Bible Commentaries
John 10

Verses 1-42

X 1-XI 56 The Good Shepherd.

X 1-21 The Parable of the Door and the Good Shepherd —This piece is often called an allegory. It is really not such, but a parable, which our Lord applies to himself according to two terms of comparison, namely, the Door of the sheepfold and the Shepherd of the flock. As the application itself is allegory or extended metaphor, the whole may be called a parable-allegory. We can find in it a rather complete definition of the Church charmingly conveyed through a description taken from Palestinian pastoral life. It is no wonder, then, that the fulfilment of the promise made to Simon Peter, Matthew 16:18, is expressed in the same language as this, parable, John 21:15-17. The parable is connected with the foregoing by a certain association of ideas. A sheep (the man born blind) expelled from the synagogue by the false shepherds of Israel is received by the Good Shepherd. In those who heard the parable, it also evokes that miracle of illumination, 21. Nevertheless, it is the beginning of a new series, and is connected by a common basic idea with the revelations of the Feast of Dedication, 26. It is clear that Jesus, the Light of the World, here shows himself as the Giver of life—a qualification which is sealed, some weeks after the Dedication, by the resuscitation of Lazarus at Bethany, less than two miles from the gates of Jerusalem. This event occasioned that fateful conciliar pronouncement of Joseph Caiphas, 11:50, in which Jn sees a divinely-ordained prophecy that Christ will realize his own parable of the Good Shepherd, 52.

1-6. The picture of the sheep-pen contains all the necessary elements of the instruction to be conveyed —the walled or palisaded enclosure protecting the sheep brought back from their pastures for the night, the door which is open to shepherds but not to thieves who enter in some other way, the scene of the morning, when the shepherd comes from his home or his camp to lead out his sheep to pasture, the pastoral call and its recognition by his own sheep, the familiar solicitude which shows itself in calling the sheep individually by name, the docility with which the flock, ready to fly from a stranger, throng on the heels of their true shepherd. Though the picture was evidently a ’proverb’ from everyday life (which is St John’s word for the Hebrew mašal, which the Synoptists call a parable or similitude) the audience did not understand its purpose.

7-10. Jesus therefore makes the first application and explains: ’I am the door of the sheep’ (and of the shepherds).

8. ’All others as many as came before me (p?ò eµ?û probably authentic) are thieves and robbers’. St Chrysostom and many commentators have thought that false Messiahs like Judas the Galilean or Theudas, Acts 5:36 f., are chiefly meant, but the verb ’are’ in the present tense seems to refer it to those immediate false shepherds who are the scribes and Pharisees. The sheep did not hear them; cf.Matthew 9:36; Mark 6:34. In the prophecies of Ezechiel, 34:1-24, God had manifested his intention of taking over the shepherding of his people from selfseeking shepherds and handing it to a Davidic Prince.

9. When Jesus declares himself the door of safety for all who enter by him, he means primarily shepherds, but thereby he is also the door of the sheep who through him enter to safety and go out to wholesome pastures.

10. Whereas the thief’s intention is destructive, the purpose of Jesus is life-giving. He came that his sheep may have life and have an abundance (of it)—grace, glory, resurrection from the dead.

11-18. In the application of the idea of shepherd, the contrast is not with thieves but with hirelings, and anyone who is presumed’ not to have an owner’s devotedness towards his own sheep. The allegorical description of that devotedness is carried to hyperbole, in order to fit the reality in Jesus. No shepherd could reasonably make a voluntary sacrifice of his life, that his sheep might be safe, but the Good Shepherd has actually done this.

11. The single sentence ’I am the good shepherd’ has a whole world of biblical and ecclesiastical souvenirs clustering about it ( Ps 22(23) and 79(80); Is 40; Jer 23; Ez 34; Zach 13; Lk 15; the shepherd of Hermas, the inscription of Abercius, the famous sculptured type of the Roman catacombs). Here Jesus says at once that the excellence of ’the (great) shepherd of the sheep’, Hebrews 13:20, is to be found in his self-immolation on behalf of his sheep.

12 f. The hireling, whose interest is salary, has no such devotedness. We can easily find an interpretation of the ’wolf’, although it belongs to the literary plenitude rather than to the essence of the parable.

