Ezekiel 34:4, commentary and pictures

Ezekiel 34:4 charges shepherds with five failures toward the vulnerable, leaving the diseased unstrengthened, the sick unhealed, the broken unbound, the driven away unreturned and the lost unsought, while ruling them with force and cruelty instead. It was spoken against the leaders of Israel and the Pharisees and religious rulers as false shepherds whose proud, greedy neglect and oppression scattered the flock and left them exposed to harm. Against them stands Jesus as the Good Shepherd who does what they left undone, knowing each one by name, caring for the feeble and wandering, hearing their cry, and laying down His life to save them. It therefore requires those who care for God's people to strengthen the weak by personal, tender attention, visiting house to house and by the fireside, feeding with truth, healing wounds, seeking the straying and restoring the erring with meekness rather than driving by force or wounding by censure. Unconsecrated watchmen who serve themselves, labor only for gain, and hurt and crush instead of binding up stand under God's displeasure and are unfit to be entrusted with the flock unless they repent and learn Christ's meekness.

Meaning and Historical Setting

The verse indicts shepherds for five omissions toward the vulnerable, failing to strengthen the diseased and weak, to heal the sick, to bind up the broken and injured, to bring back the driven away and straying, and to seek the lost, while ruling them instead with force and cruelty. That reproof exposes a lack of love, forbearance, and pity, where servants of God let their own feelings rule them instead of treating people with compassion and kindness. It describes ministers who neglect their duty to give the people truth and righteousness, reject messages calling for self-denial, and disregard God by trampling plain commands. It means disobeying the law of God as a law of love by not loving God supremely and neighbor as self, and it applies to those who in blindness and selfishness neglect appointed work while exalting themselves as superior. One who bites and devours others and cannot minister to the sick and suffering is unfit to be entrusted with the flock.

Historically the verse describes Israel's leaders as failing to care for those needing help, ruling the people harshly and cruelly instead of strengthening, healing, restoring, and seeking them. It describes the Pharisees and religious rulers as false shepherds who spiritually neglected and harmed the weak, wounded, scattered, and lost. It also exposes the cruelty and greed of rulers in Israel who instead of protecting men became proud and cruel oppressors. That oppressive neglect reveals the secret of Babylon's fall and of the fall of many other kingdoms since the world began.

The neglect condemned left the sheep scattered for lack of a shepherd and exposed as meat to beasts of the field. They wandered through mountains and high hills over all the face of the earth, with none searching or seeking after them. Harsh, severe, and overbearing treatment still scatters the sheep and can drive people away so they cannot be brought back. Zeal without knowledge working in sternness, severity, and exacting harshness distracts, confuses, and scatters the poor sheep, pushing some out of the fold so they can never be reached and brought back.

Against the failing shepherds stands Jesus as the Good Shepherd who does what they did not do. He knows each one individually by name, is touched with the feeling of infirmities, reads hidden grief, cares for feeble, sickly, wandering sheep and lambs, hears the cry for aid, sees when one of His little ones is injured, and calls the offender to account. As chief shepherd He laid down His own life to save His sheep and places the flock in the care of ministers as under-shepherds with sacred responsibility to share His interest and love. They must feed the flock, strengthen the weak, revive the fainting, shield the sheep from devouring wolves, protect the flock, and labor for its welfare rather than their own ease or gain.

Those who care for God's people must not pronounce sentence, accuse, condemn, injure, or rule with indifference and contempt. They must love one another, pray for one another, weep over the erring, and restore with meekness, showing sufficient love, forbearance, and pity. The failure is shown by the selfish priest and Levite who refused care for the wounded man. It is also shown by the self-exalting superiority of scribes and Pharisees who demerit others whose desire and aim is to serve God, instead of keeping the commandments and doing appointed work.

Doctrine Law and Judgment

Ezekiel 34:4 means disobedience to God's law as a law of love, failing to love God supremely and neighbor as self, as seen when need is passed by in blindness and selfishness and when self is exalted in superiority while those who aim to serve God are disparaged instead of God's commandments being kept and appointed work being done. It condemns shepherds who neglect to give the people truth and righteousness, who reject messages calling for self-denial, who trample the plain commands of the law, and who teach that the law is not binding in order to turn people from truth and break their trust.

