Shepherd-King

The traditions of the ancient Near East of the divine Shepherd-King, where the divine king possessed a shepherd's rod that symbolized both his divine authority to rule as king as well as his priestly responsibility to shepherd his people spiritually. Many of the ancient coronation texts refer to the king's responsibility as a shepherd. Sumerian coronation texts contain phrases such as “has exalted you as shepherd over the land of Sumer, [and] has put your enemies under your feet.” Egyptian texts have similar terminology: “Give the crook into his hand so that the head of Lower and Upper Egypt shall be bowed.” Assurbanipal's Assyrian coronation hymn says: “Place in his hand the weapon of war and battle, give him the black-headed people [i.e. Mankind], that he may rule as a shepherd.” These rods were also royal sceptres that were frequently made out of iron: “Composite-sceptres with iron parts dated to the Iron Age II of the eighth and seventh century BCE were excavated in Tel Dan, Ta'anach and Nimrud.” Israel had it's own history of a Davidic Shepherd-King: And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. (Eze 34:23 KJV) The shepherd's rod or staff was used “for disciplining a wandering sheep, encircling a sheep’s neck or belly to rescue it from a gully and laying across the backs of sheep for purposes of counting (the so called rodding of the sheep) as they entered the sheepfold (Lev 27:32; Ezek 20:37).” And this is the rod of the Shepherd-King in Psalm 2:9. But to see this we must take a closer look at the language behind the phrase “break them with a rod of iron.” The Hebrew text (unvoweled) gives us תרעם. Assuming the psalm to be late, many translators see this as a conjugation of the Aramaic verb ra'a', to break. But if we assume the material here to be pre-exilic, then we read it as a form of the Hebrew ra'ah, to feed, pasture, or shepherd. The Septuagint (LXX) Greek translators must have read this with the older Hebrew in mind and not as an Aramaic loan-word, because they chose the verb poimaneis (ποιμανεῖς, to shepherd or rule) as the translation, instead of the Aramaic “break.” (Thus, “He shall shepherd them with a rod of iron.”) The New Testament authors who cite Psalms 2:7 also use the Greek poimaneis, showing how they read this passage. And in the book of Revelation, John cites a portion of this verse with some powerful added imagery: “And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule [Greek poimaneis] all nations with a rod of iron: (Rev 12:5 KJV).” Note how this connection to the Son of God and his shepherd staff in Psalm 2 includes the vision of the actual birth of the Messiah from his mother, just as in Nephi's vision. But the Hebrew root that the Greek translation assumes can be found in similar contexts elsewhere: “Feed [from ra'ah] thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage” (Mic 7:14 KJV; the Dead Sea Scrolls version is simply “shepherd your people with your rod”). Thus the rod represents the shepherd's responsibility and authority to lead his flock along the path to pasture.