14 f. He repeats ’I am the good shepherd’ ad incrementum orationis, and in order to introduce a new trait, that of intimate mutual knowledge of affection between Shepherd and sheep, and also in order to affirm that he fulfils the sublime ideal of pastoral self-devotedness by giving his life for his sheep. The reciprocal knowledge of charity between Shepherd and sheep is proportionately analogous to that between the Father and the Son. The Gk word translated ’lay down’ (my life) may represent either the metaphor of total giving, or of depositing a price, or putting off life (like a garment). 16. The sheep of the Good Shepherd are not all to be found within the enclosure of Israel hitherto the only pen established by God himself— but other sheep Jesus must bring from outside, and they shall hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, and there shall be one flock (not ’fold’, which, however, is no real distortion of the sense) and one shepherd (cf. Ephesians 2:13-16). [There is no doubt that p?íµ?? (grex) ’flock’ is the correct reading in 16b, though ’Fold’ (ovile) appears in the Vg and thenceforth universally in mediaeval Latin writers. ’This fold’— the contrast is not between a fold of the Jews and a fold of the Gentiles, but between the fold of the Jewish Church which excluded the Gentiles, and the ’flock’ of the Christian Church which was to include them. ’Other sheep’—here signify simply the Gentiles. MacRory (op. cit. 7th ed) comments: ’We have three very important declarations in this verse. (1) The faith was to be preached to the Gentiles; (2) Christ was to have but one flock, composed alike of Jews and Gentiles; (3) That one flock was to have one supreme visible head’.—Gen. Ed.] 17. Jesus returns to the idea of self-immolation. For the reason (because he is obedient unto death) the Father loves the Word Incarnate, laying down his life on the cross, in order to take it up again in the resurrection of the third day. 18. His is an entirely free oblation of his life ’No man taketh it away from me’—if we read took (with S, B and papyrus 45) there would be reference to the attempts to stone or arrest him—’but I lay it down of myself’. It is as God that he says this, and adds moreover ’I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again’. But it is as man that the Word Incarnate received a command from the Father— according to NT usage a precept not a more intimation of good-pleasure usually called a beneplacitum.

19-21. Once again the result in the audience was disagreement. Some said these were the words of a demoniac and a madman; others said that neither those noble words nor the miracle on the man born blind could come from a demoniac. As the parable of the Good Shepherd is a Sunday Gospel (2nd after Easter) it will be useful to sum up the doctrine of this whole section very briefly. The sheep come from the Jewish and the Gentile world. Unity is maintained by pastoral authority and care, that of the one Shepherd Christ and of the shepherds that rule in his name—those that come in by the door. There is union of mind and heart between sheep and shepherd. The flock feeds on the wholesome pastures of truth, the sheep individually are consoled by the compassionate solicitude of the Shepherd and they follow him with affectionate docility. The whole flock finds life in the death of the Shepherd and his resurrection. That great sacrifice willed by the Father, freely offered by Jesus, crowned with life after three days, centres the love of the Father on the Shepherd—and, let us add, should centre the love of the sheep on their Good Shepherd. Gratitude, one of the greatest human motive powers, should grow out of the consciousness that he came that we may have life and an abundance of it.

22-39 The Great Discussion at the Dedication Festival —This festival called in Hebrew ?nukkah was instituted by Judas Maccabeus, 1 Mac 4:52; 2 Mac 10:5, as an eight-day solemnity beginning on 25 Casleu (Kislev), the ninth month of the Jewish year —therefore opening approximately about the third week of December. As commemorating the renewal of worship in the temple in 165 b.c., after the profanations of Antiochus Ephiphanes, it held an important place in the festal calendar. Having presumably occupied the time between Tabernacles and Dedication in the Judaean and Transjordanian ministry which Luke 9:15-; Luke 11:13 probably records in the main, Jesus came to Jerusalem for this feast.

22 f. The occasion is marked in a short historical introduction. The season (winter) is mentioned for the sake of Greek readers and to explain wily Jesus walked in Solomon’s Porch, the eastern side of the temple running along the western verge of Cedron and sheltered from desert winds. St Augustine could not resist referring the words to the human atmosphere: ’It was winter, and they were frigid’.

24. They gathered around him and pressed him to declare himself. Their question is really a demand that he should finish this suspense of uncertainty for them and say plainly whether he was the Christ. Hitherto Jesus had proved that he was, but had not expressly said so.

25. He had said so sufficiently, however, and they did not believe, but now as before it is to the proofs, namely the works he has been doing in the name of his Father, that he refers them. His words are going to take them higher than his Messianic title up to his dignity of Son of God, consubstantial with the Father.

26. In terms of the Good Shepherd parable he tells them the reason of their unbelief. Because of their bad dispositions they are not of his sheep—the Father does not draw them, 6:44. As St Augustine is strongly predestinationist in commenting on this verse, it should be emphasized that the Jews do not receive the grace of faith, because they are voluntarily as blind as a man who shuts his eyes and refuses to open them. That they are not ’of his sheep’ is their own fault.

