Ezekiel 34: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Ezekiel to speak against the shepherds of Israel, who fed themselves instead of caring for the flock, so the sheep were scattered and eaten by wild animals. God says he is against those shepherds, will take the flock out of their hands, and will search for his sheep himself, gather them from the countries, and feed them in their own land. He also judges between the fat sheep and the lean ones they shoved aside. The chapter ends with promises of one shepherd, God's servant David, an agreement of peace, rain in season, and safety in the land.

Claim by Claim

1. 34:1
   • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel.
   • The word came with instructions to speak.
2. 34:2
   • God addressed the prophet as son of man.
   • God commanded him to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.
   • God commanded him to prophesy and speak to the shepherds.
   • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD spoken to the shepherds.
   • Woe is pronounced on the shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves.
   • God asked whether the shepherds should not feed the flock.
3. 34:3
   • The shepherds eat the fat.
   • The shepherds clothe themselves with the wool.
   • The shepherds slaughter the fattened animals.
   • The shepherds do not feed the flock.
4. 34:4
   • The shepherds have not strengthened the weak.
   • The shepherds have not healed the sick.
   • The shepherds have not bound up the injured.
   • The shepherds have not brought back the strayed.
   • The shepherds have not sought the lost.
   • The shepherds have ruled them with force and with harshness.
5. 34:5
   • The sheep were scattered because there was no shepherd.
   • The sheep became food for every wild beast of the field.
   • The sheep were scattered.
6. 34:6
   • God's sheep wandered on all the mountains.
   • God's sheep wandered on every high hill.
   • God's flock was scattered over the whole face of the earth.
   • No one searched for them.
   • No one sought after them.
7. 34:7
   • God commanded the shepherds to hear the word of the LORD.
8. 34:8
   • The Lord GOD swore by his own life.
   • God's flock became plunder.
   • God's flock became food for every wild beast of the field.
   • There was no shepherd.
   • God's shepherds did not search for his flock.
   • The shepherds fed themselves.
   • The shepherds did not feed God's flock.
9. 34:9
   • God again commanded the shepherds to hear the word of the LORD.
10. 34:10
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • God declared that he is against the shepherds.
    • God will require his flock from their hand.
    • God will make them cease from tending the flock.
    • The shepherds will no longer feed themselves.
    • God will rescue his flock from their mouth.
    • The flock will not be food for them.
11. 34:11
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • God himself will search for his flock.
    • God himself will seek them out and look them over.
12. 34:12
    • A shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep.
    • God will seek out his sheep in that same way.
    • God will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered.
    • They were scattered on a day of cloud and thick darkness.
13. 34:13
    • God will bring them out from the peoples.
    • God will gather them from the countries.
    • God will bring them into their own land.
    • God will feed them on the mountains of Israel.
    • God will feed them in the ravines.
    • God will feed them in all the inhabited places of the land.
14. 34:14
    • God will feed them in good pasture.
    • Their grazing place will be on the high mountains of Israel.
    • There they will lie down in a good grazing place.
    • They will feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.
15. 34:15
    • God himself will feed his flock.
    • God himself will make them lie down.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD.
16. 34:16
    • God will seek the lost.
    • God will bring back the strayed.
    • God will bind up the injured.
    • God will strengthen the weak.
    • God will destroy the fat and the strong.
    • God will feed them with judgment.
17. 34:17
    • God addressed his flock.
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • God will judge between one sheep and another.
    • God will judge between the rams and the male goats.
18. 34:18
    • God asked whether it is too small a thing for them to feed on the good pasture.
    • They trample the rest of their pasture with their feet.
    • They drink clear water.
    • They foul the remaining water with their feet.
19. 34:19
    • God's flock feeds on what the others have trampled with their feet.
    • God's flock drinks what the others have fouled with their feet.
20. 34:20
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD spoken to them.
    • God himself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.
21. 34:21
    • They thrust with flank and with shoulder.
    • They butt all the weak ones with their horns.
    • They have scattered the weak ones abroad.
22. 34:22
    • God will save his flock.
    • The flock will no longer be plunder.
    • God will judge between one sheep and another.
23. 34:23
    • God will set up one shepherd over them.
    • That shepherd will feed them.
    • The shepherd is God's servant David.
    • He will feed them.
    • He will be their shepherd.
24. 34:24
    • The LORD will be their God.
    • God's servant David will be a prince among them.
    • The LORD declares that he has spoken it.
25. 34:25
    • God will make a covenant of peace with them.
    • God will rid the land of harmful wild beasts.
    • They will dwell securely in the wilderness.
    • They will sleep in the forests.
26. 34:26
    • God will make them and the places around his hill a blessing.
    • God will send down the rain in its season.
    • The rains will be showers of blessing.
27. 34:27
    • The tree of the field will yield its fruit.
    • The land will yield its produce.
    • They will be secure on their own soil.
    • They will know that he is the LORD.
    • God will break the bars of their yoke.
    • God will deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them.
28. 34:28
    • They will no longer be plunder for the nations.
    • The beasts of the land will not devour them.
    • They will dwell securely.
    • No one will make them afraid.
29. 34:29
    • God will raise up for them a planting of renown.
    • They will no longer be consumed by famine in the land.
    • They will no longer bear the reproach of the nations.
30. 34:30
    • They will know that the LORD their God is with them.
    • They will know that they, the house of Israel, are his people.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD.
31. 34:31
    • They are God's flock, the flock of his pasture.
    • They are human beings.
    • He is their God.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

34:1

Where the rendering prints "the LORD" in capitals, the Hebrew has the personal name of Israel's God (the four letters usually written YHWH), which Jewish readers traditionally do not pronounce. "Lord GOD" renders a double form, roughly "my Master, YHWH." The capitals are a printing convention carried over from the King James Version, not a difference in meaning.

