to tend a flock: to lead grazing animals out, guard them, and bring them to food and water
This is the everyday work of a herdsman, and it is the picture the Bible attaches to the word most often. To do it is to take charge of animals that cannot look after themselves: finding grass and water, guarding against predators and thieves, steering the flock through a day's wandering and bringing it home again. The same word also covers the animals' side of the arrangement, the quiet grazing they do once they have been brought to good ground.
Long before Israel existed, kings across the ancient world advertised themselves as the shepherd of their people. The title claimed two things at once: that a ruler feeds and protects, and that he decides where his people go. Israel took up the image but used it with striking restraint for its own kings, since David is essentially the only Israelite king the Bible openly calls a shepherd. It reserved the picture instead for God, who is said to have shepherded Jacob all his life, to shepherd Israel like a flock, and to gather the lambs in his arms.
The prophets then turned the same word into an accusation. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah brand Judah's leaders as shepherds who scatter and destroy, who eat the fat and wear the wool while the sheep go hungry, and they set against them the promise of one true shepherd still to come. So one word can name:
- the herdsman out on the hills with real sheep and goats
- the king who governs a nation and answers for its welfare
- God himself, feeding and protecting his people
- the failed leader who lives off the flock instead of feeding it
From the image of an animal cropping grass the word stretches one step further, to feeding on or consuming something. A person can be said to feed on ashes or on wind, a picture of chasing what gives no nourishment, and a fire or a sword can graze through a land and eat it bare.