²⁵ For ^(A)you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned ^(B)to the Shepherd and ^[a]Overseer of your souls.

¹⁰ The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

^11 (A)“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. ¹² But a ^[a]hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and ^(B)leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.

⁹ Now ^(A)it came to pass in the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea the son of Elah, king of Israel, that Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria and besieged it. ¹⁰ And at the end of three years they took it. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is, ^(B)the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken. ^11 (C)Then the king of Assyria carried Israel away captive to Assyria, and put them ^(D)in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, ¹² because they ^(E)did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed His covenant and all that Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded; and they would neither hear nor do them.

¹³ And ^(F)in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.

^4 (A)“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? ⁵ And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. ⁶ And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ^(B)‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep ^(C)which was lost!’

^36 (A)But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were ^[a]weary and scattered, ^(B)like sheep having no shepherd. ³⁷ Then He said to His disciples, ^(C)“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. ^38 (D)Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”