, in a very disagreeable manner, visited by God (פקד עליכם); the good shepherd visits, and, therefore, the sheep need not be sought. The clause: "They shall fear no more, nor be terrified," receives its explanation from Ezek. xxxiv. 8: "Because my flock are a prey, and meat to every beast of the field, because they have no shepherd, and because my shepherds do not concern themselves with the flock."

Ver. 5. "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, and I raise unto David a righteous Branch, and He ruleth as a King, and acteth wisely, and worketh justice and righteousness in the land."

The expression: "Behold the days come," according to the constant usus loquendi of Jeremiah, does not designate a progress in time, in reference to what precedes, but only directs attention to the greatness of that which is to be announced. It contains, at the same time, an allusion to the contrast presented by the visible state of things, which affords no ground for such a thing. How dark soever the present state of things may be, the time is still coming; although the heart may loudly say. No, the word of God must be more certain. Concerning צמח, compare Isa. iv. 2, and the passages of Zechariah there quoted, צדיק stands here in the same signification as in Zech. ix. 9,--different from that which it has in Isa. liii. 11. In the latter passage, where the Servant of God is described as the High Priest and sin-offering. His righteousness comes into consideration as the fundamental condition of justification; here, where He appears as King only,--as the cause of the diffusion of justice and righteousness in the land. That there is implied in this a contrast to the former kings, was pointed out as early as by Abarbanel: "He shall not be an unrighteous seed, such as Jehoiakim and his son, but a righteous one." Calvin also points out "the obvious antithesis between Christ and so many false, and, as it were, adulterous sons. For we know for certain that He alone was the righteous seed of David; for although Hezekiah and Josiah were legitimate successors, yet, when we look to others, they were, as it were, monsters. Except three or four, all the rest were degenerate and covenant-breakers." The words: "I raise unto David a righteous Branch" are here, as well as in chap. xxxiii. 15, not by any means equivalent to: a righteous Branch of David. On the contrary, David is designated as he to whom the act of raising belongs, for whose sake it is undertaken. God has promised to him the eternal dominion of his house. How much soever, therefore, the members of this family may sin against the Lord,--how unworthy soever the people may be to be governed by a righteous Branch of David, God, as surely as He is God, must raise Him for the sake of David. The word מֶלֶךְ must not be overlooked. It shows that מָלַךְ, which, standing by itself, may designate also another government than by a king, such as, e.g., that of Zerubbabel, is to be taken in its full sense. And this qualification was so much the more necessary, that the deepest abasement of the house of David, announced by the Prophet in chap. xxii., compare especially ver. 30, was approaching, and that thereby every hope of its rising to complete prosperity seemed to be set aside. Since, therefore, the faith in this event rested merely on the word, it was necessary that the word should be as distinct as possible, in order that no one might pervert, or explain it away. Calvin remarks: "He shall rule as a King, i.e., He shall rule gloriously; so that there do not merely appear some relics of former glory, but that He flourish and be powerful as a King, and attain to a perfection, such as existed under David and Solomon; and even much more excellent."--As regards השכיל, we have already, in our remarks on chap. iii. 15, proved that it never and nowhere means "to prosper," "to be prosperous," but always "to act wisely." It has been shown by Calvin that even the context here requires the latter signification. He says: "The Prophet seems here rather to speak of right judgment than of prosperity and success; for we must read this in connexion with one another: He shall act wisely, and then work justice and righteousness. He shall be endowed with the spirit of wisdom, as well as of justice and righteousness; so that he shall perform all the offices and duties of a king." Yet Calvin has not exhausted the arguments which may be derived from the context. The whole verse before us treats of the endowments of the King; the whole succeeding one, of the prosperity which, by these endowments, is imparted to the people. To this may still be added the evident contrast to the folly of the former shepherds, which was the consequence of their wickedness, and