Scripture · Luke 15:8
Luke 15:5-6
The Lost Sheep
And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, comes home, and calls together his friends and neighbors to tell them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep!’
A shepherd bends beneath a sheep carried across his shoulders, making his way over a steep, rough hillside.
About the artwork
The animal partly hides the shepherd’s face, shifting attention from expression to the work of carrying. His hands hold the legs at his chest while clothing blows to one side. Rocks and thorny growth leave little easy footing. Millais makes a joyful recovery look physically demanding: the sheep has been found, but bringing it home still requires the shepherd’s strength.
Millais asked the Dalziel Brothers to keep this design out of the Good Words sequence because another illustrator had treated the same subject for the magazine. It appeared in the subsequent book. The print’s physical effort offers a distinctive treatment of the often familiar lost-sheep image.
Featured in: John Everett Millais’s Bible Paintings: The Holy Family That Made Dickens Furious
What does Luke 15:5-6 mean?
Luke 15:5–6 describes the shepherd carrying home the sheep he has found and inviting neighbors to share his joy. Jesus tells the parable after complaints that He welcomes sinners. The search and recovery answer that criticism with a picture of active care.
The engraving pauses during the return, before the neighbors’ celebration. Its terrain gives bodily weight to the carrying named in the verse. The surrounding passage explains that the joy concerns recovery, not the sheep’s ability to find its own way back.
Luke 15:5–6 identifies the hard journey as a joyful return with what had been lost.
Sources
John Everett Millais’s Bible Paintings: The Holy Family That Made Dickens Furious. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Luke 15 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Luke 15:5-6.
The Brothers Dalziel (1901), p. 104 — Millais’s letter of 8 February 1863. Millais asks that The Lost Sheep be withheld from Good Words because Mrs. Blackburn had prepared the same subject for the magazine.
Also from Luke:The Angel Appearing to ZachariasAnnunciation
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