34:2

"Son of man" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning simply "human being" or "mortal." It is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, over ninety times; it is not a title. "Shepherd" was standard political vocabulary across the ancient Near East for a king or ruler, used of Babylonian and Egyptian monarchs as well as Israelite ones. The whole chapter is an attack on Israel's rulers, and the first hearers would have understood "shepherds" that way immediately.

34:3

The fat was the richest and most prized part of a slaughtered animal, and the fattened animals were the ones raised for eating rather than for wool or breeding. The charge is that the shepherds are consuming the best of what belongs to the flock's owner.

34:4

Every item here is a real job in a shepherd's day: strengthening weak animals with extra feed, treating sick ones, splinting and bandaging a sheep with a broken leg, going out after strays, and hunting for one that is genuinely lost. The verse charges the rulers with skipping all of it.

34:5

In 1611 "meat" meant food of any kind, not flesh specifically. Sheep without a shepherd are defenseless; lions, bears, wolves and jackals all hunted flocks in this region.

34:6

"Every high hill" is where sheep drift when nobody herds them, up and away from water and safety. Behind the picture is a real event: the deportation of Judeans to Babylon and their flight into surrounding countries after Jerusalem fell.

34:8

"As surely as I live" is a formal oath. A person swore by something greater than themselves; God, having nothing greater, swears by his own life. The formula marks what follows as binding and irreversible.

34:10

"I will require my flock at their hand" is legal language. Under the herding contracts of the ancient world, a hired shepherd was financially liable for missing animals and had to produce the remains of one killed by a predator to prove he had not simply sold it. God is calling in that debt from the rulers.

34:12

"A dark and cloudy day" is a stock phrase in the prophets for a day of disaster and judgment, not a description of the weather. Ezekiel's hearers would connect it with the fall of Jerusalem.

34:13

Ezekiel was writing among Judeans deported to Babylon after Jerusalem fell in 587 BC, with others having fled to Egypt and elsewhere. "Bring them out from the peoples" is about ending that dispersal and returning the survivors home.

34:14

"A fat pasture" uses "fat" in its older sense of rich and fertile, said of land rather than animals. A "fold" is an enclosure, often a rough stone wall or a thornbush pen, where a flock is penned at night.

34:16

The Hebrew here is disputed. The traditional Hebrew text reads "the fat and the strong I will destroy," as rendered; the ancient Greek and Syriac translations read a nearly identical Hebrew word meaning "I will watch over" or "guard": that is, the strong will be cared for too. The two readings differ by one letter.

34:17

The rams and male goats are the large, dominant animals that push their way to food and water first. The image shifts here: God has finished with the rulers and is now addressing members of the community who bully the weaker ones.

34:18

In a dry land, good grazing and clean water sources were limited and could not simply be replaced. An animal that ate its fill and then trampled the remaining grass and stirred mud into the water ruined it for everything that came after.

34:21

Sheep and goats really do fight this way at a feeding trough or a watering place, driving weaker animals off with their flanks, shoulders and horns until those animals give up and drift away.

34:23

David had been dead about four centuries when Ezekiel spoke. "My servant David" means a future ruler from David's line; the founder's name is used for the dynasty, much as a later ruler might be called a new Caesar. The point of "one shepherd" is a single ruler replacing the many failed ones.

34:24

"Prince" here is the Hebrew word nasi, meaning a leader or chief. Ezekiel consistently avoids the ordinary word for "king" (melek) for this future ruler, using the less grand term instead.

34:25

A covenant was a formal, binding agreement, the ancient equivalent of a treaty, and was the standard way of describing the relationship between God and Israel. "Peace" translates shalom, which means safety, wholeness and prosperity, not merely the absence of fighting. Sleeping in open country or woodland was dangerous because of predators and bandits; the promise is that it will become safe.

34:26

"My hill" is Mount Zion, the ridge in Jerusalem where the temple stood. Rain in this land fell in two seasons, the autumn rains that softened the ground for plowing and the spring rains that filled out the grain, and a crop failed if either did not come. "Rain at the right time of year" means both arriving on schedule.

34:27

A yoke was the wooden beam laid across the necks of draft animals, held in place by pegs or bars. Breaking the bars released the animal, and the image was the ordinary way of speaking about being freed from the control of a foreign power.

34:28

"The nations" translates goyim, the King James "heathen", simply the peoples other than Israel, with no comment on their religion implied by the word itself.

34:29

The Hebrew phrase is obscure and translators differ: it can mean a planting or plantation that is famous, understood as land made spectacularly fertile, or, with a small change to the text that some ancient versions support, "a planting of peace" or "of prosperity." Some later readers took "planting" as a term for a promised individual ruler. The vagueness is in the original.

34:31

The Hebrew ends bluntly: "you are adam", you are human beings. After thirty verses of sheep and shepherds, the final line drops the figure of speech and says plainly who the flock is. Some translations render the word as "my people" instead, following the ancient Greek version.