Ezekiel 34 In Light of the Three Horizons of Scripture

Ezekiel chapter 34 stands in stark contrast to the all too often painted picture of God as harsh and unloving in the Old Testament. This divinely inspired chapter serves as a gracious warming cloak for the cold judgment of God that permeates the preceding chapters. D.L. Moody saw this same comfort evident in the chapter. He writes:

Notice the “I wills” of the Lord God on behalf of His sheep. The shepherd and the sheep:-
v. 11 I will search them and seek them out.
v. 12 I will deliver them.
v. 13 I will bring them out.
v. 13 I will gather them together.
v. 13 I will bring them in.
v. 14 I will feed them.
v. 15 I will cause them to lie down.
v. 16 I will bind up the broken.
v. 16 I will strengthen the sick.
There are a good many lean sheep in God’s fold, but none in His pasture.[1]

Ezekiel 34 must have been a breath of fresh air to its immediate recipients, but it should call us to praise as well. By studying this text in light of the three horizons of Scripture we will be able to discern just how it plays such a significant role in the lives of so many from such distinct periods in history.

When I speak of the three horizons of Scripture I am using a technical term that identifies the different levels at which we read and interpret the Bible. The textual horizon is the first level. At this horizon we are seeking to understand what the author intended to convey in the immediate context of that passage and to his original audience. This means we must pay attention to the background, the setting, and the situation of those whom he is addressing. The second level seeks to place a specific text within the larger context of the testament or covenant which it falls under. Passages in the Old Testament fall under the old covenant and those in the New under the new covenant. This distinction helps to determine at what point in God’s redemptive plan the events of the passage are taking place. The final horizon is labeled the canonical. This horizon takes into account a passages place in the whole canon of Scripture. While there is some overlap here between the epochal and canonical the significant distinction is that in the Canonical horizon we are identifying a passages relation to the cross specifically. All of scripture is pointing us to the cross and so it is through the lens of the New Testament that we must read the Old. That being said let us begin looking at Ezekiel 34 on all three of these horizons.

We begin with the textual horizon, that is the immediate context of the passage. Here we are seeking to discern what the author intended to convey, and thus what God intended to convey through that author, to his original audience. In this passage Ezekiel is declaring a prophesy of judgment against the rulers of Israel. They are the careless and self-indulgent shepherds of verses 1-10.

The prophet is speaking out against the wickedness of Judah, and warning them of the coming destruction of Jerusalem. The northern kingdom of Israel had been exiled to Babylon in 597 B.C., and Judah would soon join them in being exiled from the land. It is part of God’s punishment on Judah. So in verses 21-33 of chapter 33 we read of Jerusalem’s destruction, even the desolation of the temple. But chapter 34 is the silver lining in the black sky. It is hope for those who had lost what they saw as the center of God’s covenant with His people: the temple. It was the promise of future restoration, the promise of God’s communion with His sheep, and the deliverance from captivity. The intent of the author was to offer hope and encouragement to a people who had been swept away into exile. It was to quell the fear that God had abandoned them, and to re-assure them of the promise of a king from the Davidic line who would rescue them from their captors.

As we move into the epochal horizon we can note that there is a fair amount of overlap (both with the textual and the canonical horizon). Before delineating the obvious overlaps, however, let’s set up the larger epochal horizon. Patrick Fairbairn gives a good help here when he writes:

This passage evidently points, both as to its subject, and the language it employs, to a quite similar and earlier prophecy of Jeremiah (chap. xxiii. 1-6), where, in like manner, the false shepherds are denounced and judged, that the way might be opened up for the appearance of the Lord’s true shepherd. In both prophecies alike, what is meant by the shepherd is manifestly not priests or prophets, but kings and rulers…[2]

Here is one of the great foci of the passage: the promise of a King. Fairbairn rightly connects this passage with that of Jeremiah 23:1-6. In both passages there is the promise of a future “shepherd,” that is a King, who will rescue God’s people and usher in a time of peace and of security. Both passages are set in the larger context of the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah: God’s anointed one.

