Luke 2:8 “And there were shepherds in the same country abiding in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock.”

We hear this Christmas story so much around this time of year that we never really stop to think about it or wonder about some obvious questions. Having Asperger’s Syndrome I tend to focus and fixate on things that other people are just not really interested in. My earliest memory of Christmas has my Sunday School teacher putting sheets around the male members of her class, wrapping at towel around their heads and giving us each cane declaring us Shepherds for the Christmas pageant and forcing us to sing something like: “While shepherds wash their socks by night.” Even at this early age I had questions like, “Why was the night watch so important that the Bible made sure to mention it and when did the shepherds sleep, how could shepherds be watching their sheep if they were asleep?” But a question which that was most important on my mind was, “Why did the angels appear to this particular group of shepherds and why to shepherds in the first place?” Another question I thought about was why were there a group of shepherds, did they not work alone? Not that I was a bright kid, I was an Aspie and I focused on such worthless details.

Anyways, nobody could give me a decent answer to these question but I figured once in Bible College I would get the answers. But their answers were no different than my Sunday School teachers or my pastor. I would get answers like they watched by night during certain times of the years. Shepherds often let their sheep graze together and when they did they used the opportunity to share local gossip. As to why God chose to reveal the birth of His Son to shepherds, well shepherds were the lowest class of people, sometimes they were even criminals and outcast. They were filthy, dirty, brawling, drunkard scum of the earth types. After hearing that I really did not want to call my Jesus a Shepherd nor did I want to call my pastor a shepherd (although I met a few pastors I would call a shepherd in that context). I soon learned about something called Christian audibles. Christians hate to admit that they do not have an answer for everything, especially Christian teachers, so they will formulate some sort of answer that borders very close to: “I am not sure, but this TV preacher said…”

Anyways, it is the Christmas season and that time of year to again revisit these age old questions and see what kind of answers we can come up with. First let’s take a look at this word shepherd that is used in this passage in Luke. The Greek uses the word poimenes which means to feed or to protect. It is also a word for pastures as that is where the shepherd fed his sheep. The Latin word for shepherd is pastor as in pasture where we get the idea that your pastor is your shepherd whose job it is to spiritually feed you.

These shepherds in Luke were good shepherds because they were keeping watch over their flocks by night, do not asleep. But they had to sleep sometime, maybe they worked in shifts. Actually, I am not sure where the idea of shepherds being the scum of the earth came from. Often a shepherd was a young teenage, usually the youngest of the family who were charged with keeping watch over the family enterprise. If no son were available some outsider would be hired. Sure you might get some dirt bag who would dummy up his resume but for the most part you ran as much of a background check as you could on your candidate as you were entrusting him with your whole store. In fact from my study of ancient cultures I find that a shepherd was a well-respected profession in those days, every mother dreamed of her son becoming a shepherd, seriously. So the idea that God sent his angels to the lowest scum to announce the birth of his Son just doesn’t historically hold water.

The next question then is why did God reveal the birth of his son to shepherds and to these particular shepherds and why were they grouped together? I searched through all the Christian resources I could find and found nothing. Then one day I was reading the Jewish Talmud and I read something that made a lot of sense. If Christians were not so one dimensional and spent a little time studying Jewish culture, they would find a lot of simple answers to crazy question. Anyways I learned that the sheep which were to be used for the daily sacrifice in the temple were to be feed in pastures set aside just outside, you guessed it, Bethlehem. These shepherds had charge of the most important sheep of all, the seh or sacrificial lambs. Such sheep were not left entrusted to just one shepherd but a team of shepherds, most likely from the tribe of Levi. The Talmud clearly teaches that they were to provided round the clock watch. There were four night watches where the shepherds worked in shifts. There was the evening watch, the midnight watch, the cock crowing watch and the morning watch. I have seen many a nativity play where the shepherds are laying on the ground fast asleep when suddenly they are awakened by a bright light. Boloney! The Greek words used here is phulassontes phuloakas which literally means guarding in the guardhouses of the night. The shepherds in Bethlehem who were guarding (not watching) these sacrificial lambs and they worked around the clock sleeping in established guard houses when not on their shift. These pastures were specifically set apart for the temple for the raising of the yearling ewe lambs. These were not your nomadic shepherds wandering all over the place. A sacrificial lamb had to be without blemish and without spot so they required extra special care and only the best of the best shepherds were chosen for this elite task of guarding these little lambs.

The Aramaic word used in the Peshitta for shepherd is ra’a. This comes from a Semitic root which expresses the idea of a deep passion. These are the good shepherds who feel such passion for their sheep and their duty to guard these sheep that they would lay down their lives for these sheep. Jesus as the good shepherd was a ra’a.

The angels appeared to the best of the best of these elite Levitical shepherds, I know they were the best of the best because they had the most difficult watch, the midnight watch. You see there is an ancient Jewish tradition that the Messiah would come at midnight. If they were indeed Levites, they would have been anticipating the arrival of the Messiah at midnight. It is also very likely that Jesus was born at midnight.

Here’s the real kicker, for these elite, dedicated ra’a (shepherds) to leave their seh sacrificial lambs, to abandon their duties, they must have been convinced that they were going to worship the true ra’a (shepherd) and seh sacrificial lamb. They probably realized that their jobs were done, there was no longer a need for the seh sacrificial lambs for the true seh sacrificial lamb had arrived.

The angels arrived to these Levitical Shepherds to announce that the Lamb of God had arrived and that their jobs were now to be outsourced to heaven. In other words they were fired.