Scripture · Daniel 6:1-28
Ezekiel 34:12
The Good Shepherd (Atlas Mountains, Morocco)
As a shepherd looks for his scattered sheep when he is among the flock, so I will look for My flock. I will rescue them from all the places to which they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.
A tiny white-hooded shepherd stands below great pale cliffs. His sheep spread up the slope, almost disappearing into the scale of the gorge.
About the artwork
The white-hooded shepherd at the lower right and the pale sheep behind him take up little of this mountain scene. Grey-white cliffs rise above them, making the flock seem vulnerable within a much larger terrain. The Smithsonian notes that Tanner gives the landscape more prominence than the story itself. Finding the figures is part of the experience of looking: the shepherd’s care is easily missed within the gorge’s scale.
Tanner had visited Morocco in 1912. His son Jesse remembered the Good Shepherd as his father’s favorite subject, and the theme allowed him to bring the work of guidance into very different landscapes. Here there is no close view of a tender embrace or a rescued animal. The difficulty of keeping a flock together in such country gives care its weight.
Featured in: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris
What does Ezekiel 34:12 mean?
Ezekiel 34 rebukes Israel’s leaders through the image of shepherds who feed themselves while neglecting their flock. The weak are not strengthened, the injured are not tended, and the lost are not sought. God then promises to do what these shepherds have failed to do: search, gather, feed, and care for the scattered sheep.
Verse 12 makes that care active and searching. Tanner’s shepherd and animals are small within an imposing Moroccan landscape, which gives the task a visible difficulty. The setting is the artist’s interpretation of the shepherd theme; Ezekiel’s oracle concerns the scattered people of Israel rather than a journey through the Atlas Mountains.
Ezekiel 34:11–16 turns the small shepherd within Tanner’s vast landscape into a way of considering the work of seeking and gathering.
Sources
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington (1983.95.198); oil on fiberboard, 75.8 × 91.3 cm. The museum gives c. 1930 and records the Morocco journey and Jesse Tanner’s recollection. Mosby’s later dating based on the address on the reverse is retained as a research qualification, not a precise year.
Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Ezekiel 34 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Ezekiel 34:12.
Also from Ezekiel:The Vision of EzekielThe Destruction of Tyre
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