HEBREW WORD STUDY – SACRIFICIAL LAMB – KESAH  כשה Kap Sine Hei

Psalms 119:176: “I have gone astray like a lost sheep, seek thy servant for I do not forget thy commandments.”

“I’m just a little lamb who is lost in the woods,

I know that I could always be good,

To someone who will watch over me.“- George Gershwin  “Someone to Watch Over Me”

The human bond with sheep will rival that with dogs in loyalty and intimacy. Humans, dogs, and sheep form a complex relationship with is the foundation of what we know as civilization. Loving sheep and eating them have, for millennia, gone together with surprisingly little tension. You will never hear people compare a child to a little pig or a calf or even a little colt. It just doesn’t get the “Ow, how sweet” response that a little lamb gets. It was a little lamb that Mary had and wherever she went the lamb was sure to go. There is something innocent about a little lamb, they are very trusting and naïve. Unlike other animals, sheep cannot find their way without a leader. Sheep will bond very quickly with humans. They will naturally follow any leader. It is sheep who are led to slaughter, not pigs, cows, or deer.  The longer a sheep is with a shepherd the more intimate that sheep will become with the shepherd and the more unlikely it is to lose its way.  However, sheep who have spent little time with their shepherd will be more prone to follow the call of another shepherd and will wander away from its shepherd and get lost. Some sheep just follow their own way to feed and will become so focused on its own feeding that it will wander away from the flock.  

Aristotle, writing in Greek, pointed out the similarity of the word for feeding and wandering in the Greek in order to show the innocence of sheep.  It seems appropriate that God would use the illustration of a wandering sheep to show His loving care. He is not angry with us when we wander, He understands that our wandering is not intentional or rebellious, but just the result of being too focused on our physical needs as eating. 

We focus on our jobs, our finances, and our health so much that we never stop to look up at our Shepherd and before long he is gone. Not that he has left us but we have left him and lost our way. Once a sheep has gone astray, he will not find his way back to the flock, unless the shepherd comes looking for him, he will remain lost.  That is why David says in this verse “seek they servant.” All that little lamb can do is stand in his lost condition and ba, hoping his shepherd will find him. 

Sheep were worshipped in Egypt. In fact,t the Egyptian god Khnum was a sheep. Khnum was one of the earliest-known Egyptian deities and one of the major deities at that. Khnum was the creator of all life. Khnum was originally the god of the source of the Nile. Since the annual flooding of the Nile brought with it silt and clay, and its water brought life to its surroundings. He was thought to be the creator of the bodies of human children, which he made at a potter’s wheel, from clay, and placed in their mothers’ wombs. He was later described as having molded the other deities, and he had the titles “Divine Potter” and “Lord of created things from himself”

This would explain one reason why the Hebrews were to sacrifice a lamb as protection from the final plague. No Egyptian follower of Khnum would dare harm a little lamb the symbol of one of their supreme gods. For the Hebrews, it would show their total rejection of the pagan beliefs of the Egyptians not to mention an outright insult to one of the Egyptian’s supreme gods. 

Then God commanded that a sheep be slaughtered as an atonement for sins. Imagine, a family has a newly born little lamb, loved by the children who were most likely assigned to care for it to make sure it was without blemish or spot. They would hand feed it, groom it, bathe it, and protect it from insects and other harmful elements. It would feed with them as the family ate, almost like another child. Then on the day of atonement, they would bring this little lamb to the temple and watch a priest take a knife and slaughter it before their very eyes.  Talk about trauma. Yet, it would be explained to the children and the adults as well that this is the penalty for sin and this innocent little lamb who simply loved and gave little bas was dying in their place. We have the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ who was totally innocent, and yet because of our sins, He had to die. 

What did David see in his own wanderings and going astray? It was a picture of a sacrifice that God could use to show many generations the lovingkindness of the Good Shepherd. But there was something even more important about his. The word that David uses for the lost sheep is keseh in the Hebrew. The Hebrew has a number of different names for sheep and lambs. A keseh is a little lamb, but a very special lamb, it is the sacrificial lamb. David didn’t see himself as any old lamb going astray, he was the sacrificial lamb that went astray. Yet, He knew that he had a Shepherd who would trade places with him on that altar. We live a life of hardship, pain, heartbreak, and misery and you may feel like David that you are a keseh or sacrificial lamb of God prone to wander, yet there is a Shepherd looking for you who has laid down His life so you would not be sacrificed for your sins.

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