Kids
There is a view, held by some Christians, that to call a
human child a “kid” is an insult. The inference is partly because of the
parable, in which Jesus portrayed himself as a Great Shepherd, separating the
sheep nations (‘good’) from the goat nations (‘not so good’). If goats are
‘bad’ people, then kids must also be bad, because they are the offspring of
goats.
Another reason is anecdotal.
Sheep, it is said, care for their lambs, while goats, it is said (by people who
know very little about these animals) do not care for their kids. Female goats,
these people say, wander away from their offspring, leaving them untended. This
theory is not supported by the facts. As someone who has been involved with
farming for the last thirty years, I can say with confidence that sheep do not
always make good mothers. The usual regular chore, every spring time, is to
round up all the abandoned lambs and ‘mother them up’ to their own mothers, or
to some other mother.
One of the tedious
and often frustrating mothering techniques at lambing time is to take
the skin of a dead lamb and wrap it around an abandoned living lamb, so the
mother who lost the first lamb will accept the new lamb – she smells the
familiar smell of her dead lamb and allows it to suckle. But even though this is done the mother may
still refuse to allow the lamb to suckle. Some ewes with two lambs will
deliberately shun one of their lambs, leaving it to die only a few metres
away. Lambs wander away too, get
themselves stuck in fences, find holes in fences and run far away from their mothers . . . many farmers find
this erratic and stupid behaviour infuriating and frustrating. So, from simple
observation, it can be argued that sheep and lambs are not as ‘good’ as they
are said to be, and by no means supply a useful contrast to goats with their
kids.
But what does the Bible
say about “kids” and goats?
Gen.27:9 Jacob
brought two kids to his mother to use in the ‘red pottage’ incident. In this
case the kids (Heb. ‘gedi’) were ‘neutral, that is neither good or bad.
Their skins supplied the ‘hairy arms’ for Jacob in his plan to deceive his
father.
Ex.23:19. In the
Law, the people were commanded not to boil the kid (Heb. ‘gedi’) in its
mother’s milk. This law has a compassionate aspect in that a mother goat would
at the time be producing the milk for its young, therefore, to kill and eat the
kid could cause some distress to the mother.
Another word used
for goats is ‘gedi izzim’ which means ‘baby goat’. One place where this
word is used is where
Another word for young goats is the Hebrew ‘gediyyah’.
We find this word
in the Song of Solomon 1:8. The Beloved speaks to the Woman: “Feed your little
goats beside the shepherd’s tents”. This is obviously poetry, and meant to be a
beautiful expression, which means that, by inference, that kids are valued as
something attractive and positive in this instance.
Lev. 4:23. When a
ruler sins, according to the Law, he or she is told to bring an offering: a kid
without blemish. This is a very important point. The kid was used as an
offering for sin, just as a lamb was used as an offering for sin. By inference
therefore, the kid is a symbol of the Lord Jesus. By making lambs and kids equal
in their station as offerings, God has given kids a status which the
denigrators of ‘kids’ cannot gainsay.
Ez. 43:22 and
45:23. Ezekiel saw a wonderful, glorious, beautiful
2 Chron. 35:7. Good
king Josiah wanted to celebrate the Passover, so he ordered the people to get
busy. As an act of benevolence he donated many lambs and goats so the people
would be able to join in – 33,000 in all. In this way the kid (‘gediyyah’) was
elevated to the same level of importance as the Passover lamb.
Luke 15:29. In the
parable of the ‘Prodigal Son’ the brother of the son who went away complains to
his father that he never gave him a kid as part of a general celebration. The
kid here is seen as a blessing, a good thing, and part of a celebration, so its
value is once again elevated.
Looking at the word
‘goats’ we also find several interesting verses.
Prov.30:31 says
“There are three things which are majestic in pace, yes four that are stately
in walk: a lion . . . a greyhound . . . a goat . . . and a king. “ Now
obviously, if goats were ‘bad’ they would not come in for such clear
commendation. Goats and kings go together – surely there must be some other way
we can regard the parable of the sheep and goats?
Let us take another
look at the parable. Mat.25:31-46. Jesus told this parable about the end of
this present age. He said he would be like a shepherd at that time, separating
the sheep nations from the goat nations. The emphasis is more on the shepherd
than the animals he is working with. Surely the main point about this is the
fact that Jesus can discern between one kind of person and another. God, we
know, looks upon the heart and not the outward appearance.
The parable goes on
to say that the ‘sheep’ nations are generally more humanitarian than the ‘goat’
nations.
Let us, just for
argument’s sake, take this parable literally. If it means what it seems to
mean, as a literal description of how things are, then we have a direct contradiction
of the gospel. People will be saved by works rather than faith. It looks as if
the humanitarian nations have a pretty good chance of getting into God’s
Kingdom simply by doing good deeds, and not, after all, by trusting in Jesus
alone. This is rather disturbing, but then, all the parables seem to say one
thing when they really mean another.
If we look back
into the Old Testament we find that God usually called the people of Israel the
“sheep”, or the “sheep of his pasture”, and since this parable is called a
parable of the kingdom, we would not be violating any rules if we saw it as a
symbolic picture of God separating the Israelite nations from the non-Israelite
nations at the end of the age. Now it is very clear that God loves all people,
of whatever branch of the family tree, so there is no suggestion in the parable
that sheep are good and goats are bad, but that some nations are generally
better than others. Jesus could have called them stones and bread, or salt and
pepper for all that it mattered.
References to
Israel being the sheep include: Ps.44:11, 74:1, 78:52, 79:13, 95:7, 53:6,
Ez.34:6, 11, 12. God is pictured as the great Shepherd in Ps.23:1, 80:1,
Is.40:11, Jer.31:10, 50:44, Ez.34:23, Zech.13:7, John 10:11,14, Heb.13:20 and
1Pet.2:25.
So God has not cast
off his people whom he foreknew, nor abrogated his covenant promises to his
people, yet he has also opened the doors to all the world for salvation. We
have solved one question – that of the place of kids in Scripture, but we have
unearthed yet another problem – the national identity of
As it is not the
purpose of this article to explain the place of Israel the ‘sheep’ or
non-Israel the ‘goats’ n their context as national identities, you may consider
that matter yourself – but it is clear from Scripture that there is
no insult implied in the affectionate term “kids” when applied to human
children.