Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 10:2

On the other hand, ὁ δὲ εἰσερχόμενος … προβάτων, “but he that entereth by the door is shepherd of the sheep”. The shepherd is known by his using the legitimate mode of entrance. What that is, He does not here explicitly state. The shepherd is further recognised by his treatment of the sheep, τὰ ἴδια πρόβατα καλεῖ [better φωνεῖ] κατʼ ὄνομα, “his own sheep he calls by name”. ἴδια perhaps as distinguished from others in the same fold; perhaps merely a strong possessive. As we have names for horses, dogs, cows, so the Eastern shepherds for their sheep. [“Many of the sheep have particular names,” Van Lennep, Bible Lands, i. 189. It was also a Greek custom to name sheep, and Wetstein quotes from Longus, ὁ δὲ Δάφνις ἐκάλεσέ τινας αὐτῶν ὀνομαστί] ὅταν … αὐτοῦ. When he has put all his own out of the fold, they follow him, because they know his voice: the shepherd walking in front as is still the custom in the East. This method cannot be adopted by strangers “because the sheep know not the voice of strangers”. “There is a story of a Scotch traveller who changed clothes with a Jerusalem shepherd and tried to lead the sheep; but the sheep followed the shepherd's voice and not his clothes.” Plummer. So that the shepherd's claim is justified not only by his method of entrance but by his Knowledge of the names of the individual sheep and by their knowledge of him and confidence in him. The different methods are illustrated in Andrewes and Laud, the former saying “Our guiding must be mild and gentle, else it is not duxisti, but traxisti, drawing and driving and no leading”; the latter, of whom it was said that he “would never convince an opponent if he could suppress him”. See Ottley's Andrewes, 159.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 10:2

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