Ezekiel 34:17-19 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Ezekiel 34:17 ; Ezekiel 34:19. As for you, O my flock The prophet, having finished what he had to say to the shepherds, now delivers God's message to the flock. God had before ordered him to speak tenderly to them, and to assure them of the mercy which he had in store for them. But now he is ordered to make a difference between some and others of them, to separate between the precious and the vile, and then to give them a promise of the Messiah, by whom this distinction would be effectually made; partly at his first coming, when for judgment he should come into this world, John 9:39; but completely at his second coming, when he shall, as it is here said, judge between cattle as a shepherd divides between the sheep and the goats, and shall set the sheep on his right hand and the goals on his left, Matthew 25:32-33. Between the rams and the he-goats The Hebrew, it seems, may be better rendered, Between the small cattle, and the cattle of rams and of he-goats, between the weak and the strong cattle; that is, between the rich and the poor, as the Chaldee Paraphrase explains the sense upon Ezekiel 34:20. Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture? &c. This reproof may be fitly applied to those of the rich and great, who take no care that the poor may enjoy the benefit of their superfluities, but will rather let them be thrown away and lost, than they will take the trouble of seeing them disposed of for the relief of those that stand in need. As for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden, &c. They are compelled to live upon the relics of what you have spoiled and destroyed.