170 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTStheir pasture, where their numbers will increase. It will be a new creation, for
"they shall be fruitful and multiply." Yahweh promises also to raise up new
shepherds who will do the job right. The sheep that remain will no longer be
afraid, no longer be broken in body and spirit, and no longer be visited by Yah-
weh for a reckoning, which, to the careful listener will mean no more visita-
tions for the purpose of punishment.
Since the oracles retain their metaphorical character throughout, it remains
for the audience to determine that the shepherds are Judah's inattentive kings
with inattentive officials under them, and the sheep are poor Judahites who
have been carried off into exile. The audience will also have to see the return
to pasture as a return to the Promised Land, and they should also discern in this
image a new act of divine grace in store for the remnant, one that will exceed
anything the covenant people have known in the past. When the oracles are
heard in sequence, the audience can be expected to perceive a movement
from indictment to judgment to future grace. In other oracle clusters (7:3-14;
21: 11-14), movement has been from admonition to indictment to judgment.
But now the time for admonition is past. What people need is a hope after the
judgment, and this is what the audience is given. They are told once again that
salvation is Yahweh's end game. All three oracles can be dated early in Zede-
kiah's reign, shortly after the exile of 597 B.C.
When these oracles are heard in their larger context, the "woe" of the first or-
acle will echo the "woe" to Jehoiakim in 22: 13; the judgmental "therefore" in-
troducing the second oracle will echo the judgmental "therefore" spoken
against Jehoiakim in 22: 18; and the indictment of the shepherds for scattering
Yahweh's flock will give a reason for judgment against the same in 22:22,
where it was stated ironically that the shepherds faced a scattering by the wind.
On a more positive note, it will be evident that on the other side of judgment
is a salvation that Yahweh, just now, is preparing for his covenant people.
12. For David: A Righteous Shoot (23:5-6)
23 5 Look, days are coming-oracle of Yahweh-
when I will raise up for David a righteous Shoot
And he shall reign as king and shall succeed
and do justice and righteousness in the land(^6) In his days Judah will be saved
and Israel will dwell in security
And this is his name by which one will call him:
'Yahweh is our righteousness.'
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
In the present verses is an oracle that reappears with only minor changes in
33:14-16. It is poetry (pace RSV; NJV; NRSV), which delimits it from the