to put animals out to feed: to keep a grazing herd supplied with food, or, of the herd, to be out eating
This is the plainest of the New Testament's feeding words. It pictures livestock with their heads down in the grass and a keeper who put them there, and Greek writers had used it that way for centuries, of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. The Greek noun for the growing feed itself, "crop" or "herbage" (βοτάνη), belongs to the same family of words.
The one verb works from either side of the meal. Said of a person, it means taking the animals out and keeping them fed, which in the Gospels is a hired hand's job and not a respected one: the runaway son in the parable hits bottom when a stranger sends him into the fields to do it for pigs. Said of the herd, it simply means the animals are out eating, as the pigs are on the hillside above the lake before the demons ask to be sent into them.
Twice the word is aimed at people. Beside the fire after the resurrection, Jesus gives Peter three commands about his flock, and two of them use this word for feeding rather than the wider verb for tending a flock (ποιμαίνω). Whether that switch is deliberate is argued over, but the word itself keeps its ordinary force: Peter's charge begins with seeing that the flock is fed.
Several Greek verbs come into English as "feed", and each does something this one does not:
- τρέφω is to nourish or bring up, used of God feeding the birds and of a child raised in a household
- ψωμίζω is to put food straight into someone's hands or mouth, the word for feeding a hungry enemy
- ποιμαίνω covers a shepherd's whole task, the leading, guarding and answering for the flock as well as the food
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the alternation of βόσκω and ποιμαίνω across the three commands of John 21:15-17, together with the parallel variation of ἀγαπάω/φιλέω and ἀρνία/πρόβατα, is semantically loaded, so that βόσκω denotes specifically the nourishing of the flock as against the fuller pastoral charge of ποιμαίνω, or is stylistic variation carrying no exegetical weight.
- minorityThe variation is deliberate and the verbs retain distinct force: βόσκω commits to Peter the feeding of the flock while ποιμαίνω covers the wider work of ruling and guarding it, and the sequence of commands is graded accordingly.; B. F. Westcott, The Gospel according to St John (London: John Murray, 1908)
- majorityThe variation is the Fourth Gospel's habitual synonym alternation and supports no distinction: the same short passage interchanges ἀγαπάω with φιλέω, ἀρνία with πρόβατα, and οἶδα with γινώσκω without any consistent pattern emerging.; C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St John, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978); Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (XIII-XXI), AB 29A (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970); D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991)