The Shepherd Knows the Sheep and Gives His Life

The speech follows 9:41 without a change of audience. “Sheepfold” is aule, a walled courtyard, the word used for the high priest’s courtyard where Peter will stand by the fire (18:15). “Robber” is lestes, the word the Book of John will use of Barabbas (18:40).

The Greek has no article: “a shepherd”, one who is a shepherd rather than an intruder. At this point the image is still general, and it will only become “I am the good shepherd” in verse 11.

Several flocks might share one walled fold, watched overnight by a porter. The same word, thuroros, is used for the maid who kept the door of the high priest’s courtyard (18:16–17). “Leadeth them out” is exago, the verb the Greek Old Testament uses for God leading Israel out of Egypt.

“Putteth forth” is ekballo, to throw out, the verb used when the Pharisees “cast out” the healed man (9:34–35). What they did in hostility, the shepherd does to lead his own. Eastern shepherds walked ahead of their flocks, as Moses prayed for a leader “which may go out before them” (Numbers 27:17).

“Stranger” is allotrios, one who does not belong. Recognition in this verse rests entirely on the ear: they do not know the voice. The healed man in the previous chapter had just refused to follow the voices of the officials who questioned him.

“Parable” here is paroimia, a figure of speech or veiled saying; the Book of John never uses parabole, the usual word in the other Gospels. The disciples will be told in 16:25 that the time for speaking in such figures is ending.

The early papyrus P75 and some Coptic versions read “I am the shepherd of the sheep”, perhaps because a scribe expected the image of verse 2. “Door of the sheep” means the door by which the sheep pass. This is the third of the book’s “I am” sayings with an image.

“Before me” is missing from several early manuscripts, perhaps dropped by scribes who feared the phrase might be taken to condemn the prophets. The tense changes at the end: the sheep “did not hear them”, a past fact, not a present one.

“Go in and out” is a Hebrew idiom for the whole of daily life lived in safety: “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out” (Deuteronomy 28:6; compare Psalm 121:8). “Saved” here means kept safe as well as rescued.

The verb for “kill” is thuo, the word for slaughtering an animal for sacrifice or the table: the thief is there to butcher. “More abundantly” is perisson, beyond measure, the surplus of the twelve baskets left over in chapter 6.

“Good” is kalos, fine, noble, even beautiful, not agathos, the plainer word for moral goodness. “Giveth his life” is literally “lays down his soul”, an idiom found in the Book of John and 1 John and nowhere else. David had risked his life for his father’s sheep against a lion and a bear (1 Samuel 17:34–35).

The Mishnah (Bava Metzia 7:9) held a paid keeper responsible if a single wolf attacked, since he could be expected to fight off one; two wolves counted as unavoidable loss. By that rule, the hireling who runs from one wolf is failing even the minimum. “Catcheth” is harpazo, to snatch.

“Careth not” is literally “it is no concern to him”. The Book of John uses the same phrase of Judas in 12:6, “not that he cared for the poor”, when he objects to the ointment poured on Jesus’ feet.

The good shepherd’s knowledge runs both ways. The Greek of Numbers 16:5 reads “God hath known them that are his”, which Paul cites in 2 Timothy 2:19. In verse 3 the shepherd called his sheep by name; here the knowledge behind the naming is spelt out.

The other Gospels contain one saying very close to this: “no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son” (Matthew 11:27). The mutual knowledge of Father and Son is the pattern for the shepherd’s knowledge of the sheep.

The Greek says “one flock, one shepherd”, not “one fold”. Tyndale had it right; the King James followed Jerome’s Latin unum ovile, one fold. Ezekiel 37:24 promised “one shepherd” over a reunited people, and Caiaphas will prophesy a gathering of the scattered children of God (11:52).

“That I might take it again” is a purpose clause: the laying down is aimed at the taking up. The Father’s love is not said to begin with the laying down, but to rest on it, since 3:35 and 5:20 have already said the Father loves the Son.

“Taketh it” is airei, a verb that returns six verses later. Some early manuscripts read the past tense, “took it”, as if the voice looks back from after the cross. “Power” is exousia, authority or right, not simply strength.

“Again” keeps count: after the feast of tabernacles (7:43) and the healing of the blind man (9:16), a third crowd splits over what Jesus has said. This time the division is among “the Jews”, the book’s usual name for his opponents.

“Mad” is mainomai, to rave, the word Festus shouts at Paul in Acts 26:24. The question “why hear ye him?” is aimed at the listeners rather than the speaker: the charge of madness is a reason not to listen.