which, in the preceding chapter, had been described as the cause of their own, and the people's destruction; compare chap. x. 21: "For the shepherds are become brutish, and do not seek the Lord; therefore they do not act wisely, and their whole flock is scattered." But if here the signification "to act wisely" be established, then it is also in all those passages where השכיל is used of David; compare remarks on chap. iii. For the fact, that the Prophet has in view these passages, and that, according to him, the reign of David is, in a more glorious manner, to be revived in his righteous Branch, appears from the circumstance that every thing else has its foundation in the description of David's reign, in the books of Samuel. Thus the words: "And he ruleth as a king, and worketh justice and righteousness in the land," refer back to 2 Sam. viii. 15: "And David reigned over all Israel, and David wrought justice and righteousness unto all his people." The foundation of the announcement of ver. 6 is formed by 2 Sam. viii. 14 (compare ver. 6): "And the Lord gave prosperity (ויושע) to David in all his ways." But if השכיל, wherever it occurs of David, must be taken in this sense, then the LXX. are right also in translating Is. lii. 13 by συνήσει: for, in that passage, just as in the verse under consideration, David is referred to as the type of the Messiah. The phrase עשה משפט וצדקה is by De Wette commonly translated: "to exercise justice and righteousness." But the circumstance that, in Ps. cxlvi. 7, he is obliged to give up this translation, proves that it is wrong. עשה must rather be explained by "to work," "to establish." משפט is here, as everywhere else, the objective right and justice; צדקה, the subjective righteousness. The working of justice is the means by which righteousness is wrought. The forced dominion of justice is necessarily followed by the voluntary, just as the judgments of God, by means of which He is sanctified upon mankind, are, at the same time, the means by which He is sanctified in them. The high vocation of the King to work justice and righteousness rests upon His dignity, as the bearer of God's image; comp. Ps. cxlvi. 7; chap. ix. 23: "For I the Lord work love, justice, and righteousness in the land." Chap. xxii. 15 is, moreover, to be compared, where it is said of Josiah, the true descendant of David, "he wrought justice and righteousness," and chap. xxii. 3, where his spurious descendants are admonished: "Work justice and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, and do not oppress the stranger; the fatherless and the widow do not wrong, neither shed innocent blood in this place." Farther, still, is the progress to be observed: the King is righteous, his righteousness passeth over from him to the subjects; then follows salvation and righteousness from the Lord.--To explanations, such as that of Grotius, who, by the righteous Branch, understands Zerubbabel, we here need the less to pay any attention, that the fact of his being in this without predecessors or followers palpably proves it to be erroneous. If, indeed, we could rely on Theodoret's statement ("The blinded Jews endeavour, with great impudence, to refer this to Zerubbabel"--then follows the refutation), the older Jews must have led the way to this perverted interpretation. But we cannot implicitly rely on Theodoret's statements of this kind. In the Jewish writings themselves, not the slightest trace of such an interpretation is to be found. The Chaldean Paraphrast is decidedly in favour of the Messianic interpretation: אתן אמר יי ואקים הא יומיא לדוד משיח דצדקה "Behold the days shall come, and I will raise up to David the righteous Messiah, (not דצדקיא 'the Messiah of the righteous,' as many absurdly read), saith the Lord." Eusebius (compare Le Moyne, de Jehova justitia nostra, p. 23), it is true, refutes the interpretation which refers it to Joshua, the son of Josedech; but we are not entitled to infer from this circumstance, that this view found supporters in his time. His intention is merely to guard against the erroneous interpretation of Ἰωσεδέκ of the following verse in the Alexandrian version (καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, ὃ καλέσει αὐτὸν κύριος, Ἰωσεδέκ). It can scarcely be imagined that the translators themselves proceeded from this erroneous view. For Josedech, the father of Joshua the high-priest, is a person altogether obscure. All which they intended, by their retaining the Hebrew form, was certainly only the wish, to express that it was a nomen proprium which occurred here; and they were specially induced to act thus by the circumstance, that this name was, in their time, generally current, as one of the proper names of the Messiah.