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Bible Dictionaries
Flock
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or Tsô'n (צְאוֹן, Strong's #6629), “flock; small cattle; sheep; goats.” A similar word is found in Akkadian, Aramaic, and Syriac, and in the Tel Amarna tablets. In Hebrew, tsô'n kept its meaning in all stages of the development of the language. The word occurs 273 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, with its first occurrence in Gen. 4:2. The word is not limited to any period of Hebrew history or to any type of literature. The Book of Genesis, with the narratives on the patriarchs in their pastoral setting, has the greatest frequency of usage (about 60 times).The primary meaning of tsô'n is “small cattle,” to be distinguished from baqar (“herd”). The word may refer to “sheep” only (1 Sam. 25:2) or to both “sheep and goats”: “So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me” (Gen. 30:33). The “flock” was an important economic factor in the ancient Near East. The animals were eaten (1 Sam. 14:32; cf. Ps. 44:11), shorn for their wool (Gen. 31:19), and milked (Deut. 32:14). They were also offered as a sacrifice, as when Abel sacrificed a firstling of his “flock” (Gen. 4:4).
In the metaphorical usage of tsô'n, the imagery of a “multitude” may apply to people: “As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezek. 36:38). God is viewed as the shepherd of His “flock,” God’s people: “Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps. 100:3; cf. Ps. 23; 79:13; Mic. 7:14). In a period of oppression, the psalmist compared God’s people to “sheep for the slaughter” (Ps. 44:22) and prayed for God’s deliverance.
People without a leader were compared to a “flock” without a shepherd (1 Kings 22:17; cf. Zech. 10:2; 13:7). Jeremiah viewed the Judeans as having been guided astray by their shepherds, or leaders (Jer. 50:6). Similarly, Isaiah wrote: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).
The prophetic promise pertains to God’s renewed blessing on the remnant of the “flock”: “And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase” (Jer. 23:3). This would come to pass as the Messiah (“the Branch of David”) will establish His rule over the people (vv. 5-6). This idea is also expressed by Ezekiel: “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. And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it” (Ezek. 34:23- 24).
The Septuagint gives the following translations: probaton (“sheep”) and piomnion (“flock”). The KJV gives these senses: “flocks; sheep; cattle.”
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Flock'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/f/flock.html. 1940.
