BEMA Episode Link: 26: Images of the Desert — Shepherd
Episode Length: 36:22
Published Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2017 01:00:00 -0700
Session 1
About this episode:

Marty Solomon and Brent Billings discuss the first in a series of images found in the desert — what it means to be a shepherd in the biblical world.

Images of the Desert — Shepherd Presentation (PDF)

Discussion Video for BEMA 26

Walking with God in the Desert — Ray Vander Laan (Amazon)

TTWMK Faith Lessons on DVD and Digital (Focus on the Family)

BEMA listeners can use code BEMA12 for 20% off of one purchase. Details.

Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler

The Good Shepherd by Kenneth Bailey

Transcript for BEMA 26

Notes

*Note: The following notes are handwritten by me, Adam, and I reserve the right to be wrong.

Review

  • The nature of G-d
  • The nature of the World
  • G-d tells us that we’re ok
    • If we trust that, good things happen. If we don’t trust that, bad things happen.
  • Avraham, Jacob, and Moses show us what can happen when we trust the story and partner with G-d.
  • We learn about the Kingdoms of Empire and Shalom.
  • We went through the Exodus story.
  • We learned about the Tabernacle and its purpose.
  • In the last episode, we learned about the book of Leviticus and how it’s really an owner’s manual to the Tabernacle which ends up being the Honeymoon suite, a retelling of Genesis 1, and finally an introduction to priesthood.
    • G-d has to explain to his people what he means when he says “kingdom of priests”.
    • We discussed atonement.
    • We talked about the priest sandwich
    • On either end of the sandwich we found a lot of laws about how to live and dress and interact with others and who to marry, etc.
    • In the middle we found that Israelites were invited to become a kingdom of priests.
      • They will live differently
      • They will eat differently
      • etc.
    • We learned how to party
    • We learned how to take care of the oppressed.
  • The Israelites now sit on the bank after coming out of Egypt and they’re now about to spend 40 years, the honeymoon, in the desert with G-d.
    • They’ve now gotten their marching orders, their ketubah, they’ve defined the relationship, but now they have to learn and they have to be shaped.
  • Now we learn about the desert which is hard to teach from a microphone.
    • Ray’s time with Marty in the desert in 2008 and 2010 really shaped Marty and is something he now loves teaching to others.
    • Over the next few podcasts, most of what Marty teaches has come from Ray and his teachings.
    • We can find more in Ray’s DVD series, That The World May Know. Specifically volume Walking With God In The Desert.

Desert

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  • One of Marty’s favorite quotes speaking about the desert:

    Because the place is demanding, it builds character. Because it’s destructive, it builds interdependence. Because it’s isolating, it builds community. And because it’s the desert, it builds nations.
    Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler

  • Desert is the word mid-bar
    • Hebrew words are made up of consonants and the meaning of the word changes based on the vowels that are used.
    • This is known as a word tree.
    • The Hebrew language is also built on imagery so words for them are not just definitions, they are pictures.
    • There are 8,000 words in Biblical Hebrew. To compare, there are 4,000 words in the English language.
    • This means there is a lot more packed into a Hebrew word than in English and they do that by relying so heavily of imagery.
    • You’ll always have a root word and the root word for desert (mid-bar) is duh-bar which means word.
      • The Ten Commandments are also known as the Ten Words or the Ten duh-bars.
      • דבר duh-bar Word
        • מדבר mid-bar Desert
        • דבבר dib-ber To Speak
        • mad-bir Shepherd
        • doh-ber pasture
        • duh-vir sheep fold
      • What does to speak and word have to do with the desert?
        • You go to the desert to learn how to speak and to learn how to listen to word. Desert is where you finally learn how to become a people of the ears.

Shepherd of mad-bir

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  • During a trip with Ray, Ray has the bus pull over on the side of the road and instructs everyone to get out of the bus because there was a shepherd on the side of the road.
    • They crossed the road and walked up a hill and were able to watch an amazing flock walk around them.
    • For the next 45 minutes they got to watch the flock.
    • There was a lot that Marty learned from watching the shepherd.
  • Shepherds lead with their voice.
    • All of the words mentioned above begin to word together and you start to realize why the desert is the place where you go to learn because the shepherd leads the sheep in the desert.
    • The desert is the place of the shepherd.
    • In our culture, pastures are green and lush. In their culture, pasture is the desert.
    • In the desert is where you find “Paths of Righteousness”.
      • The paths are created over thousands of years of shepherds taking their flocks along these paths to graze.
      • Flocks to not graze in the farmland because it’s too scarce and valuable to waste on livestock.
      • Flocks are taken to the desert which is the place of the shepherd. Not the farmland or the shephelah.
    • Shepherds lead with their voice and never leads with the stick.
      • Shepherds have a staff for practical reasons, like defense, fighting off predators, or for walking, but none of those reasons are to lead or prod or beat the sheep.
      • Examples of leading with their voice:
        • There are occasional headlines where a shepherd is tragically lost and if the tradition has not been past down, the entire flock can be lost as well because they will ONLY listen to the voice of the shepherd.
        • Multiple flocks can get pinned together and a single shepherd can wake up in the morning to call his flock and only HIS sheep will leave the pen.
      • There are so many things that Jesus said about sheep that these details put into perspective for us.
      • This is imagery we would expect from the people of the Bible. Not only are they going to be shaped here in the Torah, but Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses (40 years as a shepherd before leading the people out of Egypt), David (a shepherd) were all shaped by the desert.