The verse requires ministers to receive the message God sends of light and hope and comfort and apply it as heavenly balm to heal the wounds of sheep and lambs, which is the truth that Christ is our righteousness preached together with the law as faith and the righteousness of Christ. To come under its charge is to refuse that light, to choose what channel it may come through, to lack faith, humility, love and power from on high, to starve the flock on dry theories and narrow experience instead of feeding the glorious gospel, to place self between the people and God's message and make it of none effect, to rob souls, and to point in the wrong direction as a false guide. This includes leaving members unvisited and unfed and robbing churches of light by withholding camp meetings where the flock could be strengthened, so help must go without waiting for invitation to where need is greatest, and churches led by shepherds ignorant of truth that works by love and purifies the soul turn God-given powers to their own interests until the flock is destroyed for lack of care and becomes backslidden.

The verse rebukes unfaithful shepherds who knew that keeping God's commandments just as written makes every difference yet made no personal effort to save souls. They treated testing truth as a matter every man was at liberty to regard as he pleased with no firm bounds, failed to lay hold of the lost in intense earnestness exalting righteousness and truth as a life-and-death principle while forgiveness can still be reached, acted a lie to link up with the disobedient, misled hearers, turned them from God's law, and persecuted those who keep it. In the final judgment, when every man is judged and receives according to his works whether obedient to the law of God's kingdom or transgressing to the last, those deceived by such ministers will turn on them, blame them for their ruin, and charge them with not treating them as in earnest peril.

The chapter containing the verse is to be studied by one deciding whether to remain under the influence of a person who has apostatized, together with the promise that none of the sins of the one who turns and does that which is lawful and right shall be mentioned to him but he shall surely live, with a true change of choice known by actions. The verse holds ministers accountable for clearly teaching God's law and Word, for confusing people with their own interpretations neglects the flock and leaves souls to perish through that neglect. When shepherds remain ignorant of truth that works by love and purifies the soul and turn God-given powers toward their own interests, hungry souls asking for light are left without faithful preaching of Scripture, the flock is destroyed for lack of care, and churches become backslidden, though those who reject God's Word to follow human sophistry are not excused.

Faithful Pastoral Care

Faithful shepherding is feeding the flock with the Bread of Life and the truths of God's Word instead of serving self and leaving the people to suffer for lack of proper instruction. It requires tender, persistent attention to souls, tending each person according to condition and caring personally for every member, including parents and children, with kindness, warning, encouragement and entreaty. True work denies self and spends every nerve and means to gather poor, lost, perishing souls to the cross with a message going forth in power.

Strengthening the weak and diseased means doing more than preaching and refusing to let temporal business absorb time and attention that belongs to souls. The minister must identify with the people, visit believers when sick and inquire after them when absent from worship, and visit every accessible family house to house to get acquainted in homes and meet people where they are. He must work by the fireside in conversation and prayer, sowing seed that springs up after many days and bears fruit, and speak timely words that comfort, strengthen and establish hearers until they become rooted and grounded, so that through courage, perseverance, heavenly wisdom and the Holy Spirit many more accept, believe and practice the truth.

Neglecting this personal visiting, which is the binding off of the work and the binding of the messenger to the sheep and lambs, and shifting it upon wives or another person or supplying it by proxy because it is not pleasant business, is unwise management. Such neglect makes a minister an unfaithful shepherd under rebuke with his work not half done, leaves members tempted and ungathered, causes some to give up the truth, and causes places that heard the message to be lost to the cause. The sin of leaving the sheep unvisited and unfed must not be visited upon the sheep, and help must go without waiting for invitation where need is greatest, including arranging gatherings where the flock can be strengthened and giving the precious subject of faith and righteousness with both gospel and law.

Fulfilling the charge requires hunting for straying sheep to heal, restore, bind up and bring them back to the fold. It requires seeking the lost and withdrawing, attending to spiritual needs, visiting the ill and absent, and helping those in danger of leaving the faith. It requires restoring people led into error with gentle, Spirit-guided efforts to save them from deception, in close union with Jesus and in His lines, putting away condemnation and putting on the armor of righteousness, and taking up this field brings reward and a rich harvest.

Faithful shepherds drive nothing by force with an uplifted whip but feed, comfort and help with a loving heart and gentle care, gathering in love and strengthening the sick and binding up the lame. Their words must be fitly spoken, like apples of gold in pictures of silver, for unfit words fall in influence like desolating hail, while sternness, severity and exacting, overbearing harshness distract, confuse and scatter the sheep and can push some out of the fold so they can never be reached and brought back. They must act as physicians of souls who bind up the spiritually sick and wounded rather than feeding the flock criticism, faultfinding, suspicion and censure, which poisons with evil suspicions, harms souls and makes the church's work harder.

