Verily, verily, I say unto you. — This formula is not used at the beginning of a fresh discourse, but is, in every case, the solemn introduction of some development of our Lord’s deeper teaching. (Comp. Note on John 1:51.) We are not, then, to regard this chapter as a new subject, but as part of the teaching commenced in John 9:35, and arising out of the sign of healing the blind man. This sign is present to their thoughts at the close of the discourse, in John 10:21.
He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold. — The special form which the discourse here takes has been thought, with a probability which does not fall far short of certainty, due to the actual presence of a sheepfold with the shepherds and their flocks. (See John 5:2.) We know that Bethesda was near the “sheepgate,” and we have seen that it is not improbably to be identified with a covered portion of the Pool of Siloam. (See Note on John 5:2.) In any case, there must have been sheepfolds sufficiently near to make it possible that they had arrived at one, and the change in the central points of the allegory find their most natural explanation in thoughts of the shifting scene on which it is based. The description of such a scene, by Bochart, written more than two centuries ago, has been borne out by all modern travellers. We have to think of an open fold, surrounded by a wall or railing, into which, at eventide, the shepherds lead their flocks, committing them, during the night, to the care of an under-shepherd, who guards the door. In the morning they knock and the porter opens the door, which has been securely fastened during the night, and each shepherd calls his own sheep, who know his voice and follow him to the pasturage. (Comp. Thomson, The Land and the Book, vol. i., pp. 299-302.)
It is to some part of such a scene as this, passing before our Lord’s eye as He taught, that we have to trace the words which follow. But we must remember that His mind and theirs were full of thoughts ready to pass into a train like this. “Thy servants are shepherds, both we and also our fathers” (Genesis 47:3), was the statement of the first sons of Israel, and it was true of their descendants. This truth was bound up with their whole history. The greatest heroes of Israel — Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David — had all been shepherds, and no imagery is more frequent in prophecy or psalm than that drawn from the shepherd’s work. We must fill our minds with these Old Testament thoughts if we would understand this chapter. Let any one, before commencing it, read thoughtfully Psalms 23; Isaiah 40:11; Jeremiah 23:1-4; Ezekiel 34, and especially Zechariah 11:4-17, and he will find that he has the key which unlocks most of its difficulties. We have, then, the scene passing before their eyes, and the Old Testament thoughts of the Shepherd, connected as they were, on one hand with Jehovah and the Messiah, and on the other with the careless shepherds of Israel, dwelling in their minds; and we have, in the events which have just taken place, that which furnishes the starting-point, and gives to all that follows its fulness of meaning. The Pharisees claimed for themselves that they were shepherds of Israel. They decreed who should be admitted to, and who should be cast out from the fold. They professed to be interpreters of God’s truth, and with it to feed His flock. Pharisees, shepherds! what did they, with their curses and excommunications, know of the tenderness of the Shepherd who “shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young”? Pharisees feed the flock of God! What had they, with their pride and self-righteousness, ever known of the infinite love and mercy of God; or what had their hearts ever felt of the wants and woes of the masses of mankind? This poor blind beggar was an example of their treatment of the weaker ones of the flock. In spirit, if not in deed (John 9:22; John 9:34), they had thrust him out from the fold of God. The true Shepherd had sought and found this lost sheep, who is now standing near, in His presence and in that of the false shepherds. He teaches who the Shepherd and what the flock of God really are.
On the meaning of “the door,” see the fuller expansion in John 10:7-9.
Climbeth up some other way. — Or, more exactly, climbeth up from elsewhere — i.e., from some part of the fence, away from the door where the porter is watching.
The same is a thief and a robber. — The former of these words means the petty thief who commits the smaller or unobserved robbery. The latter means the brigand or highwayman, and is applied, e.g., to Barabbas and to the two crucified with our Lord. The words are repeated in John 10:8. They are probably joined together to express, in all its fulness, the idea which is common to both. If we press the individual sense of each, it may be that the false shepherds united the meaner faults and the greater crimes.
(1) At the Feast of Tabernacles there was a practice, one of those which witnessed to a feeling wider than that of those who acted in it, of offering up seventy oxen for the seventy nations of the world, the number being taken partly from the list in Genesis, and partly from a vague idea of its sanctity. The number seventy was thus brought before the people with the recognition of the heathen world as within the hope of salvation, and the minds of men were prepared for the mission of the Seventy, which followed at no long interval.