Dr. Daniel I. Block notes the larger context of the messianic prophecies in his commentary on Ezekiel. He writes:

The shepherd will be David. Although this ruler is explicitly identified as David only twice outside this book, Ezekiel’s identification of the divinely installed king as David is based on a long-standing prophetic tradition. On the one hand, the 8th-century prophet Hosea had looked forward to the day when the children of Israel would “return and seek Yahweh their God and David their King.” On the other hand, Ezekiel’s diction is closer to Jer. 30:8-10, which also combines the appointment of David with the anticipated restoration of the nation. There is no thought in these prophecies of the resurrection of the historical king, as some kind of David [revived]. Ezekiel’s use of the singular “shepherd,” and his emphasis on … “one,” also preclude the restoration of the dynasty in the abstract, that is, simply a series of kings. He envisions a single person, who may embody the dynasty but who occupies the throne himself.[3]

Dr. Block has noted that the messiah, or the “divinely installed King,” as David had a long-standing tradition in Israel’s prophetic history. He gives evidence in the examples of Hosea and Jeremiah. His comments stress, as well, the centrality of David in this passage.
In their sins the people of Judah had broken the Davidic Covenant, and as a result God had abandoned His dwelling place among them, in the temple on Mt. Zion.[4] At stake in their disobedience was the fulfillment of God’s promise to David: that one of his descendants would reign on his throne forever. Such a danger must have undoubtedly been in the back of the minds of the people of Judah as they foresaw Jerusalem laid waste and as they were shuttled off to a foreign land.

With such a background, then, it becomes evident why God revealed to the people that this “true shepherd” would be David. The prophecy was to be a boost to their confidence in God’s trustworthiness. He had not forgotten, nor abandoned, His covenant with David. This true shepherd was to be of the Davidic line, he was to be the anointed of God, the Messiah, just as 2 Samuel 7:1-17 says. For our purposes in this discussion we could simply look to verses 12-13:
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The immediate context of that passage is referring to David’s son Solomon. But as one reads the history of Solomon you find a man far short of God’s standard, a man who divides the kingdom in half, and who eventually dies, leaving the nation wondering who is this anointed son of David that was to come and establish an eternal throne? They continued to wait for his appearing.

The image of the king as a shepherd of the sheep of Israel has two underlying notions to it. This is where we will see some of that overlap I mentioned a moment ago. The connection between David and this “true shepherd” who is the future king of Israel is all the more relevant when we grasp that David himself was at one time a shepherd. By calling this new king a shepherd the prophet is immediately connecting him with the Davidic dynasty, without saying so specifically.

The second connection is between this “true shepherd” and God Himself. There are several other places in Scripture where God refers to Himself as a shepherd. Genesis 49:24 is one example, but Lamar Cooper is probably right when he identifies Psalm 23 as the best known example. Cooper writes:

David provided insight not only into God’s role as “Shepherd” but also into the responsibility of kings to be rightly related to God. The king was to be the undershepherd and God the true King and Shepherd. Psalm 23 was David’s personal commitment to this principle. “The Lord is my Shepherd” (Ps. 23:1) was a personal declaration that he, David the king, had a King/Shepherd, who was Yahweh.[5]

The whole of Ezekiel chapter 34 re-enforces this connection with the powerful and comforting “I will” statements of God. Verse 11 reads, “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.” God is the shepherd of Ezekiel 34, it He who will seek out His sheep. He will rescue, gather, feed, bind up, strengthen, seek, and cause to lie down. Yahweh, God, is the shepherd and none other.

Through the “Redemptive-Historical” lens we can see that Ezekiel 34 is a prophecy concerning the coming Messiah. The promise to David of a descendant who would possess a special favor with God was apprehended by the whole nation and they waited anxiously for the appearing of this Davidic king. The exile, however, dashed their hopes and left them not only without a king, but without a land for a king to rule over. It is from this point on that the messianic promise takes on the form of the prophetic. The prediction of the coming king assures the people that God has not forgotten and will still keep His promise to David. Ezekiel 34 is right in line with these prophecies as the true shepherd of Israel will bring the people back into their own land, put them at rest, and rule over them as God’s appointed representative.

