His decree, already renounced
them. But, in one respect, God might consider them as aliens, while, in
respect to His covenant, He still acknowledged them as His, and hence
He calls them His people."--The words "that feed my people," render the
idea still more prominent and emphatic than the simple "the shepherds"
would have done, and hence serve to make more glaring the contrast
presented by the reality. The words "you have not visited them," seem,
at first sight, since graver charges have been mentioned before, to be
feeble. But that which they did, appears in its whole heinousness only
by that which they did not, but which, according to their vocation,
they ought to have done. This reference to their destination imparts
the greatest severity to the apparently mild reproof Similar is Ezek.
xxxiv. 3: "Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill
them that are fed, and ye feed not the flock." The visiting forms the
general foundation of every single activity of the shepherd, so that
the [Hebrew: la pqdtM] comprehends within itself all that which Ezekiel
particularly mentions in chap. xxxiv. 4: "The weak ye strengthen not,
and the sick ye heal not, and the wounded ye bind not up, and the
scattered ye bring not back, and the perishing ye seek not."--The
words: "the wickedness of your doings," look back to Deut. xxviii. 20:
"The Lord shall send upon thee curse, terror, and ruin in all thy
undertakings, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly,
_because of the wickedness of thy doings_, that thou hast forsaken me."
The gentle allusion to that fearful threatening in that portion of the
Pentateuch, which was the best known of all, was sufficient to make
every one supplement from it that, which was there actually and
expressly uttered. Such an allusion to that passage of Deuteronomy can
be traced out, wherever the phrase [Hebrew: re melliM] occurs, which,
in later times, had become obsolete; compare chap. iv. 4 and xxi. 12
(in both of these passages [Hebrew: mpni], too, is introduced); Is. i.
16; Ps. xxviii. 4; Hos. ix. 15.

Ver. 3. "_And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the
countries whither I have driven them away, and I_ [Pg 408] _bring them
back again to their folds, and they are fruitful and increase._"

Compare chap. xxix. 14, xxxi. 8, 10; Ezek. xxxiv. 12, 13: "As a
shepherd looketh after his flock in the day that he is in the midst of
his flock, the scattered, so will I look aft