27. The description of the sheep as those who hear the Shepherd’s voice, those whom Jesus knows, those who follow him, reproduces the thought of the parable, 3 f., 14. 28. ’Everlasting life’ which occurs just a dozen times in chh 3-6 recurs here, Jesus gives it to his sheep and they shall (as long as they are his sheep) never fall to destruction. No one (either with the stealth of the thief or the violence of the robber) shall snatch them from his hand. It is the power exercised by the violent that is particularly envisaged, and this notion of the Shepherd’s unconquerable power to keep his sheep from every adverse force is the point of connexion with the difficult verse that follows.

29. DV gives the reading of Vg which has the support of the Greek B (Vaticanus) and the Latin Fathers. Translated literally (with the original Rheims) this form of the text says: ’My Father, that which he hath given me, is greater than all’. Both the relative pronoun (?) and the comparative adjective (µeÎ???) are neuter gender. The rival reading followed by the Greek Fathers Basil, Chrysostom, Cyril, makes both words masculine and says: ’My Father, who gave to me is greater than all’. There is no need to refer to the mixture of the two readings in many MSS. The second reading, asserting that the Father who gives the sheep to Jesus is greater (in power) than all makes an easy sense, but for that very reason may be suspect. The grammatically neuter reading is more difficult. The thing given has been understood by St Augustine and St Thomas of the divine nature (and power) given in eternal generation by the Father to the Son; others understand the thing given as the sheep, not simply as sheep but as something given by an omnipotent giver to an omnipotent keeper, as the context demands. The words that follow will fit any of these three senses: ’No one can snatch them out of the hand of my Father’. It is evident that the hand of Jesus is equally omnipotent, for no one can snatch the sheep out of his hand.

30. ’I and the Father are one’. St Cyril who follows the easier reading of 29a crystallizes his interpretation of these few words in the two adjectives homoousios, homodynamos—consubstantial, com-potent. Similar language is used by Basil and Chrysostom. Because the Arians said that union of will was meant —unanimity or concord of the Father and Christ— the champions of orthodoxy interpreted this text repeatedly (Athanasius about 50 times). Two brief citations will suffice as a summary of patristic thought. ’Unum ad naturam referimus, sumus ad personarum distinctionern’, Jer. ’Quod dico, unum, audiat arianus; quod dico, sumus audiat sabellianus. Non dividat arianus unum; non deleat sabellianus sumus’, Aug. 31-39. The Jews understood the magnitude of the claim and again threatened stoning—bringing the stones, rather than finding them near in the Porch of Solomon.

32. Jesus does not withdraw this time (cf. 8:59), but asks them to state their motive. Of the many good works he had shown them from his Father, for which particular good work did they want to stone him?

33. They answer: ’Not for a good work’—whatever it might be—’but for blasphemy’. The accusation is quite formal: ’Thou, being a man, makest thyself God’.

34. Jesus does not deny the charge, nor mitigate what he has said, but leads them to reason upward from a Scripture text, according to the favourite rabbinical process of qal wa?omer—from the less to the greater. Ps 81 (82):6 (a text of the Law in the wider sense of the term) introduces God addressing the judges of Israel in the solemn words: ’I said: "You are gods"’.

35. The appellation is God’s own and registered in an inviolable Scripture.

36. Therefore, a fortiori, it is not blasphemy to apply it to one of higher dignity. That one is Jesus whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world, as his anointed, holy Envoy. It is not blasphemy for him to say: ’I am the Son of God’, this being the equivalent of what he had said above. If ’god’ is a metaphor in Psalms 81:6, it does hot follow that ’Son of God’is a metaphor here.

37. It is a higher dignity proved by works which Jesus does as works of his Father. If his word is not sufficient—although it is—at least they should believe those works, so as to recognize and know that ’the Father is in me, and I in the Father’. This mutual in-being is a unity of being and nature and signifies an identity such as Jesus later impressed on his Apostle Philip in the same words, 14:10. Therefore, the discourse returns to the earlier assertion of consubstantiality: ’I and the Father are one’.

39. The Jews did not think that he had retracted, for they wished to seize him, but ’he escaped out of their hands’.

40-42 Departure to Peraea —Jesus returned across the Jordan to the place where he gathered his first disciples —the place where the Precursor was first baptizing. Away from the hostile environment of Jerusalem, many believed in him; and the memory of John became a motive of belief. Whereas the Precursor had worked no miracles, all he had said of Jesus was true.