And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.
I will set up one Shepherd over them - i:e., raise up by divine appointment; alluding to the declaration of God to David, "I will set up thy seed after thee" (2 Samuel 7:12); and, "Yet have I set my king on my holy hill of Zion" (Psalms 2:6: cf. Acts 2:30; Acts 13:23).
One shepherd - literally, a shepherd, one; singularly and pre-eminently one: the only one of His kind, to whom none is comparable (Song of Solomon 5:10, "My beloved is ... the chiefest among ten thousand"). The Lord Jesus refers to this prophecy (John 10:14), "I am THE good Shepherd." Also "one" as uniting in one the heretofore divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and also, "in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, gathering together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth" (Ephesians 1:10); thus healing worse breaches than that between Israel and Judah (Colossians 1:20, "God by Him reconciling all things unto Himself, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven").
David - the antitypical David, Messiah, of the seed of David, which no other king after the captivity was: who was fully, what David was only in a degree, "the man after God's own heart." Also, David means beloved; Messiah was truly God's beloved Son (Isaiah 42:1; Matthew 3:17). Shepherd means King, rather than religious instructor; in this preeminently He was the true David who was the Shepherd King (Luke 1:32-33). Messiah is called "David" in Isaiah 55:3-4; Jeremiah 30:9; Hosea 3:5.