And Jesus says to them, All ye shall be offended, for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered abroad.
Jesus warns His disciples that every one of them will fall away that night. He backs the warning with a line of prophecy already written. Two questions press for an answer. Who is doing the striking? And why should the death of the Shepherd scatter the very sheep He came to save?
The one who strikes is God. Jesus is not pointing only at the men who would arrest and kill Him. He is pointing at the hand of God behind the blow.
He announced the scattering of the sheep and His own striking by the hand of God. What must it have meant for Him to say, with His perfect knowledge, "I will strike the shepherd"! That striking took place on the cross. It is the heart and mystery of the atonement.
Commentators put the emphasis differently. A scattered flock, one writer points out, is not what the cross achieves as a sacrifice for sins.
Does that mighty work of suffering for our sins, does the Atonement, "scatter" the sheep? Is it not, on the contrary, the only righteous foundation on which they are gathered? … But the striking of the Shepherd expresses His utter humiliation as Messiah, cut off and having nothing. "I will strike" refers to God's giving the Lord up to feel the reality of His rejection and death. No doubt atonement was accomplished in it. But "striking" is a wider term. Christ takes it from God, yet it was His enemies who actually did the deed. … All this humiliation of the Saviour, even before it was complete on the cross, scattered the disciples. They stumbled and fled the night before the blow actually fell on their Master.
The verse Jesus quotes describes the one to be struck in two ways at once, and both belong to Him.
The LORD calls Him "My fellow." So He is divine. In no sense and at no time was He ever inferior to God. "I and the Father are one," He said while He was here on earth — one in majesty, power, wisdom and glory. Yet the LORD of hosts also calls Him "the man." He became this in His grace, the offspring of the woman, so that He might bruise the serpent's head.
He had also filled the shepherd's role without one failure. That is what makes the sentence so terrible.
Had He ever once, in His whole life, acted against His character as the Good Shepherd? He feeds His flock. He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart, and He gently leads the nursing ewes (Isa. 40:11). And now this Shepherd had to be struck down in death!
Their failure was not theirs alone. What happened to the disciples that night still happens among God's people.
They can sing together in the presence of the Lord. Yet that same night, away from His presence, they will take offence and be scattered. How solemn a picture they give of what has happened among the Lord's people! We can only sing together in His presence, with every heart taken up with Him… Away from His presence we take offence at Christ and at one another. And offended saints soon part company and become scattered sheep.
Not one of the disciples was an exception. They had never yet been tested by death.
They did not know their own weakness. They did not know what it was to have the power of death pressing on them. They had never faced what total rejection by the world feels like… The disciples did not yet know what it was to be dead with Him. So not one of them could stand. Later it became their privilege, but they had not gone that way before. Jesus must go first.
The warning is not where the Lord leaves them. The disciples failed; He did not.
But, blessed be His name, He never fails. So the scattering will end and the gathering time will come. The disciples found this in their own day. After He rose, they learned that the Lord had not changed in all the love and grace of His heart. He, the great Shepherd of the sheep, would go before them and once again His sheep would follow Him.
- Struck — the blow is God's own. "I will strike" means God gave up His Shepherd to the full reality of rejection and death. Enemy hands did the deed.
- Shepherd — God names Him twice over: His own equal, and "the man." He is fully divine, and He had never once failed His flock.
- Scattered — the sheep scatter as soon as they leave His presence. Saints who take offence at Christ soon take offence at each other.
- Weak — not one disciple could stand. They had never yet felt the weight of death and the world's rejection. Jesus had to go first.
- Gathered — He never fails, so the scattering ends. Risen, the great Shepherd goes before His sheep, and they follow Him again.
But after I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee.
On the night of His betrayal, Jesus told His disciples they would all fall away. God would strike the Shepherd, and the sheep would scatter. Then, in the same breath, He named a meeting place beyond His own death. Why promise a reunion to men who were about to fail Him? And why Galilee?
The promise is not a reward for loyalty. He gives it to men He has just told will be ashamed of Him.
"Jesus says to them, 'You will all fall away because of me this night.'" To be ashamed of Him, wretched as we are! And yet how this brings out the indescribable love of Jesus! He tells His sheep, who are about to be scattered, that He will rejoin them soon. This whole work is to save His own. Sadly, it also shows all the weakness of the flesh in them, and all the perfection of obedience in Jesus. As soon as He has finished it, He will go before them into Galilee.
The words "go before" belong to shepherding. They describe a shepherd walking ahead of his flock.
The word προάγειν ("go before") is used of the shepherd. It appears in the same way in John 10:4, and is also used of false leaders in 2 John 9.
Risen life does not lift Him above walking at their head:
"But after I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee." The Lord takes up again in resurrection His place of lowly service with the disciples.
He names the region where He had first called them, away from the centre of national religion.
The link between Jesus and His disciples here below would indeed be broken, but not by His abandoning them... Yet the hand of God was in all this. He would strike the Shepherd. But once raised from the dead, Jesus would take up His relationship with His disciples again — with the poor of the flock. He would go before them to the place where that relationship began — to Galilee. It lay far from the pride of the nation. There the light had appeared among them, according to the word of God.
Others tie the verse to the next line of the prophecy He had just quoted:
He warned them of what lay ahead. He pointed them to the prophecy of Zechariah, which foretold the striking of Jehovah's Shepherd and the scattering of the sheep. But the prophet went on to say, "and I will turn my hand upon the little ones," and this answers to verse 28 of our chapter. Those who were His sheep as a nation were scattered. But the "little ones," whom Zechariah elsewhere calls "the poor of the flock," were gathered again on a new basis, once the Shepherd had risen from the dead. So He was to meet them not in Jerusalem but in Galilee.
(Older translations read "turn my hand upon the little ones." The ESV has "I will turn my hand against the little ones" in Zechariah 13:7.)
Verse 27 ends in dispersion. Verse 28 sets a limit on it.
But, blessed be His name, He never fails; so the scattering will end and the gathering time will come. In their own day the disciples would find this. After He rose, they would learn that the Lord had not changed in all the love and grace of His heart. He, the great Shepherd of the sheep, would go before them, and once again His sheep would follow Him.
An angel repeated this word at the empty tomb, and the disciples acted on it. Then they grew tired of waiting for Him.
At the empty tomb the angel told the women to tell His disciples, and Peter, that He was going before them into Galilee, and that they would see Him there, just as He had said. So the disciples, knowing that their Master had risen from the dead, went in due course into Galilee to see Him. So far, this was commendable obedience.
But weak flesh has no patience with delay. It was too tedious for them to wait patiently for the Lord to appear and direct their steps. "I am going fishing," says one. "We will come with you," say the rest... Sheep of Christ, will you not wait patiently for the Great Shepherd who was struck for you? Do not spoil your obedience by your impatience!
- Struck — God's own hand strikes the Shepherd, and the flock scatters. Jesus foretells the disciples' failure; He does not excuse it.
- Promised — before a single one of them falls, He fixes the reunion: "after I am raised up." Love speaks first, and does not wait to be deserved.
- Leading — "go before" is shepherd language, the same word as in John 10:4. Risen, He still takes the low place of service and walks ahead of His sheep.
- Galilee — He picks the place where the relationship began and where the light first shone, not Jerusalem, the proud centre of the nation.
- Gathered — the scattering ends and the sheep follow Him again. Yet they must wait for Him, and impatience spoils obedience.