In the other Gospels demons cause blindness and dumbness (Matthew 12:22), not cure them. The question expects the answer no. The eyes opened in chapter 9 are still being argued about, and they are still the hardest fact to dispose of.

This is Hanukkah, the eight days kept from the 25th of Kislev in December to remember the cleansing of the temple by Judas Maccabeus in 164 BC, after Antiochus IV had profaned it (1 Maccabees 4:52–59). This verse is the only mention of the feast anywhere in the Bible.

Solomon’s porch was the colonnade along the eastern side of the temple court, which Josephus says went back to Solomon’s work. In winter it gave shelter from the wind. The first believers later gathered there (Acts 3:11; 5:12).

“Came round about” is kukloo, to encircle, the verb Luke uses of armies surrounding Jerusalem (Luke 21:20). “Make us to doubt” is literally “How long dost thou take away our soul?”, using airo, the verb of verse 18 where no man “taketh” his life from him.

Jesus has not said “I am the Christ” to these questioners in so many words. He said it to a Samaritan woman (4:26) and to the man born blind (9:37). “I told you” covers his words and works together, the testimony he appealed to in 5:36.

The words “as I said unto you” are absent from the oldest manuscripts, which let this sentence end on “ye are not of my sheep”. Belief follows belonging here, which reverses the order the questioners expected.

Three short clauses compress the whole of verses 3 and 4: the sheep hear, the shepherd knows, and the sheep follow. His knowing stands between their hearing and their following, as the link that holds the two together.

“Never perish” is an emphatic double negative. “Pluck” is harpazo, the wolf’s verb from verse 12, where the wolf “catcheth” the sheep. What the wolf does to the hireling’s flock, no one can do to this one.

Several ancient manuscripts read “That which my Father hath given me is greater than all”, making the flock, not the Father, the greater thing. The sentence recalls God’s words in Deuteronomy 32:39, “neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”

“One” is hen, neuter, one thing, not heis, one person. Augustine observed that “one” answers Arius, who made the Son less than the Father, and the plural “are” answers Sabellius, who made them a single person under two names.

“Again” recalls the stones of 8:59. “Took up” is ebastasan, carried, which may mean they had to fetch stones from elsewhere in the paved colonnade, though that is an inference.

“Good works” uses kalos again, the adjective of the good shepherd in verse 11. “Shewed” is deiknumi, to display, as one puts goods on view. He asks, with irony, which of them earned the stones.

Leviticus 24:16 punished blasphemy with stoning. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 7:5) later held that blasphemy strictly required pronouncing the divine name itself. The charge repeats 5:18: a man “making himself equal with God”.

Psalm 82 is in the Psalms, not the five books of Moses, so “your law” means Scripture as a whole, as it does in 12:34 and 15:25, where the Book of John quotes Psalms again as “law”.

“Broken” is luo, the verb for breaking the Sabbath in 5:18 and the law in 7:23: to loosen, to undo. A later rabbinic reading applied Psalm 82 to Israel at Sinai, the people to whom the word of God came in the giving of the law.

“Sanctified” is hagiazo, to consecrate. The feast was the dedication of the altar and the temple, consecrated again after its profaning, and the one whom the Father consecrated is standing in that temple during that feast. He uses the same verb of himself in 17:19.

He sets his claim under a test they can apply, as Deuteronomy 18:22 tests a prophet by whether his word comes to pass. The works are what he appealed to in verse 25, and he stakes his credibility on them.

The best manuscripts read “that ye may know and go on knowing”, using the same verb twice in two tenses, where the King James has “know, and believe”. In 14:10–11 Jesus makes the same appeal to Philip: “believe me for the very works’ sake.”

“Take” is piazo, to seize, the verb used for catching fish in 21:3 and 21:10. He goes out of their hand just after saying that no one can take the sheep out of his.

The place is Bethabara beyond Jordan (1:28), where the Book of John began its account of John’s witness, so the public ministry ends where it started. The region was Peraea, under Herod Antipas, and outside the reach of the Jerusalem council. “Abode” is meno.

No Gospel attributes a single miracle to John the Baptist. This is the last time he is mentioned in the book, and the last word on him is that his words proved true, from the “Lamb of God” (1:29) to “he must increase” (3:30).

The Greek puts “there” last for emphasis: many believed on him there, in the wilderness across the river, in contrast with the stones in the temple. From this place he will be called to Bethany in the next chapter.