permit one word of an expository nature. The description of the
flock, 'Because they fainted and were scattered abroad,' is couched
in the original in a couple of words, one of which means properly
'torn' or 'fainting,' according as one or other of two readings of
the text is adopted, and the other means 'lying down.' Now, the
former of these gives a very pathetic picture if we apply it to the
individuals that made up the flock. We have then the image of the
poor sheep that has lost its way, struggling through briars and
thorns, getting out of them with its fleece all torn and hanging in
strips dangling at its heels, or of it as lacerated by the beasts of
the field to whom it is a prey. If we take the metaphor, as seems
more probably to be intended, as applying not so much to the
individuals as to the flock, then it comes to mean 'torn asunder,'
'thrown apart,' and gives us the notion of anarchic confusion into
which the flock comes if there be no shepherd to lead it. Then the
other word, which our Bible translates 'were scattered abroad,'
seems to mean more properly 'lying down,' and it gives the idea of
the poor, wearied creature, after all its struggles and wanderings,
utterly beaten and dejected, having lost its way, at its wits' end
and resourceless, flinging itself down there in despair, and panting
its timid life out anywhere where it finds itself. So it comes to be
a picture of the utter weariness and hopelessness of all men's
efforts apart from that Guide and Shepherd, who alone can lead them
in the way. And then both of these miserable states, the laceration
if you take the one explanation, the disintegration and casting
apart if you take the other, the weariness and exhaustion, are
traced to their source, they are 'as sheep having no shepherd.' He
has gone, and so all this comes. With this explanation we may take
the points of view that are thus suggested simply as they lie before
us.