Scripture · John 10:27-28
John 10:14-15
The Good Shepherd
I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father. And I lay down My life for the sheep.
A shepherd lies face down beside his fallen crook while sheep scatter and a lion’s head rises beyond the thorny growth.
About the artwork
The prone body dominates the foreground. The abandoned crook and nearby sheep make the shepherd’s vulnerability inseparable from the flock’s danger. This is not the separate Lost Sheep print in which a shepherd carries an animal home; here the subject is the cost of protecting the flock.
The lion is a change from the wolf named in John 10. Its head remains visible at the left, so the threat has not disappeared with the shepherd’s fall. In Millais’s Lost Sheep, strength is spent carrying one animal home; here the body lies still while the flock moves around it. The engraving asks a harder question of the familiar pastoral title: what does the shepherd’s care cost when protection means placing himself in danger?
Featured in: John Everett Millais’s Bible Paintings: The Holy Family That Made Dickens Furious
What does John 10:14-15 mean?
John 10:14–15 joins mutual knowledge between shepherd and sheep with Christ’s willingness to lay down His life for them. The preceding contrast is with a hired worker who abandons the flock when danger arrives. The good shepherd’s care is defined by commitment when safety is lost.
Millais gives that commitment a stark bodily image rather than a peaceful pastoral one. The lion belongs to his treatment, while the passage’s concern is the shepherd’s relationship with those entrusted to him. The fallen figure brings the cost of that relationship to the foreground.
John 10:14–15 explains the fallen shepherd through sacrificial care; the lion is Millais’s substitution for the Gospel’s wolf.
Sources
John Everett Millais’s Bible Paintings: The Holy Family That Made Dickens Furious. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
John 10 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for John 10:14-15.
Also from John:Madonna and ChildLux in Tenebris
Continue looking:The Hireling ShepherdThe Good ShepherdThe Ascension