Shepherds represent people who lead and teach others, using knowledge and true ideas to help people reach the goodness of life. This makes sense if you think about what a shepherd does. He makes sure the flock has good grass to eat; plants in the Bible represent facts and knowledge. The shepherd makes sure the flock has good water to drink; water represents true thinking about the spiritual aspect of day-to-day life. He carries weapons (a true understanding of spiritual things) to ward off predators (desires for evil) and keeps the flock safe. And the ultimate goal of the shepherd is for the flock to be useful, to do good, to provide good things, representing the good of life. There are, of course, a few cases in which shepherds are the bad guys (for instance, a group of them in Midian would chase Jethro's daughters away so they could water their sheep first; Moses found favor by helping the daughters and ended up marrying one of them). In these cases shepherds represent people who lead and teach without the good of life as the goal. When goodness is not the goal, ideas and knowledge are twisted into falsity and the teaching and leading trend toward evil. See also Sheep.

6229. 'God Shaddai showed Himself to me in Luz in the land of Canaan' means the Divine appearing within the natural in a previous state. This is clear from the meaning of 'God Shaddai' as the Divine, for He who was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was called Shaddai, 3667, 5628, and was Jehovah Himself or the Lord, thus the Divine, as may be seen from Genesis 28:13, 19; from the meaning of 'showed Himself to me' as the fact that He appeared; from the meaning of 'Luz' as the natural in a previous state, dealt with in 4556; and from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan' as the Church, dealt with before. From all this it is evident that 'God Shaddai showed Himself to me in Luz in the land of Canaan' means the Divine appearing within the natural where the spiritual Church's truth existed.