David Baron

“ No owner of a flock, or lord of a flock, would call a hired or purchased shepherd his amitk. And so God would not apply this epithet to any godly or ungodly man whom He might have appointed shepherd over a nation. ”

“ Great numbers of Jews were crucified by the Romans outside the walls of Jerusalem, while many thousands were taken in ships to Egypt and sold as slaves. Then, not to speak of the great numbers of Jews who were during the same time done to death in different parts of the Roman Empire, only some sixty years after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, a calamity of almost equal magnitude overtook the Jewish people " throughout all the land," consequent on their renewed rising under the false Messiah, Bar Cochba. ”

“ To return to the passage immediately before us, it is interesting to observe that Jewish commentators themselves have admitted that the word " f amithi n ("my Fellow") implies equality with God ; " only since they own not Him who was God and Man they must interpret it of a false claim on the part of man," overlooking that it is God Himself who thus speaks of the shepherd of his text. ”

“ The Shepherd would be smitten on account of the sin of the people, who would in consequence be scattered, but Jehovah would remember in mercy a little remnant of the flock, namely, the poor in spirit, the humble ones who are little in their own eyes, and who give heed to the word of the Lord. ”

“ The Shepherd was slain " ; as another writer truly observes : " When Jesus of Nazareth was crucified an act ascribed in the New Testament no less to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, on the one hand, than to the malice of men on the other." And there, in the same inspired narrative which tells of the smiting of the Shepherd, we read also of another fulfilment of the scattering of the flock, which is, so to say, additional to the primary mean ing of the prophecy, but is not altogether unconnected with the scattering of Israel and the saving of the remnant. ”

“ He was the true prophet, and much more than a prophet, but He also was " wounded," yea, " smitten " even unto death, in the house of His friends (i.e., " His own " nation) , who in their blind and ungodly zeal even thought that they rendered God a service in slaying the Prince of Life ; because, having become alienated in their hearts from God, they did not recognise Him Who is the very " image of the invisible God," and charged Him with blasphemy, because He claimed to speak to them in the Name of God, as one who is " equal with God." ”

“ At the beginning of the sixteenth century, according to reliable computations, there were only about one million Jews left in the whole world after the centuries of oppression and unparalleled sufferings which they had had to endure, especially throughout the dark Middle Ages. ”

“ Jehovah Himself is " the Shepherd of Israel," but He fulfils all that is implied in this relationship and office mediately, in and through the Messiah. This is fully set forth in Ezek. xxxiv., where, after announcing that He will Himself" seek" and "save," " heal " and " strengthen," " feed " and " satisfy," His now scattered flock, He says : " / will set up one shepherd over them, and He sliall feed them, even my servant David" (whom the Jewish commentators themselves identify with the Messiah, " David s greater Son ") . " He shall feed them, and He shall be their Shepherd? ”

“ At the yearly market, by Abraham s Oak, at Hebron, Jewish slaves were sold at a nominal price ; a Jew was worth no more than a horse. See the summary of Jewish History since the Dispersion, in The Shepherd of Israel and His Scattered Flock. ”

“ But the only other place in the Hebrew Bible where this word is found, namely, in Leviti cus, it is used only as the synonym of HN (" brother ") , in the concrete sense of the nearest one. 1 The two words gebher (" man ") and " amithi " (" my Fellow ") must there fore be regarded as apposites, and have been properly so rendered in the English Bible. ”