Sheep and Goats

One of the advantages of living here in the Middle East is that it gives some new insight on Biblical metaphor.

This morning, my young son and I were out with the local natural history group, trying to find an old way station on the caravan route. We never found it, but while we were there scouting the dunes, a herd of goats passed by.

There was no goatherd. Nevertheless, the goats kept to a group, moving like a wave, almost in lock step. Like sheep. I had seen goats do this in the souk before, but had imagined they might have been particularly well-behaved goats, or intimidated by the strange surroundings and the presence of the goatherd with his staff.

Nope. Conformity is instinctive with goats, just as with sheep.

And this completely destroyed my previous understanding of the parable of the sheep and the goats.

I had always assumed that the point was that sheep herded easily, while goats tended to be individualistic. I didn’t take this from whole cloth either: when I was a kid I had a pet sheep and a pet goat. The goat always led, and the sheep always followed. Therefore, I thought the point was that good folk were obedient.

Not so, obviously. It just happened that my goat was dominant. Whatever Jesus was saying by contrasting sheep and goats, he was not advocating conformity or obedience per se. It was not the same sense we intend colloquially when we speak of people being “a bunch of sheep.”

The association may be more that in “better to be hanged for a sheep than a goat.” Sheep are meatier, woollier, hence more valuable animals. For Eid, you slaughter a sheep if you can afford it. If you can’t, you slaughter a goat.

I’ve often thought it would be a great idea for a retreat to spend some time in the hills as a shepherd. It would give you a better appreciation for the Gospel image.

Eid Mubarak.