How think you? if a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, does he not leave the ninety and nine, and go into the mountains, and seek that which is gone astray?
All Commentaries on Matthew 18:12 Go To Matthew 18
Jerome
AD 420
When he said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones,” he is calling us to be merciful. Then he adds the parable of the ninetynine sheep left in the mountains and the one stray that because of its great weakness could not walk. The good shepherd carried it on his shoulders to the rest of the flock. This, some say, is the shepherd “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” For that reason he descended to earth: to save the one sheep that had perished, that is, the human race. Others think that by the ninetynine sheep should be understood the number of the righteous and by the one sheep the number of the sinners, according to what he said in another place: “I have come not to call the righteous but the sinners; for it is not the healthy who have need of the physician but those who are ill.” .
