Did the Shepherds in Bethlehem Include Girls?
Does your nativity set have any female shepherds? Until last year when a friend gifted me with a set that included one, mine didn’t. For the longest time I thought shepherds were only male—an image I probably picked up unconsciously from art. Without anything said outright about the sex of shepherds, I had internalized the idea that “shepherd” was a guy job.If I saw a Christmas pageant with girls dressed in bathrobes holding shepherds’ crooks, I would tell myself the real nativity story lacked girls, so the directors were taking creative license, adding roles to include all the kids in the show. But now I know those females in bathrobes more closely represented reality than did my misinformed imagination.
My understanding about shepherds shifted radically when I traveled with my husband and daughter to Kenya’s Rift Valley. My husband is a U.S.-based missionary serving national leaders in remote areas. And when we went with him seventeen years ago, his ministry partner, Joseph, a Maasai warrior, took us to the dwellings of some of his friends.
The Maasai are pastoral people—shepherds. Like Joseph, they live in individual huts inside bomas—enclosures made of brambles encircling huts made by women out of mud, sticks, grass, and cow dung. (House-building is women’s work.) Inside the perimeter of the boma sits a big livestock pen, also made of brambles.
During the day, girls usually shepherd the goats and sheep, sometimes with their mothers or a grandparent, while boys shepherd the larger livestock. If a family has no girls—or not enough girls—the youngest son (or sons) also gets assigned to sheep-and-goat duty. The pecking order in their culture is usually men, animals, women, children. In such pastoral settings, livestock are the pantries, 401(k) plans, Meals on Wheels, and bank accounts. Often a shepherd-girls lack education, because someone must guard the assets, and boys’ educations have taken priority.
This setup or a similar one has been true for many shepherding tribes and peoples across time and geography. Consider that David, son of Jesse, who had multiple brothers—at least three in the army—was the youngest boy and thus the shepherd among Jesse’s eight sons.
The Maasai, like so many Bedouins my husband and I met in Jordan that same summer, live—or abide, or dwell—in the field. And that is exactly how Luke describes what the shepherds in Jesus’s birth narrative are doing—they are abiding or dwelling in the field. Not roaming. They live there.
And what are they doing at night? Watching their flock. Singular. And like these Maasai, the shepherds to whom the angel choir appeared were probably not a bunch of unrelated guys from different families watching multiple flocks on an open hillside. More likely, they were from one extended family with male, female, old, and young present guarding the door of the sheep pen.
The highlight of my time with the Maasai on that trip was watching the “Jesus” film with them. We threw a bedsheet over the top of a hut, hooked up a generator and voila! The best part was hearing the delight in their gasps when the angels appeared to shepherds saying, in Naa—their own language— “Fear not! For I bring you good news of great joy for all the people!”
A week later, we moved on to meet members of the Pokot tribe. And along the dirt road far from town, we saw female Pokot shepherds out by themselves herding sheep.
These experiences caused me to pose some questions about the biblical text to people who live much closer to the world in which it was set. And here’s what I learned:
Vocational shepherds are not outcasts. They smell a lot like a typical cowboy. Animal pens stink, but humans who keep the animals don’t walk around with dung clinging to themselves if they can help it.
That said, shepherds don’t inhabit halls of power. My shepherd friends were overjoyed that in Jesus’s nativity story, instead of appearing to rulers in palaces or temples, the angels came to those far lower on the rungs of social power. These shepherds heard in the angels’ proclamation an emphasis on “all the people”—from the highest to the lowest.
Girls were probably present when the angels announced their glad tidings as good news for all. Come to think of it, Little Bo Peep has been around for a long time—she’s not some recent development in storytelling.
As is true today, sheep in Jesus’s time were probably not wandering around in the hills at night, but gathered into their owners’ sheepfold which had a gate (see John 10). I followed up with a Maasai brother to ask for more details, and he said in his world, after the animals are in their pens for the night, the whole extended family gathers around the fire to tell and hear stories. When we think of the angels’ good news, he envisions an extended shepherding family warming themselves around a fire near a pen.
So, what are some spiritual ramifications?
Women shepherd people. In a book on the ultra-conservative end of the gender debate, the authors imply that women cannot be spiritual shepherds because “shepherd” is a male job. Yet “Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherd” (Gen. 29:9). Possibly Moses’s wife was a shepherd (Exodus 2:16). And the “beloved” in Song of Songs is assumed to be grazing goats (Song 1:8). If we want to read biblical texts about shepherding as the original readers would have understood them, we will envision both males and females. The metaphor of a shepherd is that of one entrusted with the care of souls. The church through the centuries has applied the metaphor of shepherding, a synonym for pastoring, to both men and women.
We need to read the Bible in community with Christians whose lives are closer to the world of the text than to those of us with central heating and bank accounts with passwords. That means taking the posture of a learner in the presence of those who can see what we cannot.
Representation matters. When I mentioned on Twitter (it was Twitter then) the possibility that females were present at the pronouncement of “good news for all the people,” some responded with tears and joy. For the first time they saw themselves in the story. Yet in a quick search for Christmas Bible art, I found Mary as the only female in any of the multiple scenes. The biggest demographic leaving the church is young females. Why might that be?
God loves the lowly; and so must we. Although shepherds were not despised or regarded as the lowest of the low (as they are sometimes described), they themselves still acknowledge that neither are they the rich or powerful of this world. The heavenly choice to make the announcement to those outside of the usual authority structures reveals something about the heart of God and inclusiveness of the good news. Do we want to be like him?
After my brief visits to shepherding cultures, I went on a hunt for a nativity scene that included a female shepherd or two. (And some old people.) Since females were last at the cross, first at the tomb, and the first to herald the good news that Jesus is alive, it made perfect sense to me that females also would have been among the first at the manger. And what does Luke tell readers these shepherds did? After seeing the swaddled child, they spread the word. Like them, let us do the same—Go, tell it on the mountain! Jesus Christ is born!
P.S. Some think the flock referenced in the Bible story were sheep specially destined for sacrifice at the temple in nearby Jerusalem. The source of this information was a rabbinic Jewish scholar who converted to Christianity. But his idea has been further vetted. Comments in the link of this post address the details. Based on others’ research, I’m no longer inclined to think so. Nevertheless, the child who was born, the Good Shepherd, was indeed the sacrificial lamb who was slain.
Post adapted from one published on bible.org in 2020. “Rebecka” by Dikla Laor at DiklaLaor.Photography. Used with permission.
