Full of solemn meaning is it to us of this day that the Lord in that day looked on Israel as an unkept, unfed flock. "When He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." And yet-though this was the judgment of the great Shepherd-there was much religion then. Sects were numerous, feast-days were kept, and there was a great stir in all that which might have marked a day of public religious decency and devotion. That generation were soon to bear witness to themselves, that they would not go into the judgment-hall of the Gentiles, lest they should be defiled, and be thereby hindered from keeping the Passover. The money that was soon to purchase the blood of a guiltless man, they would not put into the treasury. Excision from the synagogue was dreaded, and Moses was boasted in; the Gentile was despised likewise, and the Samaritan was shunned. Ceremonial cleanness would be preserved. Teachers abounded, and zeal. And yet, under the eye of Him who saw them as God saw them, Israel was without a shepherd, an unkept, unfed flock. The land was as a field which needed the tillage of spring. It was no reaping-time then, as it ought to have been, where all this religiousness was, and when the Heir of the vineyard had come. In the thoughts of the Lord of the harvest, it was rather a time for "the first works" to be done over again, a sowing-time; and the servants had to be sent into the field with the plough and the seed, and not with the sickle.

From The Evangelists (Matthew. p.22) J. G. Bellett