Psalm 23

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  • Green pastures

    23:2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.

    • There is no such things has lush patches of grass in the desert.
    • Because of how the rain falls in the desert, there are tiny tufts of grass that grow around the rocks. It is these tufts of grass that the sheep graze on.
    • It’s these mostly barren areas with small tufts of grass that the Psalmist refers to as green pastures.
  • Just enough
    • The desert teaches the lesson, the desert is not a place of abundance and it’s a place fo just enough.
      • Do I have enough right now, yes. Will I have enough in ten minutes? I don’t know. I need to trust the shepherd.
      • I have what I need for RIGHT NOW.
      • The is no shade, there is no abundance.

        23:1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. Deut 8:3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every WORD that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

    • The desert is where they learn the lessons they’re supposed to learn during their testing.
    • Put your head down and wait for the next tuft of grass.
  • Quiet Waters

    23:2 he leads me beside quiet waters

    • There are no babbling brooks in the desert.
    • Still waters is the water that’s left over after the rainy season that gathers together in muddy pools at the bottom of the wadi. They are rare but you occassionaly run across a small watering hole.
    • This is not about abundance, it’s about just enough.
  • Paths of righteousness

    23:3 He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

    • These are the paths mentioned above that were worn down over thousands of years of shepherding.
    • The shepherds, both biblical and Bedouin, literally refer to these paths as paths of righteousness.
  • Valley of the Shadow of Death

    23:4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley

    • This is another shepherd term.
    • You get stuck in the valley of the shadow of death if you don’t get your flock back by nightfall.
    • Everything can be incredibly dark depending on the moon and weather.
    • The flock will always follow the voice of the shepherd.
    • In this scenario, the shepherd leads the flock from the CENTER and not from behind like normal.
    • Story from 2006.
      • A shepherd got ahead of the flock just on the other side of a chasm.
      • Without thinking, he turned around and called to the flock and the sheep all walked off the edge of cliff and died because they trust him so much.
  • Preparing a table

    23:5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

    • The psalm shifts. We discussed Avraham and his hospitality. This is a desert image. They lived in tents in the middle of the desert.
  • Lots and lots of desert images in this psalm.
    • The deserts if where I’m going to learn to trust and to listen.
    • Maybe more than anything else, G-d is going to use our deserts to teach us how to become people of the ears and not people of the eyes.
    • This life becomes pretty difficult if we become people of the eyes because it looks like there are lots of things to be worried about and afraid of.
    • However, G-d says:
      • Do not fear, take heart, I have overcome the world.
      • To trust him.
      • He’ll take care of us.
      • Be people of the ears and not people of the eyes.
  • Hopefully, listeners realize that this is about literal deserts but is also very much about our figurative deserts that we all go through.
    • G-d will take us though these deserts to teach us these very same lessons.
    • While we may not ever ask for our deserts, many of us likely look fondly of our times in the desert when we’re on the other side.

Goats

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  • Almost every desert flock will have sheet AND goats.
    • This is because they produce two different things:
      • Sheep produce wool and goats produce milk.
      • Additionally, sheep will eat the tufts of grass and the goats eat ANYTHING but the tufts of grass that the sheep need to eat.
    • This is interesting because when Jesus calls on scriptures about sheep and goats, like the parable of the sheep and goats, he relied heavily on this imagery because you always have sheep and goats in the same flock.
    • One of the things that you see when you have the two in the same flock is you have a blob of sheep huddle together following the word and the command and the voice of the shepherd all moving together with the shepherd 60 or 70 yards behind the flock. Finally, after the shepherd, there is a random smattering of goats scattered around the mountain.
    • The goats DO NOT LISTEN to the shepherd. They will get where they need to go but goats are goats and will do what they want.
    • Sheep however, do what the sheep ask.
    • Which am I? Which are you? Both are a part of the same flock but to which part of the flock do you belong? The part of the flock that knows how to listen and hear (i.e. shema: to listen and to obey) the voice of the shepherd.

Who is the shepherd?

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  • The shepherds in this culture are almost always female.
  • One of the roles of the younger girls in the family is to tend the flocks.
  • In all of Marty’s years, he has never seen a male shepherd.
  • It would have been quite uncommon for Moses and David to be shepherds.
  • David as a shepherd:
    • David is likely out helping his older sisters shepherd the flock.
    • David does leave the flock but he isn’t leaving the flock alone.
    • It’s not uncommon for shepherd girls to watch their younger siblings so David may have been being babysat.
  • Shepherds also throw rocks to help guide the sheep.
    • Rocks are not thrown AT the sheep but to the side of the sheep to get them to migrate from one place to the next.
    • In fact, this is what David’s sling was likely for.
    • They get very good at throwing and launching rocks accurately and precisely.

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