Later text
Luke 15:4BSB
“What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the pasture and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?
Intertextuality Pair
Luke 15:4 → Ezekiel 34:11-12
Allusion
Earlier text
Open the passage to read it in full.
Significance
Jesus' parable of the lost sheep — "What man among you … does not leave the ninety-nine and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?" (Luke 15:4) — is a direct enactment of the divine promise in Ezekiel 34: "For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them … I will search for the lost and bring back the strays" (ʾăbaqqēš ʾet-hāʾōbedêt, Ezek 34:11-12, 16). Ezekiel's oracle condemns the false shepherds of Israel and promises that Yahweh himself will personally come to do the shepherding they failed to perform. Jesus' parable does not merely illustrate divine care — placed in the context of his practice of welcoming sinners (Luke 15:1-2), it identifies Jesus as the fulfillment of Yahweh's promise to personally seek the lost. Luke 19:10 provides the interpretive key: "the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost," making the Ezekiel 34 claim explicit.
- Found via
- Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
- Reference Type
- Allusion
- Connection Method(s)
- Promise-Fulfillment + Divine-Identity (the seek-and-rescue promise of Ezekiel 34 is fulfilled not by a type escalated but by the divine Shepherd arrived in person — harmonized with the Ezekiel 34 ATN and the sibling Luke 19:10 → Ezekiel 34:16)
Related Anchor-Text Networks
Linked Mentions 1