There are several words in Aramaic that are hard to translate into Greek. One such place is in John 21:15-17, where Yeshua asks Peter, “Simon, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes Lord”, Peter answered. Then feed my lambs. Again Yeshua said, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you truly love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Yeshua said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of Jonah, do you love me?” Again Peter answered him, “You know all things Lord, so you know that I love you.”

Once again Yeshua answers him back, “Then feed my sheep.” The Aramaic word lamb used in the first passage is indeed best rendered as “arneeon”, which is “little or baby sheep.” In the next line, the proper word was also substituted in Greek as being “probaton”, which is the “masculine plural” designation for sheep. So at this point, we have Yeshua instructing Peter to feed his “baby lambs” and take care of his “adult male” sheep. So where are the “female” sheep to take care of, nowhere in the Greek language! For the third use of the word sheep, they simply used probaton again.

This would mean that Yeshua told Peter to take care of the children once and the grown men twice. The last word for sheep in the text is niqui, which happens to be “plural feminine.” This mistranslation in Greek probably occurred because this Aramaic word is extremely rare. It only occurs once in the Old Testament. So the translator just put in the same word for sheep the third time, as he used in the second passage. When actually, Yeshua is telling Peter to feed the children (baby lambs), the adult male sheep, and the female sheep. In English you lose this meaning, in Greek you get part of it, but in Aramaic you can see a much fuller meaning here. So ladies, we do have a designated sheep, we just had to find it!