‘But when he saw the crowds, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd.'
The great crowds that gathered around Jesus had touched His heart. He was ‘moved with compassion' towards them. The word for compassion used here is a word solely used of Jesus in the Gospels apart from when He uses it in His own parables. It is at the heart of the Kingly Rule of Heaven. For He saw these people as distressed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. This description of sheep without a shepherd is firmly based on the Old Testament (Numbers 27:17; 1Ki 22:17; 1 Chronicles 18:16; Ezekiel 34:6; Ezekiel 34:12 compare Jeremiah 50:17). And the description of Israel as sheep is even more common (2 Samuel 24:17; 1 Chronicles 21:17; Psalms 23; Psalms 44:11; Psalms 44:22; Psalms 74:1; Psalms 78:52; Psalms 79:13; Psalms 95:7; Psalms 100:3; Psalms 119:176; Isaiah 53:6; Jeremiah 23:1; Jeremiah 50:6; Micah 2:12). Without a shepherd sheep are in a hopeless condition.
The scattering of sheep was a picture of the exile (Psalms 44:11; Jeremiah 50:17; Ezekiel 34:6; Ezekiel 34:12) and of persecution (Zechariah 13:7). Thus Jesus looked on these people as in their own kind of exile, an exile from which He had Himself come in order to deliver them (Matthew 2:15). A group of scattered sheep without a shepherd would soon have found themselves in great distress in Palestine, especially in the dry summers. Unlike goats they were not good at looking after themselves. And what with thorn bushes, and predators, and scavenging dogs, and a disinclination to forage, and shortage of water, their situation if left to themselves would be desperate. In a similar way that was how Jesus saw these people, as scattered and distressed sheep, because their shepherds had failed them. It was because of their spiritual hunger and thirst that they had flocked to John and were now flocking to Him.
‘Distressed and scattered.' Various alternative translations have been suggested, ‘worried and helpless', ‘harassed and helpless', ‘distressed and downcast', ‘harassed and dejected', ‘bullied and unable to escape', ‘mishandled and lying helpless', partly depending on whether we are thinking primarily of the sheep, or of the people that they represent. But in the end they are all saying the same thing.