“Like sheep without a shepherd”
When Jesus stepped ashore and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things. (Mark 6:34 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A gentle pastoral image of aimlessness.
The cultural key
A charged Old Testament formula. Moses begs God for a successor 'that the congregation of the LORD may not be as sheep that have no shepherd' (Numbers 27:17); Micaiah sees Israel scattered leaderless (1 Kings 22:17); Ezekiel 34 indicts Israel's 'shepherds,' its rulers, for feeding themselves while the flock is ravaged, and God vows to come shepherd them himself. Mark adds the response the image demands: 'he began to teach them many things,' the shepherd's first act of feeding, and then he literally feeds them, five thousand of them, in the very next scene.
Recovered meaning
Not 'the crowds are lost souls' but 'Israel's leadership has failed them': an indictment of the shepherds in office, with Ezekiel's promise humming underneath: God himself arriving to take over the flock.