As we move into the final horizon of Scripture, the canonical, we find ourselves wrestling with the connection between the “true Shepherd” and the Lord God Himself. How are these two connected? How can God say, “I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country” (34:13), and still also say, “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (34:23)? Who is going to feed God’s lambs, David or the Lord Himself? The answer to this mild dilemma is resolved in the person of Christ Jesus. For the answer is “both.”

If the chapter as a whole falls in line with the long-standing prophetic traditions pointing to the Messiah, then it points to the man whom we know to be that Messiah. Not David himself, not Solomon, not Hezekiah, but Jesus Christ. In Jesus we find both the descendant of David and the divine being perfectly present. It is, through Christ, both God and David who feed the sheep. Hear the words that our savior uses to describe His own ministry to God’s sheep, the resemblance to Ezekiel 34 is unparalleled:

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. (John 10:14-18)

Note that Jesus calls Himself the “good shepherd,” in obvious contrast to the evil shepherds. Those evil shepherds of Ezekiel 34 who fatten themselves up while the sheep starve. This “good shepherd” is in stark contrast to the hired hands who “sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep” (John 10:12-13).

Viewing scripture along this third and final horizon allows us to go back and read Ezekiel 34 from this side of the cross. What Ezekiel and those of his time saw only in shadow we see in more full light: that Jesus is the Messiah, the true shepherd of God’s sheep. With the words “I am the good shepherd” Jesus resolves the dilemma of how both God and David can tend the lambs. There is only “one shepherd,” and that is Christ, the individual in whom reside both divinity and humanity. He is the God-man, and that is why He is the true shepherd.
In the canonical horizon of scripture we see the beautiful picture of God’s redemptive plan revealed. The true shepherd was not meant to redeem Israel from physical captivity and enslavement, but from spiritual bondage to sin and death. This the shepherd does by laying down His life for the sheep. Ezekiel 34 with its description of restoration, redemption, security, and the covenant of peace points us to the cross of Christ where all these promises find fulfillment. The prophet Ezekiel declares that God will “make with [the sheep] a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods.” The question we must ask is how, how will God make this covenant of peace with them?

Covenants were made with the shedding of blood and in them God binds Himself to do something for man. What more beautiful picture do we have of God binding Himself to man, and a covenant being made with the shedding of blood than at the cross? It is at the cross, where the true shepherd laid down His life for the sheep, that we see a covenant of peace established. Here is the fulfillment of what Ezekiel says, “They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them. They shall dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid” (v. 28). And it is echoed in Jesus’ own sentiments in John 10. There He says:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one. (vv. 27-30)

As Ezekiel predicted so Jesus promises: security for the sheep within the folds of God. No wild beast, foreign nation, or scheme of man and Satan can snatch them from the Father’s hand.
Does Ezekiel 34 make you rejoice friends? Do you see in the text the future promise of our restoration, our salvation, our peace and security? This is a text that was intended to give great comfort to a people in physical slavery, to remind them of the hope to come in the messiah. It was a text that pointed toward the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies that had been declared throughout Israel’s history at different times. But God, in His infinite wisdom and sovereignty, included this text in our Bibles so that we would see His plan to redeem us from of old.

God has had a plan to bring sheep who are not of Israel into His folds for a long time, indeed before the foundations of the world even. And all throughout history He has been revealing that plan. As we read Ezekiel 34 we see that nothing would deter God from seeing His plan to full fruition. Let us pause for a moment, then, and consider what astounding grace is displayed here. God inspired chapter 34 of Ezekiel to emphasize the surety of His plan to redeem a sinful, wretched, and offensive people like us. How amazing that we should be called the sheep of God at all, let alone that God should give us this chapter to show how throughout history He was bringing all this to completion in the death of His Son. Let Ezekiel 34 take root in your heart and compel you to rejoice friends.



[1]D.L. Moody, Notes from My Bible. Quoted in William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1985). 1061.
[2]Patrick Fairbairn, Ezekiel and the Book of His Prophecy. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1863).
[3]Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 25-48. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 297-298.
[4]See I.M. Duguid, “Ezekiel.” In New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. ed. Graeme Goldsworthy and D.A. Carson. (Downers Grove: IVP, 2000). 230.
[5]Lamar Eugene Cooper, The New American Commentary. Vol. 17. (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994). 301.