Faithful shepherd work includes correcting known wrongdoing by telling the wrongdoer his mistake and bringing reproof into the open so associates are not left in darkness and led astray. It includes telling a fellow worker his mistake and not keeping silent because he will not acknowledge his course or receive what does not harmonize with his ideas. This is especially required when the wrong disparages ministers of the gospel whose work was given by Jesus Christ, and keeping corrective instruction to oneself while associates remain ignorant and in danger is failure as a shepherd.

The charge requires shepherds to strengthen and relieve fellow workers and care for the flock rather than leave too many burdens on one man. They must not stand back and excuse themselves while he is weighed down and crushed beneath censure and staggers under a treble burden as preacher, editor, colporteur and financier, adding more burdens instead of taking their share. When the sheep must carry the burden to warn, reprove, exhort and weep over the reckless course of their shepherd, the order required is reversed, and the poor sheep suffer under such unwise shepherds just as under false shepherds.

Rebuke and Accountability

Ezekiel 34:4 rebukes unconsecrated, unfaithful watchmen who enter ministry without deep love to God and fellow men and in selfishness and self-indulgence serve themselves instead of feeding the flock and attending to pastoral duties, through which neglect the people perish for want of proper instruction. It describes idle gospel laborers in many places who produce no fruit because they are consumers and not producers, not themselves receiving grace from God to impart to others, not doing the work they should do and not reaching the high standard their knowledge of the truth requires. Shepherds who neglect care of the flock fail to strengthen the weak, heal the sick, restore the scattered and seek the lost while ruling harshly for their own interests, and teachers in responsibility are likewise unsafe guardians when they pursue their own will, pleasure, profit or honor instead of faithfully caring for those entrusted to them.

The hireling spirit condemned has no real interest in the flock, labors merely for gain, studies its own profit instead of the interest of the charge, and in time of peril or danger flees and leaves the flock. False ministers wound and tear the poor sheep and leave them bleeding through rebellion and division, failing to strengthen, heal, bind up, bring back and seek them, so that intense labor is called for to save the wounded sheep they have harmed. Some pretend to be feeding the flock when they are tearing them to pieces, and their miserable influence injures the cause and brings long mental suffering upon faithful workers who stagger under a treble burden as preacher, editor, colporteur and financier. They bite and devour others and destroy those they should feed rather than minister to the sick and suffering.

The verse condemns men professing to be shepherds who feed themselves and not the flock, shutting away the higher classes and others who need the warning message by refusing every church to anyone preaching doctrine different from their denomination, so truth cannot reach those who need it while the Lord still cares for His own, the purchase of His blood. It shows unfaithful watchmen who ignore the evidences God has given, change blessing into curse, insult the Lord, and leave the standard of truth trailing in the dust instead of feeding His flock with right provender. Leading men who dishonor the Lord in this way are false shepherds and teachers who lead the flock astray instead of caring for them.

Those entrusted with souls must hunt for straying sheep and bring them back to the fold to heal, restore and bind up, instead of crushing and destroying with force and cruelty through talking, accusing, condemning, censuring and cutting off. Those entrusted with souls are in perilous spiritual condition when ready to hurt and bruise but not to bind up, ready to destroy but not to save. To fail to bind up is to plant thorns in one's own pillow, and unless there is repentance there will be no peace and comfort when peace and comfort are needed. Those who indulge censure and accusation invite the same treatment when they err and dishonor Him, to be treated the same way and cut loose.

The verse warns all responsible for God's people to guard against becoming unfaithful shepherds by neglecting or mistreating them. A person who bites and devours others and cannot minister to the sick and suffering is unfit to be entrusted with the flock, and unless leading men who dishonor the Lord learn Christ's meekness and lowliness they are not fitted to teach, their self-righteous example doing nothing to advance the work. Such shepherds forfeit favor and come under displeasure and wrath unless the course is decidedly changed and the heart humbled, and they are unfit for the work of the time before the second appearing despite the promised large measure of the Holy Spirit. They must be disciplined by disappointment, hardship and affliction, and must be solemnly warned in God's name lest blood-guilt for neglected souls be required at the watchman's hands. Those who mislead the people should tremble for the safety of their own souls, for their candlestick will be removed out of its place unless they repent, while God will hold souls responsible for lacking keen discernment to discover what kind of food is being given to the flock.